Louisa May Alcott and the Female Fairy Tale (Form, Massachusetts)
Zehr, Janet Susan
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69446
Description
Title
Louisa May Alcott and the Female Fairy Tale (Form, Massachusetts)
Author(s)
Zehr, Janet Susan
Issue Date
1985
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Biography
Literature, American
Abstract
When Louisa May Alcott wrote her first book, Flower Fables, at the age of sixteen, she had already discovered the form that would shape many of her fictions: the female-centered fairy tale. Her version of it, appearing repeatedly in her popular children's fictions, features a heroine, frequently orphaned, who either desires something or, less often, is wronged by a villain. Traveling forth to look for her desires, she is helped by a wise donor. The tales climax in difficult tasks or struggles with villains. Finally, the heroine triumphs, is transfigured, and is rewarded with marriage and sometimes a type of coronation.
Though Alcott seems to affirm womanly strength through this form, she manipulated its predictability and capacity for infinite expansion pirmarily to meet her audiences' demands for excitement, realism, and instruction. Both her iconoclastic sensation stories and her personal correspondence indicate that she had little respect for this genre. Because she so frequently wrote formulaic fiction "to suit customers," as she put it, Alcott's real opinions about women and their roles elude the reader.
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