Representations of Health, Illness, and Repair in the Works of Louisa May Alcott

Representations of Health, Illness, and Repair in the Works of Louisa May Alcott analyzes a remarkably wide range of wholesome and unwholesome social conditions and practices as well as debilitating afflictions. Alcott’s representations of such variegated forms of well-being and sickness, Michaela Keck argues, displays complex cultural processes of meaning-making, whether through storytelling, myth, or the fine arts. Alcott’s narratives acknowledge the importance of physical and psychological health as well as the disruptive forces of disease in both their life-shattering and everyday aspects while also insisting on strategies of healing for both the individual and the collective. This book demonstrates that her stories do not shy away from addressing the embodied struggles involved in being ill and administering to the ill, nor do they avoid confronting the terrible losses resulting from sickness. Located in the private, domestic sphere as well as in institutional settings of medical care, Alcott’s depictions of health and infirmity involve common individuals and offer a wealth of ameliorative strategies not only for the afflicted and their caregivers, but also for the narrator and the readers. Alcott’s works thereby constitute in themselves critical as well as reparative readings of health and illness in nineteenth-century American society.

Michaela Keck is senior lecturer in the English and American studies department at Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany.