Was Louisa May Alcott transgender?
The author of “Little Women” is being clocked
She’s one of the most famous children’s authors in history, and her sexuality has been a bit of a problem. Louisa May Alcott often referred to herself as male.
She lived from 1832 to 1888, and has had massive global influence, primarily through her novel Little Women. But who was she? Was she a ‘she’? A startling New York Times op-ed suggests that Alcott was ‘trans’.
Alcott largely invented “young adult” or YA literature.
She honed a new kind of story, in which teenage protagonists of hazy sexuality had one exciting adventure after another. From L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter or Suzanne Collins’ Katniss Everdeen, we’re having a Louisa May Alcott experience.
Feminism came along to claim Alcott as feminist, but it was an uneasy fit. Alcott’s fiction doesn’t very visibly challenge Victorian conventions around women in general.
Jo March, the protagonist of Little Women, is an outlier, an exception. As Agnieszka Soltysik, a scholar of queer theory, writes in a 2009 study of gender in Alcott’s fiction:
