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

DATE: SUNDAY, July 17, 1994                   TAG: 9407100079
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: E-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by MARY WELEK ATWELL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PURVEYOR OF `MORAL PAP' OR FEMINIST FOREMOTHER?

To many readers, Louisa May Alcott's fiction +is+ "Little Women." That book, immensely popular since its publication in 1868, has been read by generations of girls who found a heroine in Jo March. I suspect that for many of us, Jo remained in our memories as the lively, intelligent, iconoclastic girl she was in the first section of the novel, not as the much duller woman she became at the end.

In other words, girls may have been impressed with the unconventional role model rather than with the conventional plot on the surface of the novel. The multiple meanings of "Little Women" and of Alcott's other novels and stories, both domestic and sensational, have become a fruitful area for literary criticism, especially by feminist scholars. In "Whispers in the Dark," Elizabeth Keyser examines a range of Alcott's works and finds in them a pattern of challenge to conventional ideas about women. Alcott is, in Keyser's words, "a lost foremother."

Keyser divides her study into two sections, with "Little Women" at the center. The title of each chapter draws a relationship between Alcott's writing and another significant literary or critical work. One of Keyser's themes involves the connections between Alcott's work and that of such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Brontes. Keyser also emphasizes that Alcott's fiction, both for adults and for young people, contains frequent descriptions of plays and theatrical performances. She sees in these references a sort of counter-text to the peaceful scenes depicted on the surface, and she believes that the countertext reveals Alcott's skepticism about conventional domestic values.

Elizabeth Keyser has added a valuable study to the work on Louisa May Alcott and has helped to further establish Alcott's stature as an important writer rather than as a purveyor of "moral pap." The argument for seeing Amy as a heroic figure in "Little Women" and the examination of the adult novel, "Work," seem to make particularly strong cases for the subversive nature of Alcott's writing. Although Keyser has written a scholarly book, primarily for an academic audience, "Whispers in the Dark" could also be read and appreciated by the lay reader who knows and loves Alcott's work. - Mary Welek Atwell teaches at Radford University.