Who was the woman behind Little Women?

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.

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Abigail’s parents lived in Roxbury, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Boston.

“That’s where the Jews lived,” Reisen says. “And even though some non-Jews also resided there, it was considered highly unusual.”

Abigail’s parents were close friends of Moses Michael Hays, and Abigail and her brother Samuel often spent the weekends at their home.

Samuel’s admiration for the Hays was so profound that he wrote about them in his memoirs:

“If the children of my day were taught, among other foolish things, to dread, if not despise, Jews, a very different lesson was impressed upon my young heart.

“There was but one family of the despised children of the house of Israel resident in Boston — the family of Moses Michael Hays: a man much respected, not only on account of his large wealth, but for his many personal virtues and the high culture and great excellence of his wife, his son Judah, and his daughters.

“Always on Saturday, he expected a number of friends to dine with him. A full-length table was always spread and loaded with the luxuries of the season . . . My father was a favorite guest.

He was regarded by Mr. Hays and his whole family as a particular friend, their chosen counselor in times of perplexity, and their comforter in the days of their affliction. My father seldom failed to dine at Mr. Hays’ on Saturday.”

The luminous account may be nothing more than an honest affection of one Christian man for a Jewish mentor — or suggestive of a deeper bond.

Reisen, who also mentions Louisa’s dark olive skin and intense features as a possible indication of Jewish ancestry, is interested in checking DNA preserved in a sample of the author’s hair in the Orchard House museum.

Whether Reisen can substantiate her scholarly and Jewish fascination is something only time and persistence will tell.

“Ultimately, if Louisa was descended from Jews, she didn’t know it, as is so common even now,” Reisen says.

“Did she hear rumors or look in the mirror and wonder if her face was Semitic? She often referred to herself as ‘brown-skinned’ and seemed to feel marked, although mostly for the better.

“I’d love to see someone look far enough into this to either confirm or deny the supposition that Louisa May Alcott is a tiny fraction genetically Jewish — but I don’t think it should change perceptions of her. It’s just a neat part of the story.”

HARRIET Reisen’s personal lineage is stellar in its own right. As the story goes, her great-grandfather was “excommunicated” from his temple for writing love poetry in Hebrew.

His sons Abraham and Zalman and daughter Sarah were major figures in the realm of secularized Yiddish literature.

“Irving Howe told me that Abraham was ‘the Robert Burns of Yiddish literature,’ and a friend of mine compares him to Bob Dylan in his widespread impact,” she says.

Sarah translated Shakespeare into Yiddish for the Yiddish theater and wrote children’s stories and fiction.

Raised in the New Jersey suburbs of Newark that Philip Roth described so aptly in his novels, Reisen remembers that her grandfather used to brag “that he was the greatest writer of all the siblings because he wrote the checks to support them.”

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women is Reisen’s first academic literary effort. A history and English major at Cornell who earned an MA in film and TV from Stanford, she calls herself “an independent scholar.”

“I don’t have a PhD. This book came about from my own interest,” she says, referring to one childhood summer when she devoured eight of Alcott’s children’s books.

“I’m in my 60’s and this is my first book,” she marvels. “I’ve written scripts for HBO and PBS, and I’ve always wanted to write a book — yet I’m kind of surprised I managed to do this.”

Married to Tony Kahn, the producer and director of “Morning Stories” for WGBH in Boston, Reisen undertook years of painstaking research to penetrate the woman behind the literary mask.

“So many people became a writer because of her,” she says. “I know I did. And there are others you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be influenced by her: Simone de Beauvoir, J.K. Rowling, Gertrude Stein, Cynthia Ozick — as well as Hilary Clinton and Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor. The list is endless.”

Reisen feels that Jo March, the fictional embodiment of Louisa May Alcott’s fierce intellect, wit, perversity and independence, set the bar for women in search of their own voice.

“Through Jo, Louisa May Alcott made you believe that even if you were flawed, you could triumph,” she says.

“Jo comes to terms with herself and achieves her dreams. That’s the message that got through to women in all generations — you don’t have to be perfect to succeed.

“As one Korean woman said, ‘You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband once you know Jo March.’”

Or the woman behind Little Women.