Rose in Bloom (1876)

AUTHOR: Alcott, Louisa May

KEYWORDS: diet, domesticity, dress reform, education, health, morality, vegetarianism, women's rights

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

The sequel to Eight Cousins begins with the return home of Rose, now a young woman in her early twenties, after having “been abroad several years with her uncle” (1). While Rose, the cousins, and Phebe, who accompanied Rose on her travels, re-acquaint themselves, Rose remarks on the vegetarianism of one of her cousins – Mac – (of which she had learned through their frequent correspondence): “Your letters have amused us immensely; for each one had a new theory or experiment, and the latest was always the best. I thought uncle would have died of laughing over the vegetarian mania: it was so funny to imagine you living on bread and milk, baked apples, and potatoes roasted in your own fire” (5-6). Rose's remark prompts one of the other cousins to remark that “[t]his old chap was the laughing-stock of his class. They called him Don Quixote; and the way he went at windmills of all sorts was a sight to see” (6). Questions of diet and diet reform are thus broached early in the novel, as was the case in Eight Cousins. The slightly mocking tone of the two remarks sets the tone for much of the novel.

Rose immediately establishes her independence of mind, declaring that she intends “not to be cheated out of the real things that make one good and happy” (12) and that she is “not going to be satisfied with” the life of “a housekeeper and baby-tender” (11-12). These announcements provoke the mocking response that “here's woman's rights with a vengeance!” (12). Rose then announces that “[p]hilanthropy is a generous, good, and beautiful profession; and I've chosen it for mine because I have much to give” (14). Only Mac explicitly approves of Rose's plans, and the two youngest of the three cousins “at once proposed founding a hospital for invalid dogs and horses, white mice and wounded heroes” (15). Rose indeed goes on to devote much of her energy, time, and money to charity.

The rest of the novel is occupied  primarily with the confusions and tribulations of romantic relationships. Here, too, the novel is concerned with simplicity, modesty, humility, and the question of what constitutes proper and appropriate behavior. Despite attracting many suitors, Rose ultimately accepts “the plainest of all the cousins” (35), the vegetarian Mac. His vegetarianism as well as his plainness emphasize his modesty and kindheartedness, precisely the virtues that Rose had been brought up to value and that the two novels promote. In contrast, cousin Charlie, another of Rose's suitors, finds “it hard to give up any thing he had set his heart upon,” giving in to “self-indulgence” (97), a luxurious lifestyle, and alcohol abuse. The latter ultimately proves fatal when he gets drunk, has an accident, and dies shortly after.

Mac trains to become a doctor under the mentorship of Uncle Alec who had imparted the importance of the virtues of simplicity, humbleness, frugality, and modesty to Rose in the first novel. At one point, one of the cousins even accuses Mac of “preaching 'Women's Rights' directly” (239). Indeed, Mac pledges to do his “best all round: keep good company, read good books, love good things, and cultivate soul and body as faithfully and wisely as I can” (239). He reads Keats, Thoreau, and Emerson to Rose (298-305). As it turns out, he is an accomplished poet himself. Rose, in turn, according to Uncle Alec, has perfected the “art of living for others so patiently and sweetly that we enjoy it as we do the sunshine, and are not half grateful enough for the great blessing” (351), thus fulfilling the ideal of domestic femininity.