“So Contrary and Provoking”: Love in Louisa May Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869)

Although Louisa May Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869) promotes conventional gender expectations and traditional values, at the same time it depicts heterosexual marriage as mercenary dispassionate. It proposes women’s choice to become self-sustaining a positive alternative marriage. Thus, narrative seems destabilize conventionality promotes: “spinsterhood,” independent career women, same-gender affection all appear in light. Beyond plot, book some progressive, provocative, ambiguous scenarios unveiling of which requires readers’ collaboration.