Tornar-se escritora: uma reflexão sobre Louisa May Alcott e a sua reescrita de si em Little Women

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect what means to become a writer in the 19th century, considering the literary production of Louisa May Alcott, specifically her novel called Little Women and the specific context of the time. We sought to discuss the literary production of female authorship through the movement of Alcott and her main character, from the aforementioned novel, in a period in which women were introduced into the academic environments of literature studies. We presented a brief overview of the rise of literature, novel in particular, based on Eagleton's (2006) text, to better understand how and when women could attend to this literary formal space. Furthermore, we developed a discussion concerning the process of identity construction of this writer, considering the postulates of Woolf (1990), about how those women were seen and the relevance of a room and financial independence for them. Lastly, taking into consideration this mapping, we noticed how the biographical marks of Alcott and the context in which she lived are transfigured in the novel, and this enabled us to perceive the way Alcott staged her rewriting about herself on her life-text.