In the Garret
In the Garret
Poem
Date: 1869
Source: Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. Mahwah, N.J.: Watermill Press, 1869.
About the Author: Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was raised in the Boston area. Her family owned a farm in Concord, Massachusetts and her father was Amos Bronson Alcott, a Transcendentalist. For a time, the Alcott family worked in Harvard, Massachusetts, to establish a utopian community called Fruitlands; Alcott was a strong progressive, an abolitionist, and a supporter of women's rights.
INTRODUCTION
Louisa May Alcott, a popular female writer whose work was published from the 1840s to the 1890s, began her life as the daughter of a Transcendentalist farmer, Amos Bronson Alcott. Her mother, Abigail May, was from an old New England family, and Louisa grew up schooled at home by her parents, older siblings, or occasional governesses. Her parents moved the family to Harvard, Massachusetts in 1843, to Fruitlands, a utopian community in which no animal labor, nor any male labor, would be used; the entire farm and community would be run by women. The men would be free to contemplate philosophy and progress. The Alcott family was progressive, agreeing with the abolitionist movement and firmly pro-women's rights. The Fruit-lands experience lasted less than a year; the family moved to Concord, Massachusetts.
Alcott published her first short story in 1852, though she'd written four years before, at the age of sixteen. Over time, Alcott became a well-published writer, writing romance novels and thrillers in her time. Her books, published under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard, were passionate and earned her a steady audience as well as an income as a writer of popular fiction.
Alcott wrote Little Women at the request of her publisher; the book was an immediate success. Few stories accessible to child readers had female protagonists. Alcott's girls—Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth—had distinct personalities that represented different facets of Alcott's own personality, and the story line struck a chord with readers. Mr. March is off to war and the family, headed by Marmee (Mrs. March) is struggling financially. Jo, the second daughter, is a hopeful writer. In this poem, Jo's suitor, Fredrich, gives her a poem she once submitted for publication.
PRIMARY SOURCE
Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and won by time,
All fashioned and filled, long ago,
By children now in their prime.
Four little keys hung side by side,
With faded ribbons, brae and gay
When fastened there, with childish pride
Long ago, on a rainy day.
Four little names, one on each lid,
Carved out by a boyish hand,
And underneath there lieth hid
Histories of a happy band,
Once playing here, and pausing oft
To hear the sweet refrain,
That came and went on the roof aloft,
In the falling summer rain.
"Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.
I look in with loving eyes,
For folded here, with well-known care,
A goodly gathering lies,
The record of a peaceful life—
Gifts to gentle child and girl,
A bridal gown, lines to a wife,
A tiny shoe, a baby curl.
No toys in this first chest remain,
For all are carried away,
In their old age, to join again
In another small Meg's play.
Ah, happy mother! Well I know
You hear, like a sweet refrain,
Lullabies ever soft and lo,
In the falling summer rain.
"Jo" on the next lid, scratched and worn,
And within a motley store
Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn,
Birds and beasts that speak no more;
Spoils brought home from the fairy ground
Only trod by youthful feet,
Dreams of a future never found,
Memories of a past still sweet;
Half-writ poems, stories wild,
April letters, warm and cold,
Diaries of a willful child,
Hints of a woman early old;
A woman in a lonely home,
Hearing, like a sad refrain—
"Be worthy love, and love will come,"
In the falling summer rain.
My Beth! The dust is always swept
From the lid that bears your name,
As if by loving eyes that wept,
By careful hands that often came.
Death canonized for us one saint,
Ever less human than divine,
And still we lay, with tender plaint,
Relics in this household shrine—
The silver bell, so seldom rung,
The little cap which last she wore,
The fair, dead Catherine that hung
By angels borne above her door;
The songs she sang, without lament,
In her prison house of pain,
Forever are they sweetly blunt
With the falling summer rain.
Upon the last lid's polished field—
Legend now both fair and true—
A gallant knight bears on his shield,
"my," in letters gold and blue.
Within lie snoods that bound her hair,
Slippers that have danced their last,
Faded flowers laid by with care,
Fans whose airy toils are past;
Gay valentines, all ardent flames,
Trifles that have borne their part
In girlish hopes and fears and shames,
The record of a maiden heart
Now learning fairer, truer spells,
Hearing, like a blithe refrain,
The silver sound of bridal bells
In falling summer rain.
Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
Four women, taught by weal and woe
To love and labor in their prime.
Four sisters, parted for an hour
None lost, one only gone before,
Made by loves immortal power,
Nearest and dearest evermore.
Oh, when these hidden stores of ours
Lie open to the Father's sight,
May they be rich in golden hours,
Deeds that show fairer for the light
Lives whose brave music long shall ring,
Like a spirit-stirring strain,
Souls that shall gladly soar and sing
In the long sunshine after rain.
SIGNIFICANCE
The poem is sentimental in tone, and Jo herself dismisses the verse: "'It's very bad poetry, but I felt it when I wrote it, one day when I was very lonely, and had a good cry on a rag bag. I never thought it would go where it could tell tales,' said Jo." Alcott once described Little Women as "moral paper for children"; though the book was based on her own childhood, the writing includes a wide range of morality lessons that were standard for the time, in spite of Alcott's less conventional upbringing.
Little Women created a model for post-Civil War families and inspired young girls who wished to be like Jo, who cast off ideals concerning femininity in favor of the writer's life—until she fell in love. Alcott wrote a succession of books on the March family—Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871), and Jo's Boys (1886)—that brought her money and fame. The books set a tone for how families should act, and although the books dealt with dark themes—war, child death, deceit—the eternal optimism of the characters and story lines remain popular into the twenty-first century.
In Little Women, Alcott created four archetypes for women: Meg, prim and proper; Jo, feisty and independent; Beth, fragile and innocent; and Amy, spoiled and eager for attention and love. The poem In the Garret uses imagery to capture each girls' spirit. As girls read these stories in the late 1800s, they found their personality match in one of the four girls and used the stories as guides for proper comportment and for problem solving in the social and personal arena. In addition, Marmee, the strong mother figure, assumes the role of single parent in the book; the girls were expected to listen to Marmee while Mr. March was off at war, and cooperation was stressed in the book as the solution to a wide range of problems. By reinforcing family as the central force for problem-solving and support, Little Women gave readers moral lessons within the context of lively, interesting stories that readers enjoyed and demanded.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Beecher, Catharine. A Treatise on Domestic Economy. Boston: T.H. Webb, 1842.
Dubois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Kelly, Mary C. Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Stern, Madeline. Louisa May Alcott: A Biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999.
Zelizer, Viviana. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.