Portraits of the Artist as a Young Wife: May Alcott Nieriker’s Influence on her Sister’s Literary Sketches, Fragments, and Narratives

Throughout their adult lives Louisa May Alcott and her sister, Nieriker, debated whether the female artist could combine an artistic career with marriage. For Louisa, marriage was a useful plot device in domestic fiction, but it undermine artist’s productivity reality. Contrastingly, viewed as enhancing outputs. This article surveys Louisa’s assessment of sister’s ideas romantic love across four fictional narratives that feature heroine based on May, alongside May’s correspondence married life, contrasting sisters’ philosophies complementarity artistry love.