Little Women author may have been non-binary, expert claims

Louisa May Alcott, the author of the influential 19th-century novel Little Women, did not fit into a binary gender model, a literary expert claims.

Little Women with Emma Watson (left), Saoirse Ronan (second from right) and Australian Eliza Scanlan (far right) Supplied: Palace Nova

Louisa May Alcott, the author of the influential 19th-century novel Little Women, did not fit into a binary gender model, a literary expert has claimed.

Gregory Eiselein, president of the Louisa May Alcott Society, would be cautious, however, about calling the writer transgender. He told The New York Times: “The way folks from the 19th century thought about gender, sex, sexual identity, sexuality is different from some of the terms we might use.”

Jan Susina, a professor in the English department at Illinois State University, said Alcott “may have experienced what we today would consider gender dysphoria”.

Little Women is recognised as a key feminist text, but speculation about Alcott’s sexuality has swirled for years.

Jo March, one of the main characters in the novel, clearly wishes she had been born male and rejects assertions that she is a “young lady”. Alcott’s own journals contain similar references.

An 1870 photo of American author Louisa May Alcott.

An undated handout photo of Louisa May Alcott.

She wrote at one point that she had been “born with a boy’s nature” and later in life said that she saw herself as a “man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body”. She also said that she had “fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man”.

While some scholars have argued that Alcott was a lesbian, there is no evidence of a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman.

Little Women, which follows the March sisters, Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth, through the American Civil War and was published in 1868, remains one of the most read and adapted texts of English literature. The latest big-budget film adaptation in 2019 was directed by Greta Gerwig and featured Saoirse Ronan as Jo, alongside Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and Timothee Chalamet. It collected six Oscar nominations.

Attempting to cast historical figures with contemporary notions and terminology has proven to be a contentious area for arts companies.

The Globe Theatre in London was at the centre of a controversy this year after the opening of a new play, I, Joan, which depicted Joan of Arc as non-binary. At one point in the play, which was written by Charlie Josephine who identifies as transgender, queer and non-binary, the protagonist declares: “I’m not a girl . . . I do not fit that word.”

Criticism came from right-wing commentators as well as the former leader of Britain’s Women’s Equality Party. Sophie Walker said that when she was a child, the story of Joan of Arc had “presented thrilling possibilities about what one young girl could do against massed ranks of men”.

Rewriting her “as not female and presenting it as progress” was a massive disappointment, she said.

The Times