Moods by Louisa May Alcott (American Women Writers Series) (Paperback)

~ Sarah Elbert (Editor) "THE ROOM fronted the west, but a black cloud, barred with red, robbed the hour of twilight's tranquil charm..." (more)
Key Phrases: masterful soul, beautiful eternity, sensation stories, Miss Yule, Miss Dane, Adam Warwick (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Like her later works for children, Alcott's first novel is well and imaginatively written, highly moralistic, unlikely, and moving." -- The Antioch Review

Product Description

"Like her later works for children, Alcott's first novel is well and imaginatively written, highly moralistic, unlikely, and moving." --The Antioch Review Moods, Louisa May Alcott's first novel, was published in 1864, four years before the best-selling Little Women. The novel unconventionally presents a "little woman," a true-hearted abolitionist spinster, and a fallen Cuban beauty, their lives intersecting in Alcott's first major depiction of the "woman problem." Sylvia Yule, the heroine of Moods, is a passionate tomboy who yearns for adventure. The novel opens as she embarks on a river camping trip with her brother and his two friends, both of whom fall in love with her. These rival suitors, close friends, are modeled on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Aroused, but still "moody" and inexperienced, Sylvia marries the wrong man. In the rest of the novel, Alcott attempts to resolve the dilemma she has created and leaves her readers asking whether, in fact, there is a place for a woman such as Sylvia in a man's world. In 1882, eighteen years after the original publication, Alcott revised and republished the novel. Her own literary success and the changes she helped forge in women's lives now allowed her heroine to meet, as Alcott said, "a wiser if less romantic fate than in the former edition." This volume contains the complete text of the 1864 Moods and Alcott's revisions for the 1882 version, along with explanatory notes by the editor. Sarah Elbert is a professor of history at the State University of New York, Binghamton. She is the author of A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture (Rutgers University Press, 1987).

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Product Details

• Paperback: 538 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (January 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813516706
• ISBN-13: 978-0813516707
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #915,991 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alcott's first novel, April 7, 2002

By	Anne Boyd Rioux (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews

As Alcott's first novel, this book is much more than a precursor to Little Women. It was also her attempt at serious literary recognition. Its intertexualities with the Transcendentalists, particularly Thoreau and Marget Fuller, make it an important book, as does its serious examination of a taboo subject in the 1860s: marriage and divorce. Although Alcott was not satisfied with the book, due to the many cuts required by her publisher, Moods exhibits a very ambitious Alcott finding her voice as a writer and addressing the difficult and controversial subjects with which women were wrestling. Alcott's first novel was influenced by Jane Eyre and The Scarlet Letter and bears reading alongside those two classics.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than its repuatation suggests, April 2, 2001

By	Shannon Brown (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

I was basically forced to read this novel for a college survey course in American Romanticism. I had read 'Little Women' in high school and didn't think much of it. Too morally heavy-handed and contrived and not entertaining at all. 'Moods' suprised me. The same criticisms apply, but I did find the book a pleasure to read. The criticisms that the book places against the society of the times about women's behavioral expectations, while not exactly revolutionary, were well thought out and not as in-your-face as the messages found in 'Little Women'. The characters are not as one dimensional as in 'Little Women' and I thought Sylvia's dilemna was belieavable. Like I said before, I was suprised at how much I liked the book.