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- [00:10]
Verizon Representative
Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze. Talk about refreshing. You know what else is refreshing this summer? A brand new phone with Verizon.
- [00:18]
Katy Charlwood
Yep.
- [00:19]
Verizon Representative
Get a new phone on any plan with select phone trade in and my plan and lock down a low price for three years on any plan with my plan. This is a deal for everyone whether you're a new or existing customer. Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals. 3 year price guarantee applies to then current based monthly rate only. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.
- [00:40]
Louisa May Alcott
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- [01:31]
Acast Representative
Helps creators launch, Grow and Monetize their podcasts everywhere acast.com.
- [01:40]
Tech Podcast Host
Hey, do you want to hear the next big new tech podcast hit before anyone else? Check out the daily tech news show Experiment Week. We're swapping out our normal shows to try out some new ideas. We've done this before and launched big hits like behind the Data, the Tech John and more. This year we have exclusive Android faithful reactions to the Pixel 9 event. It's all on the DTNS feed starting August 11th. Don't miss it.
- [02:11]
Acast Representative
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere acast.com.
- [02:21]
Katy Charlwood
Hello delicious friends, and welcome to who did what Now? The History Podcast. That's not your history class with me, your host, Katy Charlwood, history highlight and reader of book. It is Pride Month, everybody. And would it be Pride Month if we weren't upsetting transphobes the world over? So first off, we have this fancast of Zelda going on, right? It's not even a production, it's not even a thing. But someone said, wouldn't Hunter Schaefer be perfect for playing Princess Zelda? And if you look at Hunter Schaefer. Yeah, she looks like the daughter of Galadriel. Like, she looks like Princess Zelda. And you have all of the transphobes coming at the woodwork complaining that, you know, Hunter Shiva's not a biological woman, as if Princess Zelda is a biological human. Like, she's from Hyrule, the mythical land of Hyrule. She's Hylian. She is a creature with elf like features. We don't know anything about the biology. And I do not recall anywhere in the Zelda lore where it specifically says that Zelda has a vagina. I mean, nowhere to my knowledge. Right, but, like, here's the thing. In Ocarina of Time, Zelda magics herself into sheik, into a man, right? And then. And what was it? Breath of the Wild transforms into a dragon. And yet having a trans woman play this role is somehow out and the, you know, out of bounds somehow. Like, what is this? It's absolutely nonsense. And then I had another little thought that I posted to Threads, which has made more people angry. I was like, I don't get why, you know, transphobes use, you know, biology specifically in an argument against trans women. Because it's always trans women that, you know, they're claiming this whole biological thing when, like, in the womb, like after gestation or not during gestation, I should say, at conception, you all start off as girls. Everyone's female xx, you know, everyone starts off that. So I don't understand the issue biologically, if someone wants to revert to factory settings, like, where's the issue? Like, get over it. But, yeah, it was such a weird thing. But, yes, happy pride. And so this month we are talking about lgbtqia. If I can find them, I will talk about them. And so I thought, I'm not talking about a trans person today, but I am going to talk about someone who I'm convinced is ace. And that's my personal opinion, along with the opinion of many, many historians. So here we are. But I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, katie, quit your jibber jabber and fact me and fact you I will. But first we've got to get our source on. Our sources are the Journals of Louisa May Alcott by Madeline B. Stern, Daniel Shealy and Joel Myerson. Louisa May Alcott, A Difficult Woman who Got Things Done by E. Hooper. Louisa on the Front Lines. Louisa May Alcott in the Civil War by Samantha Sepel. The Louisa May Alcott, Encyclopaedia by Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Isling. White Stories of Civil War Nurses by Rebecca Larson. Louisa May Alcott A Modern Biography by Ruth K MacDonald Alcott in her Own Time. A biographical chronicle of her life drawn from recollections, interviews and memoirs by family, friends and associates by Daniel Shealy. The World of Louisa May Alcott by William Anderson. Louisa May Alcott by Susan Cheever. Louisa May Life Letters in Journals by Edna D. Cheney. And of course we have our old favourites, history.com and biography.com. are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832 in Germantown, Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, in the United States of America. Just in case we're not clear on the geography, she was born to Amos Bronson Alcott, a transcendentalist and educator, and Abigail May, who was one of the first paid social workers in Massachusetts. Abigail May was known as Abba, A B, B A, like the Swedish pop group, which is irrelevant, but I felt like you needed to know this, so here's the thing. Amos Bronson Alcott, he was dirt poor. Like he not dirt poor, but like that's a lie. That's too much. He was quite poor. He was impoverished. And yeah, how he landed. Abba is, is saying something. But you know what they say, the winner takes it all. I regret nothing. So Louisa, she was the second of four daughters, so there was Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and May. Trigger warning. I'm gonna mention pregnancy loss, infant loss, so skip like five seconds. ABBA suffers four miscarriages and has one stillborn son. When Louisa is two years old, the family move from Philadelphia to Boston, Massachusetts. And it's here, when she's three years old that she goes wandering at night. The who's and what's or whys unsure because she's three. And why do three year olds do anything other than confusion, hunger or pure unadulterated rage? So she's three, she's out for a wander and what does she do but falls into a frog pond and almost drowns, except she is saved by an African American boy. And this is something that she always remembers because he risked his life to save her. You know, and this is a time where, you know, racism is rife and it's very much the norm and it really helps her sort of have her opinion and was something that she would later go on to say was the foundation of her personal abolitionist beliefs. So in Boston, her dad sets up a temple school and he starts kicking about with other transcendentalists like Ralph Wardwell, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, And Horace Mann. So while he's doing this Abba, she was burdened with most of the childcare duties and all the housekeeping, but she wasn't too happy about that, to be honest. Now, Bronson, he does help with some child care. So before Louisa is old enough to join school, he teaches the girls the Alphabet by making shapes with their bodies. So like ymca or if that reference is too old for you, if you're very young, H, O, T, T, O, T, O. Okay, you get me, you get me. Hopefully one of these references will make sense to you. So Bronson, he had a very strict schedule for the girls and he believed in the sweetness of self denial. And yeah, the girls also had like a governess for a bit as well. So, yeah, this whole, like, unsweetness of self denial, it's very much along the lines of self praise is no praise. But honestly, fuck that noise because, like, if no one else is gonna praise you, you may as well praise yourself. You know, be proud of your achievements and the thing you did. So, yeah, this Temple School, it's progressive. Progressive is definitely a word. And it was educating Boston's elites, like the fancy people, the well to do, the people who believed in nativism and such. Oh, those kind of people, right. And so education, it's typically repetition, it's repetition, regurgitation of facts. And the way that Bronson Alcott would teach is he would engage in conversation and active discussions. So he was treating sort of a primary level education sort of akin to like what people would do in third level, sort of college, university, where you have that open discussion as opposed to learn, you know, people, places, facts, you know, dates, you know, those kind of things. He's like, well, let's chat about it. Now, this may shock you, but the Bostonian elites, the people who believed that Irish were a different race, these parents weren't too into the whole open discussions about religion and sex in the classroom and they started pulling the kids. Meanwhile, Louisa is keeping a journal, which her parents read and then leave notes on her pillow. I don't know how to feel about that, friends. I don't know how to feel about that. So her mum gets her to write, to process her emotions because she's struggling, because she's met with the reality of being a girl in the 1800s. She wants to play sports with the boys, but she's not allowed because apparently having a vagina means you can't do sports. I don't. I don't know. And so at the Temple School, which is already losing Students. Ronson decides to allow a black student to join his school. And when he refused to kick them out, every single child, every single white child, sorry. Was removed from the school and he was forced to close. And so the family, they moved to pastures new. They moved to Concord, which is paid for by Ralph Waldo Emerson. And the girls made friends and put on plays, you know, with Hosmer, Goodwin, Emerson, Hawthorne and Channing children. The Alcotts and the Hosmers would put on plays together especially. So Louisa, she gets this like formative education at the Emerson house until she's old enough to attend Concord Academy with her older sister. And she is really like living her best life. She's climbing trees, she's writing poems. And like kids, they got to be kids. And for Louisa, this was the happiest time of her life. When Louisa is 8 years old, her family is struggling financially. Like her mother, Abba, she's like, money, money, money, we need money. And so this well educated woman, what she is doing is she's going around asking for seamstress work so that they can pay for the basics. See, Bronson is away a lot with intellectual pursuits. So these women and girls are having to look after themselves. And when Louisa May Alcott is 10 years old, her dad brings two dudes back from England, Charles Lane and Henry Wright, to live at their cottage with them. The cottage Emerson is paying for. Bronson is out philosophizing, leaving Charles Lane at his home. Okay, that's something that he did in Lane. He is an absolute dick. He hates that the girls are strong willed and stand up for themselves. He gives them this massive learning load. Geometry, geography, Latin, French grammar, arithmetic, music, spelling and journal writing. Not only does he increase the educational workload, the women, they be choring like they are constantly working one way or the other. And like when you read old timey books about poverty and such, right, usually somewhere, somehow there's like a maid or a nanny, like doing housekeeping, like even, even people who aren't that privileged, like you'll see that as a very like normal thing, right? However, here it's just the wife and the kids doing all the work because these lofty motherfuckers, fuckers, they want to establish a utopia. Because see, free thinkers are congregating to Concord and Bronson is really believing his own fan mail. In Lane and Bronson, they want to set up a transcendental commune cult, sorry, community where men and women live in harmony. I should probably mention what transcendentalism is. So it's basically this philosophical Philosophical. Philosophical and literary movement that sort of emerged in the 19th century, typically around sort of like New England and that sort of area. And Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions, specifically like organized religion and political parties, corrupt the purity of the individual. So basically they believe that people are at their best when they're self reliant and independent. And it's only from the sort of weird kind of individualism that true community can form. Right, so kind of like ye olde hippies, like pioneer hippies. I know the pioneers are before this, but. Shh, shh, let me have this. Pioneer happiest. So, yeah, they want this commune, cult, community. Sorry, sorry. And effectively they want to, like, have this magic wee vegan feminist utopia 16 miles outside of Concord called Fruitlands, not Womblands, in case you're getting confused, Fruitlands. And so there were to be no animals hurt in the production of this commune. Like, they wouldn't have any animal products at all. So, like no honey, no wool, which is ridiculous because sheep need to be sheared. They get too hot and the wool gets too heavy. Like you're hurting the sheep if you don't shear it. That's why you're supposed to learn how to shear things properly. But yes, this was a commune culture farm in which no animals were to be involved in that. So this is a farm in the 1800s with no animals. They thought this through. So typically, if you wanted to plough a field, you would have a horse do that. But they didn't have horses because they didn't want to use an animal in any way. And so the men where the plough horses, the men had to manually plough the fields themselves and they couldn't plot anything that grew down. Right. Don't ask me for why, but you couldn't grow a root vegetable, so you couldn't grow potatoes. I love potatoes, though. I mean, I know it's a Chiba, but, like, you couldn't grow tut or beetroot carrots. And like, they were two months behind on farming anyway. And so by winter they had oatmeal, water and apples in this utopia, Fruitlands. So some of the navels who were not in the commune, they took pity on the family and they snuck a cow in for ABBA to use. Like, I'm gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. What a moo. Yeah, so they like snuck in a cow so that Abba could secretly have access to milk. Like, to secretly get milk. Like, this is the point. We're at because they're so little food. And if clandestine cream wasn't bad enough, you've got Charles Lane, who decided that women didn't need opinions. He decided that men, they were supposed to discuss philosophy and women were to discuss food and clothes. And in this commune, and you're going to be shocked by this, women did all the household chores and labour. So, yeah, winter time, the family are freezing and starving and Abba is sick of being an unpaid servant and watching her family starve. And in January, she tells Bronson that she's leaving and she's taken the girls with her. Her brother arranges a cottage just like a few miles down the road. She packs up all the furniture, grabs the girls and goes. She tells him that he is ruining their children's lives and he must have taken that to heart because a few months later, he joins them.
- [21:59]
Louisa May Alcott
Hey, listeners, meet Russell.
- [22:01]
Katy Charlwood
Hey.
- [22:01]
Louisa May Alcott
Russell just launched a fitness app and he needed to get the word out to busy professionals looking to stay fit. So I turned to acast. I used their Smart recommendations feature to easily find shop shows that talk about health and fitness. Booking sponsorships through their platform was a breeze. And just like that, my app was in their ears during their morning run. Sounds like a smart move, Russell. How's business looking now? Sweat is pouring and so are the installs. Spread the word about your business with podcast ads on Acast. Start today at go.acast.com advertisement.
- [22:42]
Katy Charlwood
So Louisa May Alcott's father, he's really sad about leaving the Fruitlands. Like he's genuinely upset about it. He's like slobbing about not working. He's barely eating and he just stares at the wall like. And Abba, she is like getting angry, like flying into a rage at least once a day because she has four daughters to feed and 11 year old Louisa, she's starving and crying herself to sleep every single night. And so they're in this new cottage and eventually he starts manning up and Abba is in charge. Bronson is like planting a garden. He's piping water into the house and he starts working but refuses a wedge because it's against his principles and he doesn't want to own property. So Emerson bought property just so that Bronson would move in. So finally Louisa has a room of her own. They're staying in Hillside and they break into a factory and ride around in coal carts. She gets annoyed by other children and like, just likes to do her own thing. And at one point she just like takes a horse and sleigh for a Joyride. Like she's just out there doing her thing. Just. I love the fact that Louisa May Alcott, beloved author, just goes, just steals a horse and sleigh and she's like, whoop Dee dee, motherfuckers. Grand horse auto. Grand theft horse. So there's, there'll be a way for me to make this work. That's not the point. Grand theft colt. Oh, I'll figure something out. I'll figure something out. So Louisa, she loved her dad, but she saw how his idealism failed her and her sisters. And as she grew into a teenager, she refused to conform to feminine ideals and prepare for marriage. It does me good to be alone. I've made a plan for my life as I am in my teens and no more a child. I'm old for my age and I don't care much for girls things. When she wasn't rambling through the woods and climbing trees, she wrote poetry. And yeah, she was also a staunch abolitionist because like in the 1840s, the slavery debate is happening and thousands of escaped enslaved people fled to the northern states. And mom and pop, they're actually active in anti slavery societies in sheltered runaway, like formerly enslaved people. Hillside. So their house, their little cottage was a stop on the railroad. So yes, the Alcotts were part of the Underground Railroad, which is probably the coolest thing about Bronson Alcott, to be honest, because Bronson, he is faffing about and pursuing intellectual shit instead of earning a wage instead of to, you know, ensure that his, you know, family are fed. Like how, how can you be this disillusioned? How? Okay, it's fine. Abba's pals, they are shocked at how she's living and they arrange for her to get a social work job back in Boston because there are loads and loads of poor Irish immigrants there. And she is working, she's got loads of work there because of this. But it's not enough to alleviate the family debt. And so Louisa and the family, they rented out Hillside and they stayed in a small house in Boston. Louisa said, I always left a keep house feeling like a caged seagull as I washed dishes and cooked. She supported her family as she could, taking on odd jobs and even working as a house servant for seven weeks in the summer of 1850. The entire family contract smallpox. They can't work for a while and their finances, they really suffer. And Louisa, she turns to writing as an escape. And in September 1851, 18 year old Louisa May Alcott publishes her first poem, sunlight. And this is in A women's magazine and she earned five whole dollars. The following year Nathaniel Hawthorne bought Hillside from the Alcotts. So like they somehow ended up owning Hillside. I'm not sure how, it's kind of convoluted, but yeah. So Hawthorne, he ends up buying it from them basically so they are not destitute. So he saves the family from financial ruin and so they end up moving into a nicer home in Boston. And Louisa tried to write for Money and at 19 she starts writing pulp fiction, Blood and Thunder tales as she calls them, Blood and Thunder Tales under the pseudonym a.m. barnard. And when she's 21 she showed her memoir essay How I Went out service to James T. Field, who had published Hawthorne's the Scarlet Letter four years before he rejected it, telling her, stick to your teaching, Ms. Alcott, you can't write. Alright buddy? Four months later, she convinces another publisher to publish her first book, Flower Fables, which is a collection of stories about fairies, elves and stuff for like Emerson's daughters. 1600 copies were published and she earned a grand total of $35. The following year the Alcotts moved to New Hampshire and Louisa stayed behind to write. When in New Hampshire her younger sister Lizzie contracts scarlet fever. But eventually she recovers. When Louise is 24, her family returned to Concord because Emerson bought them a two story farmhouse called Orchard House and everything seems to be going fine. But then the following year in 1858, Lizzie takes a turn for the worse and the doctors say there's no hope for her, which Lizzie is a clear inspiration for Beth in Little Women. Lizzie, Beth, like even the names are connected. The disease ravages her body. Lizzie was wasting away and Louisa stayed by her sister every single night until she finally succumbed to her illness. And three weeks after Lizzie passed away, Louise's big sister Anna gets engaged. And Louisa writes that she is losing a second sister, like actually she does. She goes, another sister is gone and I'd rather be a free spinster and pedal my own canoe. 26 year old Louisa returns to Boston changed by the loss. She buckles down and goes back to work to support her family. She teaches, she takes sewing work and she writes. Bronson tells her, like her dad, he tells her to send her work to the prestigious Atlantic Monthly and Love and Self Love is published. It's a love story about an orphaned girl and so she writes this like very romantic love story, but she is still churning out these blood and thunder tales, which pulp fiction. It's so good. I love, I love it so much. So in 1860 her family takes in the family of an executed abolitionist, John Brown, who we will be discussing at a later date. So April 1861. It is the American Civil War. And Louisa, she wanted to fight like she wanted to fight in the war, but obviously she's a woman, she's not allowed. And the following year in 1862, she applies to be a Union army nurse because of course, it's the Union, because she's not an idiot. In December that year, she is in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and there is a crushing defeat for the Union and. And hundreds of wounded Union soldiers are pouring into the hospital. Like, this is her first day, cuz the Battle of Fredericksburg, right? There's 12,000 Union casualties, like in all. And so you've just got soldiers like pouring into this hospital and she's like, she wanted to be here, she wanted to be involved. And then she's seeing firsthand and like the. And that's the thing is like, what she's doing mainly is washing people. It's a lot of washing. Like, as a nurse, that seems to be her primary task. That's her main task, is to wash the men. Obviously that's kind of necessary, but also Kay. But yeah, unsurprisingly, being a nurse in the 1800s and the job takes a physical toll on her. She gets this cough, which leads to a delusional fever dreams, which leads to pneumonia, which leads to typhoid fever, which I read was treated with calomel, like calomel lotion calomel. Okay, I need to look that up. So she recovers from typhoid, but then she comes down with mercury poisoning because that's how they treated all the old timey like illnesses. They're like, here, have some poison. Okay. So after six weeks, she's sent back home. When she gets back home, her publisher asks her to compile letters that she wrote as a nurse into a book. And she gets paid $200 for hospital sketches, which earned her acclaim and more. And publishers began to like, seek out her writing. But she's still like really friendly with her original publisher. And she gives her pet project moods to James Redpath, her publisher, and she is absolutely distraught when he asks her to cut it in half. And so she's like, no, this is my baby. I put my blood into this. And so she brings it to another publisher who also says it's too long. And she removes 10 out of the 30 chapters. And the book, it has mixed reviews. And at 33, a wealthy Boston ship owner asks Louisa to travel to Europe as the paid companion to his invalid daughter. So this is like the grand tour. So the Grand Tour is when rich people from America would go gallivanting round Europe and there were certain places they would go see, you know, it was a very much a done thing. It was like when you get to a certain age in society, it was, it was what you did. And so she goes on it and so she accompanies this woman to go on this grand tour and she has a swell time. She really like learns from this experience and she has just a really good time all in all. But when she returns home, she discovers that all of her family bills are unpaid. And so she spends the rest of the year writing 12 news stories. And she's tired. And I mean, no, she's like so tired. Like she literally collapses from exhaustion and she's just like so desperately trying to keep her family above water. And when she's 35, Louisa is offered the job of editor of Mary's Museum, a children's magazine, which earns her $500 a year because editor Thomas Niles, he notices a gap in the market and asks her to write a book for young girls. And Louisa says no because she's not interested in writing moral pap for the young. Like she didn't see herself as a children's authority. And she lived through like poverty, tragedy, illness and war and she just didn't want to do it. However, Bronson I'll caught her father, he had a manuscript that he wanted published. And so she agreed on the condition that Tablets, which is his manuscript, would be published. This was his request. He was like, if you know my manuscript to be published, if you write yours, like, make that part of the deal. And so she does, she does that for this man. Anyway, Skip forward to February 1869 and Louisa breaks down. She quits her job and she moves to Concord to write a book that she didn't want to write. And she writes, she writes an ordinary coming of age novel about four sisters growing into young women. A semi autobiographical and fairly sanitised account of her own childhood in Concord. A little book you might know as Little Women. Anna Alcott becomes Meg March, Lizzie becomes Beth, and May becomes Amy. Now Lizzie becomes Beth. That's the same name but with different nicknames, right? The alliteration for Meg March, you have May to Amy. They just rearranged the letters. She just rearranged the letters. It's an anagram. An anagram. And Joe Jo is an idealized version of herself. And Mr. March, he is an Employed but absent chaplain. Like, he's like, she gave him a way out and there's a maid to do the housework and she's just like, and I. It's, yeah, it's what her life could have been. And so she sends the first 12 chapters to Thurnop Nails and he calls it dull. And Louisa agrees. Then Niles shows it to his niece and she fucking loves it. And so Louisa, she pushes through illness, exhaustion and an ever forming opium habit to finish the novel. Two and a half months after starting it, she is offered $1,000 flat fee or a $300 advance and 6% royalties on each copy sold. And on 30 September 1868, Little Women was published. It's an instant success, selling out the first printing of 2,000 copies. And so she was asked to write a second volume. Her readers begged her for Jo and Laurie to marry, but she didn't believe in marriage. The publisher had sold 4,000 copies of the second volume before it was finished. Like pre orders, man, pre orders are important. And part two was published on April 14, 1869. And by the end of May, 17,000 copies had been sold and she could finally pay off her family's debt.
- [41:01]
Louisa May Alcott
Say hello to Mia.
- [41:02]
Katy Charlwood
Hey there.
- [41:03]
Louisa May Alcott
Mia runs a pet grooming service in Chicago. But getting new clients was rough until.
- [41:07]
Verizon Representative
I started using acast. I recorded my ad, targeted pet owners in the area and let ACAST do the rest. Now people all over the city know about my grooming services.
- [41:15]
Louisa May Alcott
Mia's business is looking sharp. What's your secret for happy pets and happy clients?
- [41:20]
Verizon Representative
A fresh cut, a friendly vibe and a well placed podcast ad.
- [41:24]
Louisa May Alcott
Get the word out about your business through Acast. Visit go acast.com advertise to get started.
- [41:40]
Katy Charlwood
The following year. In 1870, she wrote Old Fashioned Girl and. And it's a hit. And so she treats her and her sister May to a trip to Europe. And this time when she goes, she's a celebrated author and not a servant. So even though she got to enjoy like Europe the first time she went, this time she's going with agency, you know, with, with something behind her. And it's on this tour that she discovers her brother in law has passed away. And so she's inspired to write a sequel for Anna's sons, a sequel to Little Women, Little Men. And so she continued traveling and writing until she was too sick to enjoy her fame and Fortune. In 1877, she buys Anna a home. And then she goes to care for Abba, her mother, because she's like, without. I mean, this is a period of time when you've got men earning the money holding the purse strings. And Louisa May Alcott is making money. And she's also on all of the drugs, which she's been on, like, since the Civil War, really. And she is doing her best to care for and protect her family. And so me, she makes sure that Anna has a roof over her head, that she's safe and secure. And her mother, who, Abigail May, who just consistently fought for her children to be able to eat, you know, like, and who was again, one of the first social workers in Massachusetts. And so she's getting to that point in her life. And in November, Abba dies in her daughter Louisa's arms. And after this, Louisa is determined to do right by her mother. In 1879, Louisa May Alcott was the first woman in Concord to register to vote. And she was an active believer and was outspoken about women's suffrage and prison reform. Like, she is putting her money where her mouth is. And as she's, like, continuing to campaign, more tragedy strikes. In December 1879, her youngest sister, May, dies from complications in childbirth. And Louisa, she adopts her niece, Lulu. Well, she's also taking care of Bronson. But Louisa, she is getting sicker. She's got vertical fatigue. She's got fainting spells and gastrointestinal issues. But she is still writing. In 1886, she publishes Joe's Boys, the third volume in the March trilogy. And she mirrored her life in Joe's fame. And on the 1st of March, 1888, she visits her father for the final time. On his deathbed. She says goodbye and she goes home and falls into a coma. On the 4th of March, Bronson dies. And on the 6th of March, 1888, two days after her father, Louisa May Alcott, passes away at the age of 55 in father and Daughter, they are buried next to each other in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Louisa, she never married. She never considered courting. She was never interested in anybody anywhere. She knew the hows and whys and what fors, but it was never anything that was interesting to her. And so many historians believe that Louisa May Alcott was asexual. She was aromantic, perhaps all and the above. Now, of course, the argument can be made that she saw what her mother went through living with her father and his idealism and how it created suffering in their family. And that was not a life she wanted for herself. So even though the done thing was to get married for safety and security, which is Something he wasn't providing. And so for her, the benefits weren't there. So even for some people who were ace, they would marry anyway because it was the done thing to do. They just kind of, you know, gone with it. But there was never an inkling of any of those sort of feelings, any of those romantic connotations anywhere in her journals, in her letters. None of it. And so that's where I think Louisa May Alcott stands. And if I'm wrong, she can haunt me and tell me for why. So that ends my story on Louisa May Alcott. Now, if you were at the Red Line Literary Festival last year, then you may have heard me tell the story, and it was probably funnier. However, we can't find the recording. They can't find it, I can't find it. We don't know what's happened to it. And so here we are. And I thought, I haven't talked about this before, and I've had a very busy month with a lot of personal stuff going on that I will tell you about another time maybe. But if you liked this story, please rate and review five stars. If you didn't like it, you can just say nothing and do nothing. It's fine. Although I finally checked my Spotify. My Spotify. What's it called? The thing on Spotify. The reviews. Right. The comments. Right. Which is. I never. I mean, I don't look at them often because I'm usually too busy and it's connected to, like, a different email. It's a whole thing. And so I looked at it and I had these unread, like, comments. And they're all from, like, January. Right. And this one person just commented on every single video, not video episode. And it was like, what? And it was like, really mean stuff, too. And it was like, why are you so obsessed with me? And like, I was. I think I deleted a couple of them and then I got bored and then I went and, like, had a Ferrero Roshi or something because I was feeling fancy. And that's about it, really. Also, I would like to dedicate this episode to my drag queen loving friend. I know there's no drag queens in this episode. Sh To Sahar. I hope you're having a. You're having, like, a super fun time and that work isn't too stressful. So, yeah, let's see. Recommendation time. So I don't really drink alcohol much anymore for, like, a bunch of reasons that we'll talk about at some point. But I do feel the need to support creators, especially Ones who are really, really cool. And so I ended up buying Be a Better Drinker by Hannah Chamberlain. And, like, there are so many, like, fun, like, drinks in it, even though I don't really drink anymore. So, like, some of them are like, I could make this a really nice mocktail because sometimes I just want to drink something pretty. Okay, let me have my whimsy and aesthetic. So that is my reading recommendation for you this week. Why not recommend something by Louisa May Alcott? I feel like that's a bit on the nose, don't you? For watching Go watch Little Women actually, like, watch version. Greta Gerberg, Winona Ryder. Any of them. Any of them. There's another version from, like, the past. Like, a really black and white one, I think. Go watch that. Go watch any of them. It's fine. Have a good time. And for listening. For listening. You know what I've actually been enjoying recently was the Cotton Club Mudder. Like, 1980s. I think it's 1980s. I'm fairly certain it was 1980s. Oh, I've really enjoyed this thing. I'm listening to When's It Set? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm really bad with dates. Clearly, that's why I'm single. But also because, like, as a historian, not being great at dates is such a wild thing. Like, really. Which is insane because I'll remember very specific dates for very specific reasons. But then, yeah, I'm. I'm a disaster. A bisexual disaster, if you will. But anyway, thank you for listening. I look forward to chatting to you about more LGBTQIA people from history next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And so I shall wish you good night. Adios. Au revoir. Et vui des aimes, my friends. Bye. Bye.
- [51:29]
Louisa May Alcott
Beth, you're in charge of ordering the tacos for the meeting today.
- [51:32]
Verizon Representative
Yeah, I'm not gonna order the tacos.
- [51:34]
Acast Representative
Uh, what?
- [51:35]
Verizon Representative
I'm going to Easy Cater the tacos with EasyCater. You can order from a huge variety of restaurants, track expenses and save time.
- [51:43]
Acast Representative
Nice.
- [51:44]
Verizon Representative
Oh, by the way, you're emailing the meeting notes, right?
- [51:47]
Louisa May Alcott
No, I'm going to Easy Mail them. Where's my music?
- [51:51]
Verizon Representative
Sorry, Ben, there's no Easy Cater for that.
- [51:54]
Louisa May Alcott
Easycater. The easy way to order food for work.
- [51:57]
Acast Representative
Order now@easycator.com Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [52:10]
Tech Podcast Host
Hey, do you want to hear the next big new tech podcast hit before anyone else? Check out the daily tech news show Experiment Week. We're swapping out our normal shows to try out some new ideas. We've done this before and launched big hits like behind the Data, the Tech John and more. This year we have exclusive Android faithful reactions to the Pixel 9 event. It's all on the DTNS feed starting August 11th. Don't miss it.
- [52:41]
Acast Representative
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.