Moods

by Louisa May Alcott

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813516706
• ISBN13: 9780813516707
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 538 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.4" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Alcott's first novel

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.

Better than its repuatation suggests

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.