Eight Cousins (1874)

AUTHOR: Alcott, Louisa May

KEYWORDS: diet  domesticity, dress reform, education, Grahamism, health, water-cure

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

While Alcott does not explicitly advocate for veganism or vegetarianism in the novel, she does emphasize dietary reform and healthy eating, which for her is predominantly vegetarian. At the start of the novel the protagonist, orphaned thirteen-year old Rose, lives with her great-aunts and is described as “a low-spirited butterfly” (1). Over the span of a year, the novel tracks her development from this initial unhappy, depressed state of mind and poor physical condition to a spirited, engaged and reformed, healthy young girl. The novel celebrates the “womanly power of self-devotion”; the ability to remain “faithfully at [one's] post when all the rest” deserts it (119). Alcott also expressly promotes Temperance and abstention from tobacco, just as she condemns the immorality of popular fiction and “sensation stories” (202).

From the outset, food is an important aspect of Rose's development. While the novel does not advocate for veganism, Rose displays a healthy attitude towards dietary questions early on, when she rejects Aunt Plenty's “toothsome temptations” in the form of “'goodies' that children love” (2). "Plenty" is a revealing name (as is that of the second aunt with whom Rose lives, Aunt "Peace"), for it “feebly expressed her bountiful nature” (18). In the course of the novel, Rose becomes the model domesticated girl, well-versed in and kindheartedly promoting the dietary virtues of simplicity and moderation. Fittingly, much of this domestic virtue is imparted by Phebe Moore, the aunts' fifteen-year old domestic help.

However, Rose's uncle Alec is the major driving force behind Rose's development, as he sees to it that she has acquaintances who are “not spoilt by [their] nonsensical education” (25; basically, her cousins and Phebe) and, being a physician informed by the tenets of Grahamism and, possibly also the water-cure, takes her physical and mental well-being into his own hands. He replaces the medicines Rose routinely takes; he replaces her morning coffee, “hot biscuit” (44), “hot bread and fried stuff” (33) with oatmeal and “brown bread” (i.e., Graham bread, 44); he substitutes her tight clothing with loose and comfortable clothes, and insists upon a regime of exercise, fresh air, regular bathing, and a generally wholesome and simple diet. “If you dear little girls,” he says to Rose, “would only learn what real beauty is, and not pinch and starve and bleach yourselves out so, you'd save an immense deal of time and money and pain. A happy soul in a healthy body makes the best sort of beauty for man or woman” (51). His reformist education is expressed by way of food metaphors when he criticizes any style of education that “think[s] it necessary to cram … pupils like Thanksgiving turkeys, instead of feeding them in a natural and wholesome way” (87). According to Uncle Alec, the former is precisely “the fault with most American schools” (87).

At one point, Uncle Alec enumerates what he calls his “three great remedies”: “Plenty of sun, fresh air, and cold water; also cheerful surroundings and some work” (69). Rose, in turn, promises to “take freezing baths and eat bad-tasting messes, and let my clothes hang on me” (69). In addition to helping Phebe with the housework – “the best sort of gymnastics for girls”(93), according to Uncle Alec – gardening is among the work and exercises in fresh air that he prescribes (71). He agrees that Rose “should have a trade, something to make a living out of” that makes her “happy and independent” (180). But he then suggests “housekeeping” as the proper trade for Rose (181), wishing her to become “a skilful, frugal, cheerful housewife; the maker and the keeper of a happy home” (182). To serve this end, his teaching also includes medicine and, in particular, “[p]hysiology” (215). Of course, cooking is one of the most important skills that Rose is to acquire, and Uncle Alec directs her towards reform cookery, explicitly stating that he would prefer she “rather ... learned how to make good bread than the best pies ever baked” (183). The novel tracks how proper education under benevolent male guidance produces properly reformed, domestic women. At the end of the novel, Rose exclaims that “what girls are made for” is “[t]o take care of boys” (279).

Like most all of Louisa May Alcott's stories, this novel is character- and dialogue-driven, a strategy that allows Alcott to express directly her pedagogical and moral program while focusing on children's mental and affective ways of being in the world, which are often depicted as innocent and thus morally uncorrupted.