Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches: Pigs also possessed attractions for me

Little Women and its sequel Good Wives are on the horizon.  I am in theory reading along with Dolce Bellezza, as are, I hope, many people, although I will be on vacation the week following Christmas, just when DB plans to write about the novels.  I will catch up, I promise, at least if whoever is hogging the library copy, probably some ten year old who can hardly appreciate the book the way I will and should surrender it for the greater good of book blogging, ever returns the dang thing.  So it will likely not be until January that I write about who I think Jo should marry and which of the characters I most want to slap, which I understand are the key interpretive difficulties of the novels.

In preparation, I read Louisa May Alcott’s earlier little memoir Hospital Sketches (1863), a surprisingly humorous account of her one month as an army nurse (she contracted typhoid and had to abandon her service).  Rob Velella, proprietor of The American Literary Blog, twittered that Hospital Sketches is a better book than Little Women.  I don’t remember Little Women well enough to say, but Hospital Sketches is a good book.

A sample of Alcott’s humor, from a Chapter V, “Off Duty,” where we get to see a little bit of wartime Washington, D. C., including the new Capitol building, the statuary (“rather wearying to examine”), the army mules, and the free-range pigs:

Pigs also possessed attractions for me, never having had an opportunity of observing their graces of mind and manner, till I came to Washington, whose porcine citizens appeared to enjoy a larger liberty than many of its human ones. Stout, sedate looking pigs, hurried by each morning to their places of business, with a preoccupied air, and sonorous greeting to their friends. Genteel pigs, with an extra curl to their tails, promenaded in pairs, lunching here and there, like gentlemen of leisure…  Maternal pigs, with their interesting families, strolled by in the sun; and often the pink, baby-like squealers lay down for a nap, with a trust in Providence worthy of human imitation. (V, 71-2)

Although Alcott often reminded me of Mark Twain (this is before Twain had published anything of significance), her model is Charles Dickens.  Hospital Sketches is packed with references to Dickens.  I in fact concealed one of them in the ellipses above, where young pigs are not only compared to Mrs. Peerybingle from The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) but Alcott actually includes a close paraphrase of a Dickens passage about neat stockings.  Not only is the tone that of Dickens, but so is some of the language.

Hospital Sketches, in the edition I read (Belknap, 1960), is only 84 pages long.  The editor, Bessie Z. Jones, fills it out with a fascinating essay on military nursing before and during the Civil War.  That is the heart of the novel, of course, Alcott’s work as a nurse.  I should write something about that.  Dickens is again relevant.

14 comments:

  1. Oh Tom, you cracked me up. I look forward to finding out who you think Jo should marry and who you most want to slap. Hopefully whoever has borrowed the book from the library gives it up soon. It is most certainly for the great good of book blogging!

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  2. Another option: I buy a copy, read it, and then donate it to the library. They clearly do not have enough copies of Little Women.

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  3. There's also the "why isn't Beth dead yet?" drinking game.

    The quoted snippet makes Hospital Sketches look pretty good. I'm sure we have it around the house. Ma femme has as much Louisa May as she's been able to put her hands on over the years. Which turns out to be a considerable pile. I haven't read any of the Turkish love-slave stories.

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  4. I know who I most want to slap, and I haven't ever finished the book in lo the thirty plus years I've begun it. (Yes, I started when ten years of age. ;) That would most definitely be...but, we'll chat. So glad you're still planning on reading it with me, whenever it is that we have our discussion up. No rush.

    p.s. Shall I sent you my paperback? I have it on my nook, and I'm be most glad to 'gift' you with my real edition. bellezza.mjs@gmail.com if you want to send me your address.

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  5. Thanks for the kind offer, but I see that the Signet Classics edition is only $3.95. I guess I can let the little girl keep her library book.

    Why are book bloggers so violent? I don't want to slap anybody!

    I could be convinced to read the Alcott pot-boilers - it is easy to convince me to read something - but I have not yet come across a convincing argument.

    Hospital Sketches really is pretty good, well written and even, although not visible in this post, meaningful.

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    1. I'm not violent by nature, but herr's another girl I'd love to slap: Briony from McEwan's Atonement.

      And, please forgive the ridiculous amount if typos in my previous comment; I shouldn't type on my iPhone while teaching and then not double check what I typed.

      Thanks for making me aware of Hospital Sketches, and sorry I can't send you Little Women.

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  6. You're tempting me here, Tom. How did I not know you and Bellezza were reading this next month? I believe I've technically never finished the last chapters of Little Women despite reading the sequels. I've never read Hospital Sketches though, but I mean to--especially now you tell me how short it is. I look forward to your posts, as I'm sure you'll find some new aspect to LW I'd miss.

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    1. He's sure to find more than one aspect I'll miss as well! Read with us? It appears we won't be posting til January. ;)

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    2. I can't make any promises, but I think I'll try, Bellezza. At the start of the year I had actually intended to reread LW in December, but I sort of kicked all plans to the wind this summer.

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  7. The (lack of) length is exactly what drew me to this book (plus Mr. Velella's recommendation)! Quick, pleasing, moving.

    I suspect, by the way, that you mean you have not read the final chapters of Good Men. I am going to emphasize this distinction well beyond the point where everyone is sick of it.

    Briony is only a puppet dancing to the direction of her puppeteer. Slap Mr. McEwan if you must slap someone. He's used to it.

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    1. Yes, yes, if you mean Good Wives you are absolutely correct. My edition simply labels the two volumes "Part One" and "Part Two," so I have the hardest time remembering to refer to the two as two rather than one.

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    2. Ah geez, Good Wives, which I have mashed up with Little Men!

      I want to be clear - the reason I keep insisting that what is commonly collected as Little Women is actually two novels is so I can count it as two books when I tally up how many books I have read this year.

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  8. I've been a lifelong student of Louisa May Alcott, spending more time learning about her life than reading her works. Go figure! Anyway, Hospital Sketches was the first book of hers that I read and I found it remarkably frank and poignant. The scene with dying soldier John Suhre whom she loved (in one form or another) was just amazing. HS was apparently one of the first works published that detailed everyday life during the war so it was in high demand. You're right, it's a good book!

    I maintain the only blog exclusively about Louisa if you'd like visit - http://www.louisamayalcottismypassion.com. Come and join the conversation! :-)

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  9. Why, I wrote about just that scene in the next post! But how could I skip it - it is the centerpiece of the book.

    What a wonderful site you have created. I have dropped it into the old blog readeroo. I hope you will follow along as we write about Little Women. You can offer gentle corrections. "Are you sure that is actually in the book?" - that is always a good one to have ready for me - see my week on Laura Ingalls Wilder.

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