“People think I am wild and queer.”Īn outdoorsy, athletic child, Alcott made fast friendships with boys and delighted in their rough-and-tumble games - long past the point where such play was considered appropriate. “I don’t care much for girls’ things,” Alcott wrote in a childhood journal entry. Wild and QueerĮven as a child, Alcott didn’t identify with girlhood. She also published under the androgynous pseudonym A.M. Alcott.” On the cover of the first edition of Little Women, Alcott is credited as L.M. The Alcotts, who were big on nicknames, generally opted to call her “Lu” or “Louy” (pronounced “Louis”), and Alcott usually signed letters as “Lou” or “L.M. Much like Jo, Alcott almost never went by her full name, preferring more masculine alternatives. Was Alcott a trans man? That vocabulary didn’t exist in Alcott’s time, but, as the Louisa May Alcott Society says, “ so important to acknowledge that never fit a binary sex/gender/sexuality system.” Read on to learn more about Lou, and how her gender non-conformity influenced her beloved writing.Īnd yes, Alcott preferred “Lou” to “Louisa.”Įarly in Little Women, Alcott’s avatar Jo March complains, “I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy.” Sister Beth soothes her, saying, “ou must be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls.”
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