by Louisa May Alcott

Let’s learn a little bit about the characters of this story….

· Rose Campbell: Is a sweet, kind pretty and ambitious lady. We can say that she is the heroine of the story. She is an heiress just come of age, and struggles with the many gallants she attracts by learning to judge love versus those who regard her only as 'a good match'.

· Archibald "Archie" Campbell: Oldest son of Jem and Jessie. Oldest of all the cousins, of steady and thoughtful character, he is the Chief, much respected by all the boys and an “older brother” figure to Rose. He works for Uncle Mac and has begun to "settle down", some think too young.

· Charles C. Campbell (Charlie): Also known as Prince Charlie, the “flower of the family,” considered the most handsome, talented, and promising of the lot. He is the spoiled only child of Stephen and Clara – spoiled by his too-indulgent mother, with no father present to give him guidance. Charlie is looked up to by all the boys because he is particularly charming and well-loved in society, nicknamed "Prince Charming" by the girls. He falls in love with and tries to woo, Rose.

· Alexander Mackenzie Campbell (Mac): The older son of Mac and Jane. Known as the Bookworm, or simply “the Worm,” Mac always has his nose in a book and is regarded as the wisest and most learned of the cousins, even though through absent-mindedness and lack of interest he is deficient in basic social skills. In Rose in Bloom, Rose tries to help Mac overcome his awkward social skills by inviting him to accompany her to a dance, and he generally allows her to "polish" him into a well-rounded gentleman. He later falls in love with Rose.

· Stephen Campbell (Steve): Younger brother of Mac. A good-natured, though rather conceited dandy, he idolizes Charlie and copies him in everything, not always to his own advantage. However, his intentions are sound, and he proves to have greater self-control and willpower than Charlie ever displays. He gets engaged to Kitty Van Tassel.

· William and George Campbell (Will and Geordie): Second and third sons of Jem and Jessie. They are in cadet school now, and very proud of their uniforms, though perhaps a bit awkward by sudden growth spurts. They are just now becoming old enough to travel in society, no longer be children.

· James Campbell (Jamie): Youngest son of Jem and Jessie; the much-loved but only slightly spoiled baby of the family. He is known for inappropriately bursting out information he overheard the aunts saying in confidence. He is also a favorite of Rose's, being the only child left of the boys.

· Phebe Moore: a sweet maid who Rose befriended in Eight Cousins. Between the events of Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, she travels with Rose to Europe and upon arriving in the US at the beginning of the novel, begins a career as a singer. She is accomplished and beautiful, and instantly attracts the attention of several of the boys, but wins Archie's heart without effort or design.

· Uncle Alec: Rose's guardian after her father died. He holds a different view to bringing up a girl than the culture at that time, believing that too many balls, attention, and admirers ruin a girl and that wholesome food, regular exercise, a well-rounded education and keeping a pure mind is preferable to the fads of the time. He brings Rose up differently to most girls in her social set, allowing her to study and play and get plenty of exercises. He is naturally the example Rose holds all other young men too. He is Rose's confidant and advisor in almost all things and proves his worth throughout the book.

· Uncle Mac: younger Mac's father. A successful importer, and kindred spirit with Rose and Alec. At the beginning of the book, he and Alec begin speculative match-making for Rose's hand with much humor.

· Aunt Plenty: the spinster aunt of Uncle Alec with whom Rose and Uncle Alec live. In this sequel, she is dealing with more physical issues due to old age and has some issues with pride when Archie wishes to marry someone Aunt Plenty deems of a lower class. She is also dealing with the loss of her sister, Aunt Peace. In the end, she comes around to everyone's satisfaction and is a model example of a loving family matriarch.

· Aunt Myra: one of the Campbell Aunts who always believes her and everyone else is sick. She drives the family to distraction, and some humor, with imagined diseases. Her only daughter died young, and she is a widow.

· Aunt Clara: Charlie's mother. She loves society, is a great follower of fashion, and is much involved in bringing Rose out. While she loves her son Charlie, she has over-indulged him to the point that he lacks self-will and strength of character, a fact that is noticed and mourned by the rest of the family. She also schemes to have Rose marry Charlie.

· Aunt Jessie: The mother of Archie, Will, Geordie, and Jamie. She is the "little mum" whom all the cousins love. She is like a mother to Rose and would love to have Rose for a daughter-in-law, but despite some disappointment, genuinely tries to welcome Phebe when Archie's love for her first comes to light. Aunt Jessie is the most like Uncle Alec in his modern outlook than any of the other women in the novel.

· Aunt Jane: The mother of Mac and Steve; she is very severe and believes in discipline, but has a good heart. Rose comes to have great respect and affection for her despite her somewhat offputting nature.

· Kitty Van Tassel: A rich young woman who moves in the same social circles as the Campbells. Steve proposes and they get engaged. She is rather silly, but Steve's and Rose's good influence improve her mind a good deal and she tries to be better.

The story of the Rose Campbell and her cousins picks up two years later as Rose, Phebe and Doctor Alec return from a long trip abroad. Everyone except the youngest (Jamie) has matured into young men and women. Both Rose and Phebe have flourished during their European trip and the young men have noticed.

Of the cousins, three stood out for me:

· Mac, the studious one, is able to pick up where he left off with Rose; they are very comfortable with one another

· Charlie is still sowing his wild oats; he has his eye on Rose (and her fortune). There’s something almost sinister about him; it reminds me of how I first felt about Tempest in The Long Fatal Love-Chase.

Louisa sets up several interesting scenarios in this chapter; the book so far feels less

formulaic to me. Little Women (at first) and Little Men seemed more like a collection of short stories. Eight Cousins had a running thread but it too felt like a collection of vignettes. An Old-Fashioned Girl had more of an arc (although I still hated the ending); Rose in Bloom appears to be similar; hope it has a better ending!

Uncle Alec’s reflection on how boys and girls were raised was interesting. He felt that the aunts were in too much of a hurry to “bring out” Rose causing him to question why girls were so sheltered in comparison to boys and why they were not better prepared to meet the challenges of life. Reasoning that even privileged girls will face unexpected hardships, he had sought to prepare his Rose: “We do our duty better by the boys, but the poor little women are seldom provided with any armor worth having. Sooner or later they are sure to need it, for everyone must fight his own battle, and only the brave and strong can win.”

Undoubtedly Louisa was thinking of the hardships of her own life and whether she was, in fact, well-prepared for battle. By her very nature, she was the “son” of the family and faced hardships straight on. She might have been thinking of Anna and Lizzie who were not so hardy and perhaps wondered about how well-prepared they were for hardship. Anna eventually prevailed until she struggled a great deal; Lizzie did not.

No hero or heroine coming from the pen of Louisa was going to lead a life without purpose. Rose meant to lead her life with intent and Uncle Alec meant for her to live that way. She was going to do something good with her life and her fortune:

“I have made up my mind not to be cheated out of the real things that make one good and happy; and just because I’m a rich girl, fold my hands and drift as so many do, I haven’t lived with Phebe all these years in vain, I know what courage and self-reliance can do for one; and I sometimes wish I hadn’t a penny in the world so that I could go and earn my bread with her, and be as brave and independent as she will be pretty soon.”

This was in response to Charlie who had said, “Because we know that there is only one thing for a pretty girl to do–break a dozen or so of hearts before she finds one to suit; then marry and settle.” Rose was not happy!

Louisa’s description of Phebe’s gift of song was wonderful. Once a raw talent

singing over her pots and pans, Phebe has been schooled, developed and refined as a singer. Comfortable in her technique she could pour her herself into her singing; it stirred the heart of Archie for the first time such that he fell in love with her on the spot.

Louisa obviously understood and appreciated music although she had no talent for it herself. Little Women suggests that Marmee could sing and that Beth played the piano with great feeling. Louisa understood the power of music to communicate to the heart thus creating a moving scene with Phebe and Archie:

“No longer shy and silent, no longer the image of a handsome girl, but with a blooming woman, alive and full of eloquence her art gave her, as she laid her hands softly together, fixed her eye on the light, and just poured out her song as simply and joyfully as the lark does soaring towards the sun.”

Of all the cousins, Mac understood Rose best, preferring girls with purpose, girls who are hearty and thoughtful. As Phebe stirred Archie’s heart with her song, Rose stirred Mac with her manner: “… thanks to Doctor Alec’s guardianship, she had wasted neither heart nor time in the foolish flirtations so many girls fritter away their youth upon.” He took her by surprise with a kiss as they parted which she felt was inappropriate due to their age. Sometimes tells me this will not be the last kiss!

The story was written in the third person. For me, all the characters are dynamic.

Rose in Bloom was written by Louisa May Alcott, which was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1832. Two years later, she moved with her family to Boston and in 1840 to Concord, which was to remain her family home for the rest of her life.

Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a transcendentalist and
friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Alcott early realized that her father could not be counted on as the sole support of his family, and so she sacrificed much of her own pleasure to earn money by sewing, teaching and churning out potboilers. Her reputation was established with Hospital Sketches (1863), which was an account of her work as a volunteer nurse in Washington, D.C.

Alcott's first works were written for children, including her best-known Little Women (1868--69) and Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys (1871). Moods (1864), a "passionate conflict," was written for adults. Alcott's writing eventually became the family's main source of income.

Throughout her life, Alcott continued to produce highly popular and idealistic literature for children. An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870), Eight Cousins (1875), Rose in Bloom (1876), Under the Lilacs (1878), and Jack and Jill (1881) enjoyed wide popularity. At the same time, her adult fiction, such as the autobiographical novel Work: A Story of Experience (1873) and A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), a story based on the Faust legend, shows her deeper concern with such social issues as education, prison reform, and women's suffrage. She realistically depicts the problems of adolescents and working women, the difficulties of relationships between men and women, and the values of the single woman's life.

Here are two interesting links to visit...
1. Louisa May Alcott Society
2. Orchard House, Home of Little Women

At that time (1876), The United States of America was experimenting these events:

· The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs is formed at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois; it replaced the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first President.

· Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.

· The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

· Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone (patent #174,466).

· Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."

· Friends Academy is founded by Gideon Frost in Locust Valley, New York.

· The Centennial Exposition begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

· Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, Kansas, serving under Marshal Larry Deger.

· The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.

· Indian Wars – Battle of the Rosebud: 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.

· First published a review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, in a British magazine; the book's first edition has appeared earlier in June in England. (The book is published in the U.S. on December 1876.)

· Indian Wars – Battle of the Little Bighorn: 300 men of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer are wiped out by 5,000 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

· The United States celebrates its centennial.

· Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.

· Wild Bill Hickok is killed in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota

· Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

· In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly wiped out.

· Texas A&M University opens for classes.

· The presidential election ends indecisively with 184 Electoral College votes for Samuel J. Tilden, 165 for Rutherford B. Hayes, and 20 in dispute. The new president is not decided until 1877.

· The Centennial Exposition ends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

· Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.

· Indian Wars: In retaliation for the dramatic American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops under General Ranald S. Mackenzie sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River (the soldiers destroy all of the villagers' winter food and clothing, and then slash their ponies' throats).

· The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278, possibly more than 300.

· The first cremation in the United States takes place in a crematory built by Francis Julius LeMoyne.

At that time in the Realism is a literary movement that developed in the middle of the 19th century in France and then spread like wildfire throughout the rest of Europe, all the way to Russia, and then overseas to the US.

Realism, as you might guess by its title, is all about portraying real life. Realist writers write about regular folks—bored housewives, petty government officials, poor spinsters, poor teenagers—living ordinary lives. Let's face it: most of us don't live crazy exciting lives, after all. What Realist writers are really good at doing is showing us how even ordinary lives are meaningful, and—hello—always full of drama.

Some of these writers were reacting against the Romantic Movement, which often stressed nature over culture, the solitary individual against society. Realist writers, unlike the Romantics, like to focus on groups of people. They give us the big picture: a panorama of a village, a city, or a society. And because Realism is about giving us the big picture, it tends to be associated with the novel genre, which is huge and flexible. Most of the famous Realists—like Tolstoy and Dickens—were novelists, who wrote pretty gigantic works.

Realism as a movement with a capital R ended sometime around the turn of the century, but the techniques of Realism have lived on. Lots of novels written today are written in straightforward language about contemporary issues, for example. Hey, who can resist the soap operas of daily life, all packaged up as a 500-page slice-of-life novel?

REALISM CHARACTERISTICS

Detail
Is that special something, that je ne sais quoi that sets Realism apart from other literary schools. Detail is the stuff that Realist writers use to weave their magic with: these writers immerse us in so much detail that we can't help but believe that what we're reading is real.

How did this technique start? With a couple of Frenchies, actually. Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert took the use of detail to a new level in their novels about French life. Open up Cousin Bette or Madame Bovary, and you'll find an encyclopedia of teeny-tiny details: food, clothes, landscapes, social habits: you name it. These works became models of Realist technique, both in France and abroad.

Transparent Language

One big innovation of Realist literature was the use of simple, transparent language. No Realist novel is going, to begin with, some fancy-schmancy phrase like, "Behold, thy life and love are the true crowns upon the pinnacle of my heart."

Realist writers fit their style to their subject: given that a lot of them were writing about ordinary people, they used ordinary language. Writing in a language that echoed the way regular people spoke to each other was revolutionary in the mid-19th century when Realism really got going. Before that, literary language was often supposed to be elevated, a little bit highfalutin'. But is that kind of language realistic? Not really—so the Realist writers tried something new.

Omniscient Narrator

Realist writers really rocked the omniscient narrator. What's that, you ask?

Omniscient narrators are sort of like the superheroes of narrators, and that's because they know everything. They can jump from one character's head to another, they can tell us about one town on this page and then jump to a completely new town on the next. They know when you've been sleeping, they know when you're awake, and they know when you've been good and bad, so… Well, yeah. They move from character to character, from scene to scene, from one place to another—because they just know it all.

Knowing it all means these narrators know the details of pretty much everything,

which is a pretty convenient thing if what you're trying to do is create a sense of reality in your novel.

Of course, not all Realist literature is told from the omniscient narrator point of view—there are plenty of first-person narrators, for example, in Realist literature. But the fact is that most of the great 19th-century Realist authors wrote from an omniscient narrative point of view: Leo Tolstoy, Honoré de Balzac, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, to name just a few.

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude is a sexy word meaning truthiness. Realist literature is famous for the way it tries to create a world that seems real or true; Realist writers want us to believe that we're watching real life unfold on the page.

Hey, it's called Realism. Is anyone surprised?

Realist writers go out of their way to make sure that they get their facts straight. If a Realist writer is writing about London in 1870, you can bet that writer either lives in London or has done some serious research on London, because he or she would want the London of the novel to be as true to life as possible.

In fact, Realism was heavily influenced by journalistic techniques, and that's no surprise, given that journalism at the time was also taking off. Realist writers often write like journalists, and their attention to specific facts and specific details only adds to the sense of verisimilitude in their fictional works.

Novel

You can't talk about Realism without talking about the novel. The novel is the one genre that is most closely associated with the rise of Realism as a movement: if we tick off on your fingers the most famous works of Realist literature, you'll probably come up with the titles of a bunch of novels, like Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov, and so on.

Realist writers do write in other genres, too, but it's the novel that is at the heart of the Realist tradition. Realist writers were drawn to the novel for several reasons, but most of all, the novel is big, and it's flexible. Realism is all about detail, after all, and you can fit a whole lot more detail into 300—or 1,300—pages of writing than you can fit into the fourteen lines of a sonnet.

The novel also gives you space to talk about loads of different issues and different characters. In Tolstoy's gigantic novel War and Peace, for example, there are over 500 different characters. That's like having all of your Facebook friends covered in one single book. Do you even know all of your Facebook friends? Tolstoy sure does.

The Quotidian

You wake up. You pour your Cheerios into a bowl. You add milk. You eat and think about all the stuff you have to do today: walk the dog, finish your English essay, grab a coffee with your friend. Yeah, not that exciting right?

Guess again. The daily stuff that we all live through is the meat of Realist literature.

One reason Realism was so revolutionary when it emerged in the mid-19th century was that it rejected the idea that literature had to be about larger-than-life heroes doing heroic deeds. Realist writers wanted literature to reflect the true, daily reality of our lives—stuff that smarty-pants scholars like to call the quotidian. One of the biggest preoccupations of Realism is the depiction of daily life, the dramas, and routines of regular people.

Character

Realist writers are really into describing, analyzing, and dramatizing personality. They delve deep into their characters' psychologies and dig into their motivations, actions, and emotions. Realism was all about understanding life, society, and the world. Often, the first place these writers started was the psychological reality of individual people.

It's good to remember that when Realism was emerging, psychology as a discipline was also emerging. Towards the end of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud—whom you may know as the dude who came up with the theory that we all want to sleep with our parents—was developing many of the central concepts in psychology, including theories about the unconscious, dream life, and repression.

Realist writers during this period—and even before Freud (one person said that everything Freud said was already in Dostoevsky's novels)—were already interested in psychology, and this is reflected in Realism's obsession with character.

Social Critique

Realist writers are all about critiquing the social and political conditions of the worlds that they write about. Authors like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Honoré de Balzac, and Fyodor Dostoevsky depicted economic and social inequalities in their novels as a way of raising awareness about the plight of poor people, for example, or about the inequalities that affect women.

In fact, there's a whole subset of Realism called Social Realism, which developed in the early 20th century and was inspired by the work of the big guns of early Realism like Tolstoy and Dickens. Social Realism comments on social and political conditions in a uniquely straightforward and hard-hitting way. John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is a great example of Social Realism as it developed into the 20th century.

Class

The class is a huge deal in Realist literature. Sometimes Realist writers will delve into the intricate etiquette of the upper classes, and sometimes they'll focus on the trials and tribulations of the lower classes.

But the class that Realism is most concerned with, at least in Western Europe, is the middle class. Now, it's important to remember that the middle class didn't always exist. Way back in the day, there was the aristocracy (all of those rich landowners with powdered faces and fancy wigs) and there was everyone else (peasants, mostly, who worked their butts off on land owned by the aristocracy).

Well, in the 19th century, the middle class began to rise. Thanks to industrialization and the rise of capitalism, a peasant could, over a little time, become a wealthy merchant and start living a little more comfortably. Society was changing, social structures and classes were being transformed, and Realism reflected these changes.

The rise of the middle class also meant that there was a rise in literacy. Suddenly, the audience for literature expanded: it wasn't just rich people who had the time and the ability to read—now the middle class could, too. It's no surprise, then, that Realist literature often reflected the concerns of the middle class.

Realism's emphasis on class, and on society in general, is a departure from the concerns of the literary movement that preceded Realism: Romanticism. In fact, Realism was partly a reaction against Romanticism. While the Romantics liked to write, for example, about solitary individuals’ independent from society, Realists chose to focus on social networks and the individual's place within these social networks.

Rising Literacy

Around the time that Realism got going as a literary movement in the mid-19th century, more and more people were reading. Education was no longer the special privilege of fancy aristocrats wearing wigs and face powder. Thanks to the printing press, books, and reading materials had become much more accessible.

In fact, many of the early Realist authors didn't even publish their works as "books." Their novels were serialized in journals for the mass readership, which meant that the journal would publish one installment of a novel with each issue. Realist literature was popularized in this way: it was easily accessible, and it provided long-term entertainment for a growing reading public.

This story was written and developed in the United States. It belongs to General Fiction, Romance genres.

In Rose in Bloom (1876), the sequel to Eight Cousins, Rose, now twenty, comes out into society and must navigate its perils while choosing between several suitors, including two of her cousins. Further advancing Alcott’s passionate advocacy of women’s rights, Rose insists that she will manage her own fortune rather than find a husband to do it for her.

Three young men stood together on a wharf one bright October day, awaiting the arrival of an ocean steamer with an impatience which found a vent in lively skirmishes with a small lad, who pervaded the premises like a will-o'-the-wisp, and afforded much amusement to the other groups assembled there. "They are the Campbells, waiting for their cousin, who has been abroad several years with her uncle, the Doctor," whispered one lady to another, as the handsomest of the young men touched his hat to her as he passed, lugging the boy, whom he had just rescued from a little expedition down among the piles.

Even more than Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom is compulsively preachy. I adore a good, morally upright novel but so much here is over the top, though I love it nonetheless. For all my eye-rolling over the didactic passages, I still adore this novel and love it as much as I did as a child through in a very different way – certainly, I can no longer class it with the titles I mentioned above.

Uncle Alec who had seemed so appealing in Eight Cousins now comes across as rather tyrannical though his intentions are good. To want to shelter a girl of thirteen from the foolish fads of society women is one thing but to control the reading material of a twenty-year-old woman, to be disappointed in her when she wishes to attend balls and parties is too much. In aiming to shelter Rose and keep her innocent and wholesome he is infantilizing her in the most infuriating manner. Occasionally, Rose seems poised to rebel but inevitably she yields to his judgment. And that’s where the real conflict for me as a reader comes in: I want Rose to rebel, just a little, even as I’m going the same way as she is agreeing with Uncle Alec’s views. I suppose Rose has her minor rebellion in a three-month whirl of gaiety – a period during which she does all the normal social things young, wealthy unmarried women did. And her reaction, her distaste for such a frivolous lifestyle, perfectly echoes my opinions on the topic:

‘I don’t wish to get used to being whisked about a hot room by men who have taken too much wine, to turn day into night, wasting time that might be better spent, and grow into a fashionably fast girl who can’t get along without excitement.’

How can I be disappointed in a character for rejecting that which I too reject? I

think because she does it with such force, with such a clear idea of what is right and what is wrong. Her view of acceptable behavior seems very narrow and unyielding. Rose has energy and spirit enough to help as many errant souls reform as will offer themselves up but she is not particularly strong on acceptance or tolerance for those who wish to remain as they are.

And yet I still love Rose. Her actions may be directed by Uncle Alec but her emotional dramas are very much her own and it is through these that we finally see her weaknesses and flaws, her frailty, as she struggles to understand what it means to love, to be loved, and to be worthy of love. As a reader, it was these disappointments and revelations that finally made Rose a sympathetic, human character. Also, an unexplained mystery of my life has been solved: her reflections very clearly reveal the origins of my own views on love:

‘I don’t know how others feel, but, to me, love isn’t all. I must look up, not down, trust and honor with my whole heart, and find strength and integrity to lean on.’

Unlike Rose, it is easier to respect characters such as her cousins Mac and Archie for their successes; although each struggle with what is right and good versus what is thrilling and enjoyable, they triumph over these temptations on their own while Rose always has the controlling hand of dear Uncle Alec guiding her. In some ways, yes, this is a clear example of the freedom many parents gave and continue to give their sons while cosseting their daughters but I think it’s also a reflection of the parenting styles examined in the novel. Aunt Jessie, Uncle Alec’s staunch ally in the experiment of raising Rose, seems to lack his heavy-handedness when it comes to the raising of her sons. The same values and morals were instilled but Jessie seems to understand that her adult son must stand on his own and must know himself in order to face the world proudly. Mac’s mother just appears to have yelled at him and his brother a lot, beating sense into them when it was necessary. Not a soft maternal figure by any means but still a loving one, doing her best to raise two fine young men. Alcott treats both with respect. Aunt Clara, on the other hand, mother to Charlie, the black sheep of the family, does not get off so easily.

Poor Charlie, ruined by late nights and drink. Most of the blame is placed on silly Aunt Clara, which hardly seems fair. The entire family watched her spoil and indulge him as a child and no one did anything to intervene in a meaningful way until it was too late. By the time Rose in Bloom begins, Charlie is a grown man, surrounded by uncles and cousins enough to show him what a good man looks like. But Charlie gets his just desserts, as judged by Alcott, though I have despised since

my first reading how neatly and simply everything is tied up. Charlie is allowed undeserved dignity and nobility, the redemption that all previous allusions to his character would decry as implausible. And that is all I have to say about that, without spoiling it. But, regardless, I still always cry.

One of the central questions Rose in Bloom raised for me is: to what extent should we let ourselves be guided by the good advice of those who love us? It’s a complicated question and one I certainly don’t have an answer to. In the novel, you have both Rose and Charlie as foils, one following the exact wishes of her guardian, the other ignoring or unable to follow the advice of those who love him and all too easily follows in the footsteps of those who lead him astray. And then you have Mac…

Mac develops into the most independent of the cousins, the one who listens to everything his parents and aunts and uncles say and then goes off into his books or into the wilderness seeking his own answers. He is rather magnificent, actually, even if he did turn out to be a poet. He is clearly a man, not a boy, and one of principles and patience. Like Rose, he can at times seem almost too good to be true. In Eight Cousins, Mac had been the most human of the children to me, the best written and most life-like. Here, even more, attention is devoted to him and while he’s certainly appealing I’m not confident that he’s as true to life. It is, however, through Mac that Alcott begins to introduce the transcendentalist beliefs that so strongly influenced her own life, which was terribly fascinating. When Mac finally falls in love, he does it not at a ball or a party but through correspondence on the essays of Emerson, letters that show him the “beautiful soul” of his beloved. He is also a bit of a feminist, winning me over with this little speech to his brother and cousins:

‘It is very unreasonable in us to ask women to be saints and then expect them to feel honored when we offer them our damaged hearts or, at best, one not half as good as theirs. If they weren’t blinded by love, they’d see what a mean advantage we take of them and not make such a hard bargain.’

It might not have been the book I remembered but I appreciate it far more now as an adult than I ever did as a child. Yes, there are things I dislike about it but it’s still an excellent story written by a wonderful, intelligent author who made it engaging for audiences of all ages.

Is a story that tells about young people, as a sequence of “Eight Cousins”, now the story is about romances, about young issues. Is interesting how Louisa gets us into their lives.

I really don’t know what to expect before the reading, the Title suggests me about flowers…but…

That the Bloom term doesn’t refer only to flowers, here it means that the little kids “blooms” into young people to turn into adults.

Now, I need to read Eight Cousins for a better knowledge and comprehension of this book. It was a little bit difficult for me to understand because of the English, that’s no modern. Some words aren’t in the dictionaries.

The story begins when Rose returns home from a long trip to Europe. Everyone has

changed. As a joke, Rose lines up her seven cousins to take a long look at them, just as they did with her when they first met. The youngest, Jamie, accidentally mentions that the aunts want Rose to marry one of her cousins to keep her fortune in the family. Rose is very indignant, for she has decided ideas about what her future holds. From the beginning, she declares that she can manage her property well on her own and that she will focus on philanthropic work. Charlie has already decided she is marked out for him, with the approval of his mother.

Phebe also comes home no longer the servant that Rose "adopted" but as a young lady with a cultured singing ability. Rose challenges anyone who would look down on "her Phebe", and she is readily accepted as part of the Campbell clan until Archie falls in love with her: the family feels that Archie would be marrying beneath himself. Phebe's pride and debt to the family make her wish to prove herself before she will accept Archie; so she leaves the Campbells' home and sets off to make a name for herself as a singer, to try to earn the respect of her adopted family.

After some time at home, Rose has her "coming out" into society, much to her Uncle Alec's chagrin. She promises to try high society for only three months. During that time, her cousin Charlie falls in love with her and tries in various ways to woo her. Rose begins to give in to his charm, but he derails the budding romance by coming to her house, late one night, very drunk. This ruins all her respect for him and she sees how unprincipled he really is. After the three months are up, Rose begins to focus on her philanthropic projects and convinces Charlie to try to refrain from alcohol and other frivolous things, in order to win her love and respect.

She tries to help Charlie overcome his bad habits with the help of her uncle, but fails. Charlie does all he can to win her heart, but in the end, he succumbs, hindered by his own weak will and his constant need for acceptance by his friends. Being spoilt by his mother meant he never learned to say "no", even to himself, and his lack of discipline proves fatal: Charlie's life ends tragically in an alcohol-induced accident on the eve of his voyage to see his father and restore his good character. Although Rose never was in love with Charlie, she did have hope that he would return a better man and that they might see what relationship could develop.

Several months after Charlie's death, Rose finds out that another cousin, Mac, is now in love with her. At first, never thought of him as anything but "the worm", she refuses his love; but she does declare the deepest respect for him. This gives Mac hope, and he goes to medical school, willing to work and wait for her. She finds his devotion touching, and she begins to see him clearly for the first time, realizing that Mac is the "hero" she has been looking for. He is exactly suited to her tastes and has become a man in the noblest sense of the word. He also settles a joke with her by publishing a small book of poetry to wide critical success, earning her respect even more deeply. It is his absence that shows her how much she cares for him.

While Rose is discovering her heart, Steve and a minor character, Kitty, engaged to marry. This creates a new sensation in the family, and Kitty begins to look to Rose for sisterly guidance. Rose encourages her to improve her silly mind, and Kitty is a very willing pupil. Rose continues to wait for Mac's return but reaches a crisis when Uncle Alec becomes very sick while visiting Mac; Phebe nurses him back from the brink of death, at personal peril, and returns him to the anxious Campbells to be greeted as a triumphant member of the family, sealing her own engagement with Archie with everyone's blessing. This homecoming is completed for Rose when she is reunited with Mac and finally declares her own sentiments. The book closes with three very happy couples and much hope for their felicity.