| 11-29 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Louisa May Alcott
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Louisa May Alcott.
"I wonder if I shall ever be famous
enough for people to care to read my story and struggles."
Born Nov. 29, 1832, Louisa May Alcott, writer whose
main fame today is for her book Little Women, although she wrote
more than 270 works. Raised in abject poverty because her father was a
philosopher not a worker, she turned to writing rather than nursing or
needlecraft because it paid more. Her mother also worked. Although the
Little Women type books made her financially independent, she preferred
writing graphic detective stories and books with more realistic themes.
Louisa May Alcott is indeed famous, but her life and
her struggles have been fictionalized to the point the real woman is hardly
recognizable. Even so-called feminists in Hollywood twisted her life into
a vapid dreamer rather than expose the iron and fiery talent of this woman
of steel.
Struggling to make money, Alcott did a series of menial
jobs, sewing, housework for others, and even nursing at the Union hospital
in Georgetown, the inspiration for her book Hospital Sketches for which
she received $2,000 which enabled her to make her first trip to Europe.
While Louisa May was growing up, her family was near
starvation many times and friends and neighbors took them food and clothing.
In 1848 her mother Abba Alcott at age 49 was hired
by a group of philanthropic Boston women to be their city missionary to
distribute food and clothing to the poor and needy (her family included).
Her salary provided almost the only income for her four children and her
philosopher husband Branson, who did a lot of thinking and talking that
has gotten him into a lot of "noted men" history books, but did
no work to feed himself or his family. Branson once wrote in his voluminous
correspondence, "What with my wife's and (daughter)
Anna's earnings, my own tithe and charities from a few friends, we survive
as a family, and fall but little into debt."
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11-29 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 11-29-1752, Jemima Wilkinson, after
an illness she became Publick Universal Friend and advocated her own doctrine
through stirring sermons and her book The Universal Friend's Advice
to Those of the Same Religious Society (1784). Two Universal Friend's
communities were formed, but the sect did not last after her death.
B. 11-29-1788, Abigail Goodrich Whittelsey
edited several popular magazines, which printed practical advice and
instructions on motherhood with huge doses of religious constraints.
B. 11-29-1872, Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, eminent
Austrian Wagnerian soprano at Bayrueth (1897), member of the Vienna
Imperial opera.
B. 11-29-1876, Nellie Tayloe Ross, elected
governor of Wyoming to fill out the unexpired term of her husband,
served as director of the U.S. Mint from 1933-1953.
B. 11-29-1888, Toni Sender, union consultant
to U.N. and instrumental in the U.S. investigating and opposing slave
labor camps.
B. 11-29,-1919, Pearl Primus, dancer. Although
born in Trinidad, her family emigrated to U.S. when she was very young.
She went through the Hunter School system and gained her masters in Biology.
However, she found that as a black woman, she could get no laboratory work.
PP did a number of odd jobs while studying to become
a doctor and during a nightclub stint found out she was a highly talented
dancer and turned professional in 1943.
B. 11-29-1947, Petra Karim Kelly helped found
West German's Green Party, the environmental protection advocates.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
ALCOTT, LOUISA MAY:
"Housekeeping
ain't no joke."
"Let
us hear no more of 'woman's sphere' from the State House or pulpit - no
more twaddle about sturdy oaks and clinging vines. Let woman find out her
own limitations, but in heaven's name, give her a chance! Let the professions
be opened to her. Let fifty years of college education be hers. And then
we shall see what she can do!"
"Dear Mother,
"Into your Christmas stocking, I put my 'first
born' knowing that you will accept it with all its faults (for Grandmothers
are always kind) and look upon it merely as an earnest of what I may yet
do; for with so much to cheer me on, I hope to pass in time from fairies
and fable to men and realities."
--
Louisa May Alcott to her mother on the publication of her first book for
which she received $32 which she gave her mother.
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