Alcott, Louisa May - SSC 20 Read Free Page B

In her
sensational stories she also indulged in melodrama and tragedy, and even
attempted to “make up a better Macbeth.”
                 Macbeth pervades much of Alcott’s “A Pair of Eyes.” That story opens in the theater
where the artist Max Erdmann and the woman who is to mesmerize him are both
watching a performance of that tragedy. The painting of Lady Macbeth that
Erdmann finally completes, haying used Agatha Eure as his model, crashes from
the w all during the second and last installment — a symbolic omen of the
tragedy that is to follow.
                 In
place of Macbeth , The Tempest provided Alcott with suggestions
for her “Ariel. A Legend of the Lighthouse, ” [ 25] the only one of these five tales in which setting is more important than plot,
character, or theme. Indeed, as in The Tempest itself, an enchanted
island surrounded by “deep water, heavy surf and a spice of danger” dominates
all three. Out of the background emerges the character of Alcott’s Ariel, to
whom the author prophetically gave the surname March. And out of the background
arise many of the plot developments: Ariel’s life on the island; her love of
the hero Philip Southesk, himself “as changeable as the ocean” he loves so
well; the revelation of their true identities; their thwarted romance; and
finally their happy reunion.
     
    [24.] Louisa May Alcott to Amos Bronson
Alcott, 28 November [1855J, The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott.
    [25.] "Ariel. A Legend of the
Lighthouse," Frank Leslie's Chimucy Corner 14 and 15 July 1865 ), 81-83, 99-101.
     
                 If
the author based her background upon scenes near Gloucester , Massachusetts , where she camped out on Norman ’s Woe , [ 26] she found much else in Shakespeare’s Tempest. Throughout this “Legend of
the Lighthouse” there are overt and covert allusions to Shakespeare’s play. In
much of the conversation and characterization, the source is obvious. Philip,
for example, comments to Ariel: “It only needs a Miranda to make a modern
version of the Tempest,” and she replies: “Perhaps I am to lead you to her as
the real Ariel led Ferdinand to Miranda. ...” When Philip asks Ariel what she
knows of Shakespeare, she answers: “I know and love Shakespeare better than any
of my other books, and can sing every song he wrote.”
Indeed, she frequently sings “Oh, come unto the yellow sands,” an appropriate
lyric for one who is “a spirit singing to itself between sea and sky.” Philip’s
gift to his beloved Ariel is “a beautiful volume of Shakespeare, daintily
bound, richly illustrated,” and as he sketches, she reads. Gazing at “a fine
illustration of the Tempest,” she remarks: “Here we all are! Prospero is not
unlike my father, but Ferdinand is much plainer than you. Here’s Ariel swinging
in a vine, as I’ve often done, and Caliban watching her. ...” Alcott’s
narrative adaptation is complete to its Caliban, the lighthouse keeper’s
humpbacked companion, whose massive head is set upon a stunted body and who
loves Ariel and wreaks much evil.
                 On
the nineteenth-century American stage, theatergoers could w atch a winged Ariel
fly in and out of the scenes of The Tempest on “visible ropes.” [27] In Frank Leslies Chimney Corner , readers of sensation stories could
enjoy a ryiodern version of that play ingeniously
contrived bv the future author of Little Women.
     
    [26.] See Louisa May Alcott, unpublished
journals (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University ), August 1864, and Cheney,
p. 159, for the fortnight in Gloucester . For scenes similar to
those described in "Ariel. A Legend of the Lighthouse," see Charles
Boardman Hawes, Gloucester by Land and Sea: The Story of a New England Seacoast
Town (Boston: Little, Brown, 1923); Edward Rowe Snow, Famous New England
Lighthouses (Boston: Yankee Publishing Company, 1945); John S. Webber, Jr., In
and Around Cape Ann