Little Women Podcast: Louisa May Alcott's Love For Germany

Enjoy this analysis on Little Women and Louisa May Alcott´s love for Germany and let it soothe you into a deep sleep. ! Best enjoyed using earphones. This bedtime story can be used by both grown-ups and children at the end of the day to help them relax and unwind before bed. The material is educational and can be also used in literal research. Grown-up bedtime stories offer a pleasant distraction at the end of the day. A soft place to land for your tired body and busy mind to rest.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

My name is Nina and I am going to help you to fall asleep.

I study literature and one of the things that I am particularly interested in is Luisa May Alkut's love for the German culture and how that affected her writings and especially how we can see that in a little woman.

I hope you enjoy this episode and learn something new.

The key ingredient in understanding Friedrich's character lies within Luisa May Alkut's love for Germany,

German people,

German language,

German philosophy and most importantly,

German literature.

We might even refer to Luisa May Alkut as a Germanophile,

A person who has a great deal of interest towards German culture.

There are multiple references to Germany in Little Woman.

On the very first chapter of Little Woman,

Joe wishes a copy of Undine and Sintraam as a Christmas present.

Undine and Sintraam is a collection of Scandinavian and Germanic fables written by a French-German author,

Friedrich de la Motte-Ferquet,

That catches the scarlet fever,

Which is terrible,

But the mulches never blame the hummels.

Epidemic diseases were rather common back then and Luisa always writes about the hummels with a great sympathy.

In the chapter Camp Lawrence,

John Brooke translates a German song for Meg and reads her parts from Mary Stuart,

Which is a play that was written by German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller.

On Meg's and John's wedding,

Laurie suggests that they dance like the Germans do.

When Joe stays in New York,

Her hostess in the boarding house,

Mrs.

Kirk,

Kirk is an anglicized last name for German word Kirche,

Meaning church.

When it comes to the 19th century German culture and the influences of German immigration into American culture,

Little Woman's saga is consistently favorable towards it.

One of Luisa's favorite authors was the German poet Goethe,

And Goethe was one of the models for Friedrich's character.

In Little Woman,

On her grand tour in Europe with Aunt Marge,

Amy visits Goethe's house and writes home and tells about it.

On her first trip to Europe,

Luisa herself made a pilgrimage to Goethe's house,

Went to Vis Baden first,

A pleasant gay place full of people,

Saw the gambling hall and people playing the fine grounds and drives and then went to Frankfurt.

Here I saw and enjoyed a good deal the statues of Goethe,

Schiller,

Faust,

Gütenberg and Schaffer in the squares.

Goethe's house is a tall plain building with each story projecting over the lower and a Dutch roof,

A marble slab over the front door,

Recording the date of Goethe's birth.

I took a look at it and wanted to go in as it was empty,

But there was no time.

The most obvious and most important German influence in Little Woman is of course the love of Joe's life,

Friedrich Baer.

Little Woman takes place in the feminine sphere,

Which is one of the biggest reasons why I and millions of other readers love it.

When it comes to the main three male characters,

Laurie,

Fritz and John,

Luisa did not write explicit background stories to any of them.

To explore Friedrich's character and to get better understanding of him,

We need to explore Luisa,

Her personal life philosophy,

Values and of course her love for Germany.

Friedrich is introduced quite early on in the second novel and Joe is curious about him from the moment she sees him and she finds him to be a kindred spirit.

As I went downstairs soon after,

I saw something I liked.

The flights are very long in this tall house and as I stood waiting at the heed of the third one for a little servant girl to lumber up,

I saw a gentleman come along behind her,

Take her heavy horde of coal out of her hand,

Carry it all the way up,

Put it down at the door nearby and walk away,

Saying with a kind note and a foreign accent,

It goes better so.

The little bag is too young to have such heaviness.

Wasn't it good of him?

I like such things,

For as father says,

Trifles show character.

When I mentioned it to Mrs.

K that evening,

She laughed and said,

That must have been Professor Baer,

He is always doing things of that sort.

Mrs.

K told me he was from Berlin,

Very learned and good,

But poor as a church mouse,

And gives lessons to support himself and two little orphan nephews who he is educating here,

According to the wishes of his sister,

Who married an American.

Not a very romantic story,

But it interests me,

And I was glad to hear that Mrs.

Lends him her parlour for some of his schoolers.

There's a glass door between it and the nursery and I meant to peep at him,

And then I'll tell you how he looks,

He's almost 40,

So it's no harm for me.

Fritz is about 16 years older than Joe,

Which would mean that Fritik is somewhere between 37 and 39 when they meet.

There is a reason why Fritz is 16 years older than Joe,

Louise had a professor of her own,

And we'll get into that later on.

In Little Woman Musical Fritz is slightly younger,

When he goes to court Joe,

We find out that he has just had his 35th birthday.

In the book Fritik returns to Joe's life during the springtime,

Some months after Beth's passing.

If we combine the two,

We can make an assumption that Fritz was born in the spring.

If Fritz is almost 40 after the American Civil War,

This means that he was born sometimes between 1825 and 1827.

Fritz is very extrovert,

He enjoys lively conversations,

Makes friends easily,

Sees beyond cultural boundaries,

Is deeply religious,

Honest,

Cultured,

But also quite romantic.

It is not a coincidence that Fritik is from Berlin.

By the time Alcott wrote Little Woman,

Berlin was gaining more importance and would become the capital of the new German Empire in 1871.

While being born and living in Berlin,

Fritz would have absorbed all that the city had to offer,

Architecture,

Literature,

Churches,

Philosophical circles,

Symposiums,

Markets and beer cartons.

It is mentioned in the book that Fritz speaks several languages,

And in the books he speaks French few times.

Berlin was one of the most multicultural German cities in the 19th century,

And there was a large French speaking immigrant population.

The fact that Fritz speaks several languages indicates that he has done some travelling and is in that sense as much of a cosmopolitan as Amy and Laurie are.

We learn that Fritik used to be a respected professor in Berlin,

And this only increases Joe's interest towards him.

Joe valued goodness highly,

But she also possessed a most feminine respect for intellect and a little discovery which he made about the professor,

Added much to her regard for him.

He never spoke of himself,

And no one ever knew that in his native city he had been a man much honoured for learning and integrity.

Till a countryman came to see him,

He never spoke of himself,

And in a conversation with Miss Norton,

He watched the pleasing fact from her Joe learned it,

And liked it all the better because Mr.

Bear had never taught it.

She felt proud to know that he was an honoured professor in Berlin,

Though only a poor language master in America and his homely,

Hard-working life was much beautified by the spice of romance which this discovery gave it.

It is very likely that Louisa had Humboldt's university in her mind.

During the time when Louisa did her first visit to Germany,

It was known as the University of Berlin.

University was established in 1809,

Which makes it only fitting that Fritik would have studied and worked as a professor there.

University is known for producing some of the most well-known German thinkers and philosophers.

We are not told a lot about Fritik's family.

We find out that he had a sister,

Mina,

Who married an American,

And on her deathbed she asked Fritz to take care of his nephews and raise them in America.

It is not part of the canon,

But I have read a couple fanfics where Mina's husband was an American journalist who abandoned his family,

And Mina was also quite possibly a journalist.

This would explain why Fritik does his best to look after the boys,

Wants to be a good role model and someone who never abandons them.

Book does imply that Fritik and Mina were very close.

This is a common narrative pattern in Louisa Mayer-Eyrebrod's novels.

In work Story of Experience,

The protagonists love interest David has lost the connection with his sister.

In Moods,

The character of Jeffrey Moore takes care of his ill sister until she passes away.

Of course,

The loss of a sister is something that also bonds Joe and Fritz.

In the 19th century,

German immigrants were the second biggest group of immigrants in the US,

Only surpassed by Irish immigrants.

March family and the Alcott's in real life were descendants of Irish immigrants.

Between 1847 and 1855,

German immigrants came to US in large numbers.

Many came in the hopes of better way of life,

Others because of individual curiosity,

Economic hardships,

Political struggles or religious persecutions.

Many escaped the crop failure and famine.

When we first meet Fritik,

We find out that he has been living in New York for five years,

Which means that he arrived in 1860.

In the early 1860s,

Main transportation across the Atlantic was made with sails and the ship could last one to three months.

This would mean that Fritz would have arrived with a sailing ship that was designed for a cargo carriage.

These ships were quite hazardous and accommodation were small and dark.

The second wave of German immigrants arrived in the end of the 1860s,

Escaping the German wars.

Fritik's reasons for leaving his home country are family related.

There are a couple occasions in Little Woman that do give an impression that Fritz has faced oppression and discrimination.

And Jo does make a note to herself that he must have had a hard life.

It is not a coincidence that Jo and Fritik meet in New York of all places.

Many of the German immigrants moved into the cities in North,

Like New York,

Which already had established German communities.

These communities were tight.

When Fritik comes to visit Jo in Concord,

The reader finds out that he has German friends there.

Luisa very intentionally included messages of social justice to her works.

A lot of the details of Fritik's backstory are not included in the movies and TV adaptations.

Because of the screenwriters' personal biases,

Xenophobia and ignorance over the source material.

Yes,

This is going to be a video essay about Luisa May Alcott's intersection of feminism.

Luisa May Alcott was born into the New England's Transcendentalist movement.

Transcendentalism was very much an American movement,

But its roots were within German philosophy and romanticism.

Especially in the transnational ideas of Immanuel Kant and his new ethic of universal hospitality.

There are a couple basic principles within Transcendentalist philosophy.

Human beings are inherently good and pure.

Nature was the ultimate mediator and expression of God,

Who was present all around.

Self-reflection and being true to oneself was encouraged.

From a very early age,

Luisa practiced self-reflection and observance.

And from her novels,

Little Woman and Old Fashioned Girl have biggest Transcendentalist influences.

Little Woman film from 1994 is one of the rare adaptations with clear references to Transcendentalism.

When Jo meets Fritik,

They talk about German philosophy.

Jo mentions that her parents were part of a rather unusual circle in Concord.

And she mentions that she adores Goethe.

Fritik quotes a poem from another Transcendentalist,

Walt Whitman,

And Jo joins him.

Transcendentalists believed that it was through the observation and appreciation of nature that the human soul was enlightened.

The idea of being true,

Authentic self becomes part of their conversation.

Transcendentalist love for nature can be seen in the movie in the presence of flowers and plants in the outdoors and indoors.

Proposal scene in the movie and in the book takes place in nature and it correlates the way it is in the book Fritik has kept Jo's poem.

Purity of love and love will come in the falling of summer rain.

Luisa Malkott was surrounded by the greatest thinkers of her time.

Margaret Fuller,

Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Henry David Terrell,

And Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Fr.

Bronson Alcott showed her an idealistic and ultimately unworkable version of the movement.

Throughout Luisa's childhood,

Bronson pursued philosophical ideas by establishing the Temple School,

Where he sought to teach children.

According to his Transcendental ideas,

Some of Bronson's ideas were too radical for the parents and eventually he was forced to resign when he took a black child as a student.

Soon after the closing of the Temple School,

The family moved to Farmstead to establish a utopian society called Fruitlands.

There they attempted to leave of the land,

Follow a strict vegetarian diet,

And more fully implement the ideas that Bronson deemed important.

Fruitland was a terrible failure.

The Alcotts were subjected to backbreaking work but barely survived the winter.

After a little less than a year on the homestead,

They left.

Although Luisa had seen her father's Transcendentalist projects fail,

She still believed in the philosophy as much as he did and blamed the setbacks on poor planning and execution.

It was after this that they moved to Concord,

Where the Transcendentalist movement started to take shape.

Emerson was a good friend of Bronson and Luisa frequently borrowed books from Emerson's library and learned about nature from Henry David Terrell.

Margaret Fuller made an everlasting impression on Luisa with her philosophy and feminist ideas.

It was unusual for the time for Mutter to work outside the home,

But Abba Alcott did.

Bronson had the determination to give his daughters proper education,

Also unusual for the time.

Abba had less interest towards the ideological side of Transcendentalism,

But more in what practical tools Transcendentalism offered.

Luisa had mixed emotions about Transcendentalism.

Anticipated and inspired by the ideal of self-reliance,

She still knew from first-hand experience that self-reliance really meant reliance on others and required the self-sacrifice of family members.

Luisa wanted to tie the two opposite knots of her parents' ideas.

This drew her to Ralph Waldo Emerson's theories and ideas,

As they represented a more complete way of living out of the Transcendental philosophy.

Her journals illustrate her love for his philosophy as calling him the man who has helped me most by his life,

His books,

His society.

Emerson's philosophy on how good deeds bring happiness and satisfaction to one's life deeply affected Luisa and her written works.

Luisa was as well heavily affected by Goethe's ideas of self-reliance.

Topic of self-reliance is a constant theme in a low woman and essentially important when getting to know the characters.

Blogger K.

Lee Roan writes,

As a German immigrant,

Professor Baer understands and experiences hard work and struggle.

He bears in mind the responsibility he has in caring for a woman if he is to marry.

He is more grounded and stable than Laurie,

Whose idealized hopes of marriage remind me of Luisa's own description of her imprudent father.

Quote,

He was a man in a balloon,

With his family holding the ropes trying to hold him down to earth.

Here's a quote from Little Woman.

In a minute a hand came down over the page so that she could not draw,

And Laurie's voice said,

With a troll imitation of a penitent child,

I will be good,

Oh,

I will be good.

But Amy did not laugh,

For she was in earnest,

And tapping on the outspread hand with her pencil said soberly,

Aren't you ashamed of a hand like that?

It's as soft and white as a woman's,

And looks as if it never did anything but wear children's best gloves and pick flowers for ladies.

Amy being a working-class girl,

She doesn't have any problems reminding Laurie that he has not worked a day in his life.

Many Alcott schoolers believe that the poor nutrition in fruitlands might have affected on Luisa's hormonal balance.

Same way as Joe,

Luisa was a tomboy.

Luisa was very protective of her mother,

Who she adored,

And her love for her family was fierce.

From very early on she took the role of the provider,

Or the way Joe describes herself as the man of the house.

And Alcott was 11 years older than her literal counterpart,

MacMarche,

When she married.

Same way as Joe,

Great Mac marrying,

So did Luisa.

Not because John,

The real and the fictional one,

Was a bad person,

But because it meant the change in the family dynamics.

In the book Joe says that she tried to marry Mac herself,

Which has led many to believe that Joe is a lesbian,

But with Joe there is no context for her fear,

Because Joe's childhood was quite safe and idyllic,

Whereas Luisa's was more unstable and turbulent.

Family went through a lot together.

I was upset when Anna announced that she was getting married,

And I was 28 at the time and Luisa was 27.

It happened only three weeks after they had lost their sister.

Luisa's wish to keep the family together and fear of losing it is understandable.

If you do research on Transcendentalist you will soon find out that there was a great deal of gender fluidity.

I would highly recommend Susan Bailey's article on the 19th century female relationship in Little Woman.

I will add the link to the description.

We live in a culture in which it is common not to try and understand what the author says and means,

In this case the author,

But to assume it is some preconceived idea or job we have in our heads,

We love something that we hate,

We love or we want to think that we are.

It is a pity that it is so,

Because when we erase the fragility and faults of characters,

We deprive ourselves from seeing the reflection of our own in them,

And learn and grow.

Masculinity and femininity are social structures made of biological and cultural factors.

Cho struggles to find a balance between the two during the time when the world between man and woman was separated.

There is a stereotype that Cho is quite adventurous.

Is she?

She is quite adventurous inside her head,

And she is good at making up stories and likes acting.

Writing is a safe escape to live recurrently,

Because she can do that from a safe place.

With Laurie she can live in Boisward through his masculine energy.

Cho likes to speak about sports and such,

But because of her gender she is prevented to join any teams.

In the first book after Laurie pretended to be John Brooke and Catfish Meg with letters and deeply hurt her,

Which is not never included in any movie adaptations,

He asks Cho to go to Washington with him and surprise Mr.

Brooke.

Cho is tempted by the idea,

But she sees that such a trip is Laurie's way of getting away from his grandfather.

Cho likes to dream,

But she knows that reality would be completely different,

And Laurie never grows if he doesn't learn from his mistakes.

Louisa's attempt,

However,

Is not to make certain habits in a person clearly masculine or feminine,

But to blur the lines.

Cho is good at sewing,

And in fact she is a good dressmaker,

Likes to knit and mend clothes.

Louisa herself likes sewing.

We see all the girls sewing together in the beginning of the 1933 film and in the 1949 film Cho sues and knits.

In the book Cho sees that Mr.

Bear is mending his own socks,

And she is both surprised and impressed about it.

She is impressed how self-reliant he is.

Some readers have found it odd how Cho wants to start a school for boys.

When Cho sees the hungry look in Laurie's eyes,

When he looks at her family,

She practically adopts him.

Louisa in her personal life was devoted to charity work,

And she worked as a nurse.

Taking care of others was something that came naturally to her.

Gender fluidity continues in the sequels.

The character of Nat is very sensitive,

Musical,

And a lot like Laurie.

Dan is almost too masculine and doesn't want to show his vulnerability.

In Little Men,

Cho's niece Daisy complains how boys won't include her into their games and Cho privately thinks that in the house that is filled with boys,

The only girl is the most difficult to please.

She gets Daisy a small toy stove and teaches her to cook while turning it into a play.

This is not the 15-year-old Cho who thinks that everyone should be like her.

Instead,

She supports Daisy's individuality.

Daisy's femininity is balanced by Nan,

Who is another tomboy.

Even her name is a mixture between Nat and Dan.

Cho doesn't like to go to parties or social events like Meg and Amy do.

She rather stays at home and writes.

Cho doesn't fit well to conquer the traditional female role.

She's allowed to be herself in her home,

She does compare herself to Meg,

And the way she is treated differently for being traditionally feminine.

Same happens with Amy in the second book.

Jealousy Cho sometimes feels is caused by the fact that her sisters are better accepted than she is because of her non-conformity,

And this causes Cho feelings of isolation.

In chapter cause,

She rather speaks to pets and plays with the children of the house than talks with the adults.

Cho makes the assumption that the aunts take her to Europe,

Even after when she has blurted to Aunt Carol that she hates French.

Neither she seemed to have put much effort to study languages,

Which would be quite important if she would have seriously wanted to go to Europe with the aunts.

Cho dreams about the foreign,

But if she was abroad,

Especially with people like Aunt Marge who she had difficult relationship with,

Cho would be rather homesick.

New York Cho hesitates in the door of the newspaper quite a while when she tries to sell her first story.

She rather spends time with Friedrich,

Then goes to see new acquaintances,

And in her letters to mommy and bet,

She writes that she feels shy among strangers.

Friedrich is based on several people in Loose's life,

And I have traced Friedrich to five different men,

And I intend to talk about all of them in these essays.

I agree with many of the scholars that the philosopher Henry David Turow was the real-life Friedrich.

I have made an entire video about his and Loose's relationship.

Check it out after you have finished this one.

I am now going to read you some passages from Little Woman and Walter Hording's Turow biography.

Little Woman chapter surprises.

This part reminded me the way Cho notices how Friedrich is helping the servant girl.

Just to name a few,

Quite many of Loose's diary markings about Henry are censored.

Still 160 years ago people had right to their privacy.