Lesson Overview:

This lesson encourages students to examine author Louisa May Alcott as a pioneer, deeply dedicated to her family and to the ethical framework they represented, one who negotiated her way successfully through the difficulties of cultural displacement in pre-Civil War, Civil War, and post-Civil War America without compromising her ideals. Through her gifted pen, optimistic vision, and active engagement in the turbulent issues of the day, Alcott contributed much to the redefinition of American womanhood.

Length of Lesson:

Five 45-minute periods

Instructional Objectives:

Students will:

• appreciate the power of personal experience as a springboard for creative expression.
• become acquainted with Louisa May Alcott’s experience as a member of a family involved in the Transcendental movement
• experience growth in the writing process, oral skills, skills of research, contextual analysis, and collaboration.
• explore Louisa May Alcott’s role in the abolitionist movement and post-Civil War women’s reform movement.
• explore the involvement of the Transcendentalists in the abolitionist movement.
• gain insight into the widespread power of philosophical/intellectual movements to shape beliefs, attitudes, actions and events.
• learn of Louisa May Alcott’s close association with some of the literary giants of the American Renaissance.
• recognize the active involvement of women in post-Civil War social and political issues.
• recognize the far-reaching impact of the Concord Transcendentalists, particularly the writers, on the cultural, social, and political issues of mid- and late-19th century America.
• study the role of John Brown in the build up of the Civil War, particularly the Harper’s Ferry event.

Supplies:

• Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches
• Selected articles by Louisa May Alcott in the paper, Commonwealth
• Texts that explore Transcendental ideas, such as excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature and Self-Reliance; excerpts from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience; excerpts from Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century; and Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s play, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail
• Information about the following names and references via Internet or print resources: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Bronson Alcott, Abbe May Alcott, Charles Lane, Fruitlands, and the Brook Farm Experiment

Instructional Plan:

Introduction

Share the following information with students:

The cultural landscape of the United States between 1830 and 1870 was strongly influenced, particularly in the intellectual community of New England, by Transcendentalism, the outlook of an American version of the Romanticism that had swept over Europe at the end of the 18th century and the first part of the 19th century. The optimism and idealism inherent in Romantic beliefs was a good fit with the vibrancy of a culture dedicated to individualism and freedom within a construct of national unity, a populace pushing westward into virgin lands, and an entrepreneurial spirit that valued creative capability and drive.

Transcendentalism would help infuse in the American consciousness Romantic precepts that would become subtle but strong undercurrents contributing to the shaping of social, political, and psychological attitudes in a new nation reaching to define itself on many fronts. The practical, “surface” extensions of Romantic beliefs would be felt in such aspects as a call for a national literature, change in the behavioral patterns of women, the drive for reforms in factory working conditions, and the igniting of the abolitionist cause.

Louisa May Alcott, born in 1832 to a family deeply involved in the Transcendental movement, would spend her childhood surrounded by the strong advocates and the giant literary voices of this "Romanticism on Puritan soil." She would live through the dramatic changes effected by Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed. Her writings chronicle, in both subtle and overt ways, her life experiences in these dramatic changes in the American landscape.

The following activities are dedicated to immersing students in Louisa May Alcott’s world from three different perspectives: her experiences in the intellectual Transcendental environment of Concord, Massachusetts; her involvement in the abolitionist movement and the Civil War; and her role as a dynamic liberated woman who had gained fame and fortune as a novelist.

Activity A: Louisa, the Concord Years

Provide students with, or assign students to investigate, some of the basic precepts of Transcendentalism. Consider giving particular attention to the outlook the intellectual movement generated toward:

• self-reliance
• independence
• man’s relationship with nature (including the concepts of "fundamental unity" and "over-soul")
• a priori knowledge
• intuition
• brotherhood
• a moral imperative

Note: Eleventh and twelfth grade students can be encouraged to draw from assignments in American literature to construct, inductively, an overview of Transcendental ideas. (Rich texts for this study include: excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, Self-Reliance, and other essays; excerpts from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience; excerpts from Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century; and/or Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s play, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.)

Assign students (working individually or in pairs) to gather and share background information, from Web and print media, on the following names and references:

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Margaret Fuller
• Elizabeth Peabody
• Bronson Alcott
• Abbe May Alcott
• Charles Lane
• Fruitlands (see Alcott.net for information)
• Brook Farm Experiment

Divide the class into small groups (3–5 students). Assign each group a “cluster” from the above list. For instance, Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Elizabeth Peabody; Charles Lane, Bronson Alcott, and Fruitlands; Margaret Fuller, Abbe May Alcott and Emerson; Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the Brook Farm Experiment. Advise students that the responsibility of each group is to develop a script of a hypothetical “conversation” that includes the people and any reference in their assigned cluster, and role-play their script in a classroom performance. Remind students that their conversation should illuminate, through specific statements, demeanor, and body language, the personalities, interrelationships, attitudes, beliefs and concerns that grow out of Transcendentalist alliances and experiments.

Initiate a teacher-led large group critique of the performances and a summary of key points surfacing in the conversations about personalities and events in the Transcendental movement.

Have students read aloud selected passages from Louisa May Alcott’s Transcendental Wild Oats, a gentle and delightful satire of her childhood days at Fruitland that also includes excerpts from her Fruitlands Diary.

Activity B: Louisa, the Abolitionist

Corneila Meigs, in chapter two of her Alcott biography, Invincible Louisa, recounts an incident in Louisa’s early childhood shortly after the Alcott family had moved to Boston. Venturing too close to Frog Pond on the Boston Commons, Alcott fell in. A young African-American boy saw her gasping and struggling and quickly ran to the rescue, pulling her safely to shore. He disappeared before anyone could get his name, but the recollection of the event would stay with her throughout her life. This formative experience helped spur her future activities to support the abolishment of slavery on behalf of African-Americans.

The deep commitment she would eventually make to the abolitionist cause would be fed by various influences. The Transcendentalist community in which she had been raised included such forceful voices as those of Emerson, Thoreau, and her father Bronson—all passionate abolitionists. After having read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she had become a strong admirer of Harriet Beecher Stowe. She would become a volunteer nurse in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. She would support Abraham Lincoln’s literacy plan for teaching black soldiers to read and write. Her abolitionist fervor would sustain in stories she would write after the Civil War.

This activity brings students in touch with Alcott’s close involvement in the radical anti-slavery engagement of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, an incident that is seen as a firestorm event in helping to ignite the Civil War. (For more information on John Brown, see the Civil War Biographies site.)

To develop a frame of reference for understanding Louisa May Alcott’s fervent commitment to the abolitionist cause and her participation in the John Brown episode, assign or ask a few students to volunteer to research and prepare a presentation to the class on the following topics:

• a brief summary of the narrative and wide influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852. (Consider sharing with students the anecdotal account of Abraham Lincoln’s purported comment when he first met Stowe: "So you are the little lady who has brought this great war.") (See the PBS American Experience Web site for more information.)
• background on the traveling "Tom Shows," dramatizations of the Stowe narrative by theatre companies throughout the nation. The performances strongly influenced the strengthening of the abolitionist cause. (Some students may want to perform a vignette of one of the recorded scripts of the shows and position the “Tom Show” format in the genre of melodrama that was popular in America in the 1850s.) (See University of Virginia's site, Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, for more information.)
• an account of John Brown’s "renegade" activities in "Bleeding Kansas," his plan for establishing a fort at Harper’s Ferry, and his subsequent trial and sentence. (See the National Park Service's Harpers Ferry site for more information.)
• the song lyrics about John Brown’s fate at the trial, transposed to the music score of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." (You could encourage one or a few students to perform the song.)

Introduce the class to the text of Stephen Vincent Benet’s narrative poem, "John Brown’s Body." (See the West Virginia Division of Culture and History's site for more information.) Assign selected passages for students to read aloud in a dramatic presentation. Have students identify the passages that would best be delivered by one individual, and those that would be best as a choral reading. Have students develop a floor plan for the effective positioning of the different voices. Suggest that the John Brown song mentioned above could be infused into the dramatic reading of the text.

(Note: Many years ago, a group of some of America’s finest actors toured the nation to give powerful dramatic readings of Benet’s "John Brown’s Body." Among the group were Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey, Charles Laughton, and Tyrone Power.)

Share with the class an account of Louisa May Alcott’s and the Alcott family’s bold involvement with the John Brown episode and aftermath. (Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody, and others were also involved.) Assign a few students or ask for volunteers to:

• trace references to John Brown in Louisa May Alcott’s journals.
• access and share with the class Alcott’s poem, “With a Rose That Bloomed on the Day of John Brown’s Martyrdom,” published first in William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly newspaper, The Liberator.
• gather information about the Alcott’s sheltering of John Brown’s widow and family after his hanging.

Activity C: Louisa, Nurse and Tutor

To broaden students understanding of Alcott’s participation in the abolitionist cause and in the Civil War, assign students to read vignettes from Alcott's Hospital Sketches, her fictionalized account of her experiences as a volunteer nurse in the Civil War. Also assign some of her articles to the paper, Commonwealth, which included letters from black soldiers who had been taught to read and write. Note that Alcott, her mother, and her sister were also involved in teaching black women to read and write.

Encourage students interested in acting to develop the script of a monologue built off of an episode or encounter in one of the above sources. Advise students that, although the monologue is to be delivered by a central voice (i.e., Louisa, a doctor, or one of the soldiers in Hospital Sketches), and that the central voice could assume other voices in the context of the presentation of the monologue (i.e., to relate a conversation that the speaker had with another individual).

Activity D: Louisa, Reformer and Suffragette

Divide the class into small groups. Ask each group to gather information about how Louisa May Alcott’s interests and life experiences align with the following women’s liberation events and issues:

• William Lloyd Garrison demanding that women be admitted into the American Antislavery Society
• Women’s Rights Convention held at Seneca Falls in 1848
• Women’s Congress in New York (1875) held on the issue of women’s rights to vote
• women’s right to work
• women’s education
• the Temperance Movement
• women’s involvement in other social reforms, including charity and prison reform
• women’s petitions

Initiate the following individual writing assignment (also described in the Developing an Alcott Biography handout for ease of distribution):

You have just signed a contract to develop a full-length book entitled Louisa May Alcott, a Woman of Her Times. On the way back to your office, you suddenly realize the challenge you have just undertaken: The years between 1832 and 1888 represent an incredible span of change, particularly in the United States. You ask yourself, how does Louisa—author of such novels as Little Women, Jo’s Boys, and Eight Cousins—fit in to these strong changing currents that characterize pre-Civil War, Civil War, and post-Civil War America?

Your general perception of Alcott, based on a past reading of her novels, is that she was an “old fashioned” girl. She even wrote a book with that title. But what does that term mean? You have a pending deadline. The content of this book has to be provocative—a fresh, archetypal view of a 19th century American woman and author. Where do you start?

Your Task:

Construct a written definitive statement (one or two paragraphs of explanation) of the position you are going to take in your new book about Alcott as an archetypal symbol of the American woman emerging in the 1840–1890 time period. For instance, is she a "feminist" in the sense that we use that term today? In what way(s) could she be a feminist and still be "old-fashioned?"

Develop an opening paragraph for your new book. Work to get an energetic opening that grabs the reader’s attention, giving promise that this book is going to present a fresh, thought-provoking position about Alcott and 19th century American women.

Cite one example that you intend to use in your book as evidence of Alcott’s attitude toward the dominant male personalities she encountered in the environments in which she lived and worked. Consider, for instance, whether was she adversarial, respectful, and/or able to maintain herself as an intellectual equal. Note, when selecting your evidence, that Louisa interacted with men who were the dominant intellectuals and literati of her time period. Note, also, that she used some of these men as “patterns” for characters in her novels (i.e., Henry David Thoreau and Theodore Parker).

Activity E: Personal Essays and Creative Writing Assignments

Assign students writing assignments that will help them connect aspects of Alcott's life to their own experiences. The following topics are also described on the Writing Topics handout for ease of distribution:

Topic A
Practically everything Louisa May Alcott wrote drew off of profiles of members of her family, people she knew, and events in her life experiences. The argument has been made that much of her success as a writer was generated by the integrity of her fictionalized reality—her ability to capture the emotional and psychological context of people around her, to recreate the environments, events, and interrelationships of her life; and to present an introspective view of herself in the narratives and characterizations of her novels and short stories.

In a thoughtful essay, discuss (1) the environment(s) in your personal experience you would draw from if you were building a novel or a short story, and (2) one or a few people you have known whom you would use as a “pattern” for the characters in the narratives of your short story or novel. Include in your discussion an analysis of the rationale for your choices.

Topic B

It was the style in late-19th century America for upper-class young people, as part of their education, to go on a grand tour of Europe accompanied by one or more relatives. Louisa May Alcott and her sister May went on such a tour. Alcott recorded rich details of her travels in a journal, including specific places she visited in various geographical settings and people she met. Her travels on these tours are vividly mirrored throughout her writings.

Develop an account of a "virtual grand tour" that you would have taken. Gather specifics about the grand tour as a social concept. To give your hypothetical account a sense of authenticity, collect and integrate specific details about places you would have visited on your tour.

Assessment:

Evaluate students based on the following criteria:

• evidence of close reading of assigned text
• level of serious and cooperative participation in research and collaborative assignments
• level of discernment in drawing inferences from the text
• substantive contributions to class discussion, creative activities, and special projects
• range and depth in comparative analysis
• organization, meaningful substance, rhetorical skill, and poise in formal oral presentation
• alignment of written performance with writing process rubric
• willingness to volunteer for special activities
• general level of engagement in all activities and assignments

Sources:

Print:

• Alcott, Louisa May. Transcendental Wild Oats and Excerpts from the Fruitlands Diary. Harvard, Massasachusetts: The Harvard Common Press, 1981.
• Alcott, Louisa May. The Feminist Alcott (Stories of a Woman’s Power). Edited by Madeleine B. Stern. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
• Alcott, Louisa May. Louisa May Alcott On Race, Sex, and Slavery. Edited by Sarah Elbert. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997.
• Alcott, Louisa May. Louisa May Alcott Unmasked (Collected Thrillers). Edited by Madeleine Stern. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
• Anderson, William. The World of Louisa May Alcott. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1995.
• Benet, Stephen Vincent. John Brown’s Body. New York: Amereon, Ltd., December, 1982.
• Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott’s Place in American Culture. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers Press, 1988.
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by Brooks Atkinson. New York: Princeton Review, 2000.
• Fuller, Margaret. Excerpts of Women in the Nineteenth Century. 1844. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995.
• Stern, Madeleine B., Louisa May Alcott. New York: Rutgers Press, 1995
• Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Other Writings. Brooks Atkinson (ed.). Modern Library, 2000.
• U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Our Mothers Before Us: Wome and Democracy, 1789-1920. Washington, DC: NARA, 2000.

Web:

• U.S. Civil War 1861-1865
  http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/

Authors:

• Jayne Karsten, English, Grades 9-12
  The Key School
  Annapolis, MD US