Louisa May Alcott's Familial Feminism in Transcendental Wild Oats

Abstract

Louisa’s accounting of the Fruitlands experience in Transcendental Wild Oats speaks to the full power of Woman as one half of Man-- a “twin exponent to a divine thought” (Fuller 5) --through a wizened, tempered voice expressive of the entirety of her life’s influences. Louisa May Alcott journals her family’s seven-month experience with such a commune known as Fruitlands in her novella, Transcendental Wild Oats. Fruitlands’ failure is shown to be a direct result of the untried philosophies of a leader who “said many wise things, and did many foolish ones” (Alcott, Wild Oats 166). Timon Lion. Mr. Alcott, as portrayed through Brother Abel Lamb, is the naive idealist led around by Lion, and Mrs. Alcott, as portrayed through Sister Hope Lamb, is the realist-- protector of innocents and idealism. Transcendental Wild Oats, then, is not Louisa working out resentments toward Bronson’s deluded idealism; it is a testament to the example set by her mother in making a way for the family under the direst of circumstances.