Intermountain Jewish News

LOUISA May Alcott, celebrated author of Little Women, wrote shady thrillers unfit for the ladies, suffered wild mood swings and might be a descendant of Portuguese Jews on her mother’s side.

If those tidbits haven’t sufficiently aroused your curiosity, read on.

In the newly released Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women,  Harriet Reisen rips off the mythic veil obscuring this literary icon and uncovers a portrait far more complex and compelling than her richest characters.

The beloved children’s writer “could be so charming,” says Reisen, whose book comes to life Monday, Dec. 28 on a PBS American Masters production of the same name, “but she could also get really critical and angry.

“Her moods were so unpredictable that she carried around an oblong pillow to convey her emotional state to the family. If it was vertical, you could talk to her. If it was lying on its side, stay away.”

Reisen, who feels that many writers are manic depressive, asked Kay Redfield Jamison, one of the foremost experts on bipolar disorder, to study Alcott’s journals and other accounts of her behavior.

Jamison concluded that “everything she knows about Alcott is consistent with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder,” Reisen says.

The American Masters offering, directed by Nancy Porter and written by Reisen, reveals a very adventurous Louisa May Alcott that will challenge numerous preconceptions cherished by fans of Little Women.

CREATIVE minds generally become so enmeshed with their creations that they become one and the same, which certainly applies to Jo March and Louisa May Alcott.

Those who have read the novel or watched the Hollywood films it spawned undoubtedly remember the scene where Jo secludes herself in the attic and surrenders to artistic fire.

Little Women may indeed be autobiographical on many levels, but Reisen says it was essentially born out of monetary necessity.

Alcott “wanted and needed to write on a financial level,” says Reisen, who adds that Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s philosopher-father, “never could support the family.”

Born in 1862 in Massachusetts, Louisa May Alcott’s intellectual curiosity was nurtured in Concord by the greatest thinkers and artists of her generation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson lent her books from his library. Henry David Thoreau taught her about the intricacies of nature during their long walks. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived on the same street.

Although her father was almost solipsistic in his approach to life, Louisa’s mother Abigail May was a pragmatic woman who practiced social action with the fervor of a sisterhood president.

“Mr. Alcott was the Transcendentalist,” Reisen says of the influential movement to which he belonged. “But as Mrs. Alcott said, ‘The butcher and baker will not accept payment in aphorisms.’”

Despite their distinguished contributions to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage, the Alcotts constantly struggled for money, a condition Louisa recreates in Little Women.

“Their own children might be starving, but Mrs. Alcott would still take food to the poor,” Reisen says. “Just like Marme.

“In Little Women, the March family is steeped in genteel poverty. They had a maid. But the Alcotts were imbued in bread and water poverty.”

Louisa was forced to assume the burden of primary provider, which in a family without sons fell to the daughter, when her older sister Anna married and younger sibling Lizzie became ill.

A frenetic writer who could turn out an ink-pen scribbled page every 15 minutes, Alcott certainly had the talent, drive and ambition. By 17, she wrote her first novel, and newspapers and magazines paid handsomely for her romances and thrillers throughout her life.

With the publication of Little Women (in two parts) in 1868-1869, Alcott would never be the same — nor would any little girl who fell in love with Jo, Marme, Meg, Amy and Beth.

“She became a children’s writer, which was not very prestigious,” Reisen says. “Alcott branded herself as a New England spinster aunt. Henry James called her ‘the Trollope of the Nursery.’ Not a very nice play on words.

“Yet she was a great business woman and made sure she got royalties for Little Women — which was very unusual at that time.”

Alcott frequently referred to her children’s books as “moral pap for the young,” but her celebrity status far exceeded most male authors.

“She wasn’t the greatest American writer ever, but she wrote from the heart and touched hearts,” Reisen says. “She inspired people.”

REISEN’S theory that Louisa’s mother Abigail is descended from Portuguese Jews who left pre-Inquisition Portugal for England “is pure speculation,” she admits.

“That’s why Ididn’t include this in my book. Yet there are intriguing hints.”

She first read of a possible Jewish connection in Madelon Bedell’s book, The Alcotts: Biography of a Family. “Bedell mentions a Portuguese ancestor of John May, the first May to live in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

May, like Mayo, Mayer, Meyer, Maio and other variants, was a common Jewish name in pre-Inquisition Portugal –– and  Abigail May’s family did use Mayo for a while.