Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches: The Commonwealth newspaper and abolitionist priorities
Abstract
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches: The Commonwealth newspaper and abolitionist priorities
- Creators
- Jaclyn Crumbley Carver
- Contributors
- Kathleen Diffley (Advisor)Bluford Adams (Committee Member)Ed Folsom (Committee Member)Naomi Greyser (Committee Member)Leslie Schwalm (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- English
- Date degree season
- Spring 2022
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.006590
- Number of pages
- viii, 154 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2022 Jaclyn Crumbley Carver
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- illustrations, facsimiles
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-154).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
My dissertation investigates the connection between Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches (1863), the first nursing narrative of the U.S. Civil War, and mid-war abolitionist purpose. I assess the original Sketches as they appeared in Boston’s abolitionist Commonwealth newspaper (1862-1896), whose editors and funders had been associated with the militant abolitionist John Brown. This project examines the founding of the Commonwealth in September 1862 and explores the paper’s connection to militant abolitionism, discussing the role of literature in the effort to transform a war to preserve the Union into a commitment to abolishing slavery.
Turning to Alcott’s contributions during the paper’s first year, I discuss her January 1863 short story “M.L.” alongside her series “Letters from the Mountains” and poem “Busy Bessie, At Her Spinning Wheel,” both published in fall 1863. I then discuss Hospital Sketches in the weekly in summer 1863 and its fall collected edition, using Alcott’s periodical contributions to study her use of the picturesque and travel sketches. Finally, I track the development of the Sketches during the 1860s, ending with 1869's Hospital Sketches and Camp and Fireside Stories.
My dissertation shows how Alcott adapted Hospital Sketches while finding success as a professional writer. In examining the Commonwealth, I also depict the context in which readers originally encountered her hospital drama. By tying Hospital Sketches to the paper’s abolitionism, I investigate the use of literature to urge social reforms. In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, literature could be deployed rhetorically to showcase reconstructive possibility.
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9984271356102771