Louisa May AlcottのLittle Menにおけるインディアン教育 : 児童向けインディアン物語を執筆した動機を巡って

Indian Education in Louisa May Alcott's Little Men : Motives for Depicting an Indian in Children's Literature

本岡 亜沙子

英語英文學研究

Hiroshima studies in English language and literature

[ISSN] 02882876

[NCID] AN0002064X

In the last chapter of Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (1868-69) Louisa May Alcott (1832-88) announces that there is a quadroon student in Jo (Josephine) Bhaer's and her husband's school which is called "Bhaer Garten." However, in Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out (1871), a sequel to the novel, she abruptly changes the nonwhite student from a quadroon to an Indian-like boy, Dan. The second aspect of the novel's queerness is that Alcott reveals that Bhaer Garten is modeled on Temple School run by her father, the so-called educational philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), but she changes the day school system of his school into a boarding school one in Bhaer Garten. The aim of this paper is to explore her motive and strategy in starting writing an Indian tale.

Judging from Bronson's decision to republish his own school record in 1871, the exact year when his daughter published Little Men, it is safe to say that her hit school story is like an advertisement of Bronson's forthcoming book. As a matter of fact, in Little Men, Alcott adopts his educational philosophy, that is, to admit children's inner animal impulse and to patiently help to dissipate it by recreation until their human attributes, such as affection, conscience, and intellect, awake. Since Alcott places too much emphasis on representing Indians in her work, she, intentionally or unintentionally, succeeds in revealing the limitations of her father's educational philosophy, rather than enhancing his value as an exceptional educator. For example, all of the white students of Bhaer Garten can conquer their animal impulse; the Indian boy cannot, however, due to the influence of his uncontrollable innate impulse. Through using this kind of traditional racially-biased dichotomy, Alcott stresses Dan's 'savageness.'

One of the reasons why Alcott stops depicting the quadroon is that she avoids reigniting complicated political issues including black education. Temple school, for example, closed just after Bronson permitted a black girl to enter the school. Even in postbellum era, only a very small number of the black people were admitted to school. Consequently, we can easily guess that Alcott judged that an Indian school story would be much less of a problem than a black school one. By the 1870s, the government had already started to build off-reservation boarding schools to forcibly 'civilize' and Christianize Indian children.

In addition to her political strategy mentioned above, she writes the Indian tale in an attempt to attract much more public attention and achieve a financial success just like that of Mrs. S. L. A. N. G. Northbury, the foremost author of sensational stories in Little Women.

Even more important is that Alcott calls Indian problems of the 1870s in question as the story draws to a close. She, for example, criticizes the Marches' forced expulsion of Dan from their school through Jo's heavy feeling of guilt, the phrase "one wild March," and the tragic circumstances of Dan's death in the West. Alcott thus clings to an Indian student with the purpose of expressing her critical views regarding the Indian problem of those days.

英米文学 [ 930 ]

日本語

広島大学英文学会

[ISSN] 0288-2876

[NCID] AN0002064X