American Woman: Feminine Speech and the Reformation of National Identity Through Female Community in Louisa May Alcott’s 'An Old-Fashioned Girl'

The insecurity of American identity in the years immediately after the Civil War added to fears about the dissolution of a simple, “old-fashioned” American past. Louisa May Alcott in particular worried about the Frenchified influence of “The Girl of the Period,” a fear that she addresses in An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870). After the Civil War, Alcott saw an opportunity for women to play an essential part in the creation of a revised American identity. This article argues that the “Old-Fashioned Girl” embodied what Alcott saw as a more American value system while inspiring cultural and social change. In contrast to Republican motherhood, in which women gain power through influencing their husbands and sons, Alcott emphasized a rhizomatic female community where women gain power through their influence on and support of other women. Furthermore, the old-fashioned girl crossed age and class boundaries by building an identity and community that Alcott characterized as distinctly American; through their speech, women (and girls) could help render not only the home but the nation “what it should be.”