Early Life
Katy
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her father was Bronson Alcott, a philosopher and educator who didn’t believe in working for wages and her mother was Abigail May. All of her sisters were Anna, Elizabeth, and Abby May, Anna being the oldest, and Abby the youngest. Louisa was the second oldest. Among her family, she went to school each day being taught at home. Her absolute favorite subject was always English Language Arts.
She considered her family what she called “as poor as rats”. Her family always moved from place to place. For a time, they lived in the Fruitlands where they didn’t allow cotton, silk, or wool! When they had money, they’d eat lots of vegetables and sometimes apples or bread. Although the food was scrumptious, when she was bad, she didn’t get any dinner.
This was due to her bad behavior. She often took dares such as rubbing red peppers in her eyes and even jumping off the barn and spraining both of her ankles! She was a daring young girl who often felt she was “more boy than girl”.
During her childhood, she often spent time fantasizing a better life. She’d say to her family, “I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t.” She thought that her family was “pathetic” because they were poor and her father didn’t believe in working for wages. All she thought was that she was the only one who would be able to save her family and take them out of debt.
Although Louisa was a very kind and interesting person, she never married. Even though she didn’t marry, she had many crushes. She had a crush on the writers, and her father’s friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She always said, “I would rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.”