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"THE FASHIONABLE WORLD DISPLAYED": ALCOTT AND SOCIAL POWER.(Louisa May Alcott)

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From: Studies in American Fiction
Date: 19990322
Author:Stoneley, Peter

This article examines the photograph Louisa May Alcott used to present herself to her audience. The unfashionable dress Alcott wore, her attitudes about the need for publicity, and her feelings about the writing that sold well as opposed to what she wanted to write are discussed.

Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtues. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is the hall of the Past.

--Emerson

Self-presentation was a source of both pleasure and anxiety for ...

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