Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 17, 1990                   TAG: 9006200022
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by MARY ATWELL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JOURNALS OF ALCOTT REVEAL DRIVEN WRITER

Because journals have frequently been the repository of women's thoughts and experiences that would otherwise be lost to us, they have proved an invaluable source for rebuilding the past. Thousands of women have confided to their journals the private responses that convention or reticence forbade them from pronouncing more publicly.

Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy have brought together a comprehensive edition of Louisa May Alcott's journals, beginning with entries from 1843 when she was 11 and continuing until her death in 1888. Like her Puritan ancestors, and like Jo, the heroine of "Little Women," Alcott used her journals in part as a record of her spiritual journey, her "Pilgrim's Progress."

Particularly in the journals of her youth, one sees Alcott's determined attempts to overcome her self-proclaimed vices, as well as her determination to achieve success and fame - the latter unusual ambitions for a mid-19th century girl. Alcott's youthful exuberance and independence foreshadow the irrepressible Jo and account for a continuing sense of tension between Alcott and the oppressive Victorian society.

In the journals, as Madeline Stern notes in her introduction, Alcott reconstructs herself and her world, including interpretations of the members of her family. The inability of her father, Bronson Alcott, to support his wife and children led Louisa both to resentment and to a sense of pride in her own responsibility. The models for the characters in "Little Women" are here, although Alcott shows more ambivalence toward her real relatives than she ever allows in the novel.

Louisa May Alcott also provides reflections on her life as a writer - her education ("Life is my college"), her experiments in writing, and the struggles and compromises necessitated by her role as family breadwinner.

Finally, the journals depict Alcott's larger world, her notable friends, the Civil War hospital where she served as nurse and the reform movements - abolition and women's rights - she supported.

In the growing literature on Louisa May Alcott, these journals are further proof that she was much more than a children's author. She was an extraordinary writer and woman.