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2018 | 27/1 | 65-80

Article title

Rage and Rebellion in Louisa May Alcott’s “A Whisper in the Dark”

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Abstracts

This article discusses the feminist implications of Louisa May Alcott’s 1863 Gothic story “A Whisper in the Dark,” which not only expresses the anxieties that the author experienced in response to her upbringing and her social reality, but also provides an extensive critique of patriarchal culture. The essay explores the subversive nature of the story by presenting it as a dark double to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as well as by showing how the author mocks nineteenth-century sentimentality throughout.

Contributors

  • University of Warsaw

References

  • Alcott, Louisa May. 1934. Little Women. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.
  • -----. 1995. “A Whisper in the Dark.” A Marble Woman: Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Ed. Madeleine Stern. New York: Avon Books. 221–257.
  • -----. 1997. “Happy Women.” Alternative Alcott. Ed. Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 203–206.
  • -----. 1997. Work: A Story of Experience. Alternative Alcott. Ed. Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 237–349.
  • Carpenter, Lynette. 1986. “‘Did They Never See Anyone Angry Before?’: The Sexual Politics Of Self-Control in Alcott’s ‘A Whisper in the Dark.’” Legacy 3. 2: 31–41.
  • Chapman, Mary. 1996. “Gender and Infl uence in Louisa May Alcott’s A Modern Mephistopheles.” Legacy 13. 1: 19–37.
  • Cheney, Ednah D. 1889. Louisa May Alcott. Her Life, Letters, and Journals. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
  • Doyle, Christine. 2000. Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Brontë: Transatlantic Translations. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
  • Freeman, Janet H. 1984. “Speech and Silence in Jane Eyre.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900. 24. 4: 683–700.
  • Freud, Sigmund. 1995. “The Economic Problem of Masochism.” Essential Papers on Masochism. Ed. Margaret Ann Hanly. New York: NYU Press. 274–85.
  • Gitter, Elisabeth G. 1984. “The Power of Women’s Hair in the Victorian Imagination.” PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America) 99. 5: 936–954.
  • Halttunen, Karen. 1984. “The Domestic Drama of Louisa May Alcott.” Feminist Studies 10. 2: 233–254.
  • Keyser, Elizabeth L. 1993. Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. 3–13.
  • Massé, Michelle A. 1990. “Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the Night.” Signs 15. 4: 679–709.
  • Seelye, John D. 2005. Jane Eyre’s American Daughters: From The Wide, Wide World to Anne of Green Gables: A Study of Marginalized Maidens and What They Mean. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
  • Showalter, Elaine. 1997. “Introduction.” Alternative Alcott. Ed. Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ix–xliii.
  • Strickland, Charles. 1985. Victorian Domesticity: Families in the Life and Art of Louisa May Alcott. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.

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Publication order reference

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bwmeta1.element.desklight-c4b008b8-3228-4481-a31c-7ca3e783e1fa
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