Louisa May Alcott Unmasked: Collected Thrillers
Elaine Showalter once noted that Alcott wrote stories with both her right hand and her left hand. Before the right hand was spinning the web of domestic charm in novels like Little Women, her left hand was recording the dark underside of domestic relations. Stern, an Alcott specialist who has edited several selections of Alcott thrillers (Behind the Mask Thrillers, 1975; From Jo March's Attic: Tales of Intrigue and Suspense, LJ 12/93), has here collected all the thrillers and sensational stories that Alcott published anonymously in weekly papers before her rise to fame with the publication of Little Women. The tales cast a spellbinding aura around characters thrust into webs spun by evil, deceit, and intrigue. Spurned lovers often exact revenge only to suffer from the poison of their own venomous actions. In "Pauline's Passion and Punishment," for example, the protagonist seeks the death of her former lover only to end with him, through a set of horrible circumstances. Passionate and powerful, the women in these tales anticipate later 19th-century women characters like Edna Pontelier (The Awakening). Essential.?Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., OhioCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.