SOURCE: "The Domestic Drama of Louisa May Alcott," in Feminist Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, Summer, 1984, pp. 233-54.

In the following essay, a version of which was presented at the National Women's Studies Association Conference in May, 1980, Halttunen examines the role of the "parlor theatrical" in Alcott's fiction, noting that the popularity of this dramatic form reflected idealized conceptions of the role of the family during the Victorian era.

From the opening scene of Little Women when the four March sisters rehearse Jo's play, "The Witch's Curse, An Operatic Tragedy," to the closing lines of Jo's Boys—"let the music stop, the lights die out, and the curtain fall forever on the March family"—Louisa May Alcott's fascination with theater shaped her views of domestic life. Her most famous novel actually begins with a play-within-a-play: "The Witch's Curse" is enacted within the larger performance of The Pilgrim's Progress which frames...