by Daisy Peasblossom

Created on: June 11, 2010   Last Updated: November 25, 2010

"Work" was Louisa May Alcott's definitive work, and her feminist manifesto. In it she includes several female characters and intertwines their various fates. Included are a young woman who "gets in trouble", a housewife who is supporting her family with laundering fine linens, a factory girl,a women who does peice work,and an orphan. The plot can be a little difficult to follow, as it is written in much the same style as the Bronte sister or Jean Stratton Porter's "White Flag".

This is probably the book referred to in the semi-biographical book, "Little Women" as "having sailed around the world, eventually bringing profit to the publishers"; whereas, "a few quick chapters dashed off based on adventures of her and her sisters", no doubt refers to "Little Women".

"Work" examines working conditions, legal constraints and social mores in regards to women during her era. Some parts of it are very down-to-earth,the portions dealing with the laundress and the home piece-worker in particular; other parts are highly sensationalized, such as the portion dealing with the pregnant young woman who has been turned out without a penny or a home.

The events and characters draw heavily from Alcott's own home life. Her father, Bronson Alcott, considered himself quite the intellectual and teacher. He was fired from several teaching positions because the school directors objected to his teaching methods. He enrolled himself, his wife and daughters in a commune, which Alcott remembers with mild horror. In her diary (one of the few not burned at her death), she recounts how nice it was to wear real clothing again when they left the community. Her mother drew the line when he wanted them to enter a Shaker commune.

Mrs. Alcott may well be the model for the laundress, since she took in laundry, cleaned houses, and did whatever else she could to support her family while Bronson wandered from one job to the next, never quite managing to succeed.

Louisa Alcott spent much of her life supporting her family; her primary aim being to help raise her widowed sister's two boys and to provide a warm, sunny room for her mother's old age. She was no stranger to work, or to the exigencies forced upon a woman who needed to support herself at that time. This knowledge is clearly reflected in her descriptions of working conditions, incidents that shape each of her characters, and comments upon the moral attitudes of society at that time.

Reading "Work" clarifies and expands upon several feminist themes that are apparent in "Jo's Boys", the third volume in the saga about the March family. Regrettably, her novel "An Old-Fashioned Girl", while still endorsing hard work and independence, portrays a loving woman transforming a wayward young man into a responsible husband.

Therefore, "Work" remains the only one of her books that whole-heartedly supports women's independence. For that reason alone, it remains an excellent books for scholars examining Alcott's extended body of writing to read.

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