Louisa May Alcott's Familial Feminism in Transcendental Wild Oats
Citation
Gomez, Shandi Marie. 2021. Louisa May Alcott's Familial Feminism in Transcendental Wild Oats. Master's thesis, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education.Abstract
Louisa’s accounting of the Fruitlands experience in Transcendental Wild Oatsspeaks 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.
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