Eight Cousins

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Eight Cousins
Eight Cousins 1st ed Illus.jpg
Rose and her Aunts, frontispiece illustration in first edition
AuthorLouisa May Alcott
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherRoberts Brothers.
Publication date
1875
Pages290
Followed byRose in Bloom 

Eight Cousins, or The Aunt-Hill was published in 1875 by American novelist Louisa May Alcott. It was originally published as a serial in St. Nicholas . [1] It is the story of Rose Campbell, who has been recently orphaned and resides with her maiden great aunts, the matriarchs of her wealthy Boston [2] family, until her guardian, Uncle Alec, returns from abroad to take over her care. Through his unorthodox theories about child-rearing, she becomes happier and healthier while finding her place in her family of seven boy cousins and numerous aunts and uncles. She also makes friends with Phebe, her aunts' young housemaid, whose cheerful attitude in the face of poverty helps Rose to understand and value her own good fortune.

Contents

Major themes

Each chapter describes an adventure in Rose's life as she learns to help herself and others make good choices. Rose must define for herself her role as the only woman of her generation in her family and as an heiress in Boston's elite society.

Motherless for most of her life, 13-year-old Rose looks to her many aunts, her friends, and the housemaid Phebe as feminine role models. At the same time, she is suddenly confronted with a male guardian and seven male cousins, none of whom she knows well, after losing her beloved father, the only man in her life.

Like all of Alcott's books for young people, the story takes a high moral tone. Various chapters illustrate the evils of cigar-smoking, "yellow-back" novels, high fashion, billiards, and patent nostrums, while promoting exercise, a healthy diet, and wholesome experiences of many kinds for girls as well as boys. Alcott uses the novel to promote education theories many of which appear in her other books. For example, in choosing Rose's wardrobe, Uncle Alec rejects current women's fashions (such as corsets, high heels, veils, and bustles) in favor of less restrictive, healthier clothing. Although he discourages her from the professional study of medicine, he educates her in physiology, a subject her aunts consider inappropriate for girls, so she can understand and take charge of her own health. Rose is prepared for a career as a wife and mother, yet is taught that she must take active, thoughtful control of her fortune so she can use it and social position to the best advantage of the larger community. Written in an age when few women had control of their own money, property, or destinies, Alcott's portrayal of Rose's upbringing is a good deal more revolutionary than 21st-century readers may realize.

The sequel to Eight Cousins is Rose in Bloom (1876), which continues Rose's story into young adulthood, depicting courtship and marriage, poverty and charity, transcendental poetry and prose, and illness and death among her family and friends.

Plot

Thirteen-year-old Rose Campbell is a sickly orphan whose father recently died. She now lives with her great aunts, Peace and Plenty, at the Aunt Hill. After a week of living there, she meets and befriends the housemaid, Phebe Moore. Rose, who is intimidated by having seven boy cousins known as the clan, tries to avoid meeting them. When she meets the clan, they are introduced to her as Archie, Charlie, Mac, Steve, Will, Geordie, and Jamie. The next morning, Rose meets her uncle, who is a doctor and her guardian. He throws her medication out the window and says he is in charge of her health. Uncle Alec and the aunts decide to discuss what to do with Rose. Aunt Jane thinks that Rose should have been kept in Miss Power's boarding-school; Aunt Clara thinks she should be put in a finishing-school for a year and then sent into society; Aunt Myra thinks Rose will die; and Aunt Jessie agrees with Alec, who wants to improve Rose's health for a year before letting her decide who to live with. Rose wants to adopt Phebe, but cannot until she is older. One day Uncle Alec tells Rose to run around the garden. Afterward, he tells her to loosen her belt; at her refusal, he loosens it for her.

Rose and Uncle Alec take his boat to Uncle Mac's dock. There, they meet two Chinese gentleman, Whang Lo and Fun See, the latter of whom entertains Rose with things he has brought from China. For the Fourth of July Uncle Alec, Rose, and the clan camp on a nearby island. Wanting Phebe to participate, Rose leaves the last day of the camping trip. She sends Phebe to the island Phebe and does Phebe's chores in her absence. Mac, from studying outside all day on the camping-trip, gets a sunstroke. After this, his eyes give out from reading. Because he is consigned to a dark room for a long time and forbidden to read, Rose reads to him. The clan disturbs Mac in his rest, and after a scolding from Rose, decide to be more helpful. To help Mac with his boredom, Uncle Alec sends Mac, Rose, Aunt Jessie, Jamie, and two friends to the mountain village of Cosey Corner to stay with a woman named Mother Atkinson. Jamie and his friend join The Cosey Corner Light Infantry, whose members are the neighborhood children. On Rose's fourteenth birthday she falls off a horse going to meet Uncle Alec and sprains her ankle. While her ankle heals, Mac and The Cosey Corner Light Infantry entertain her with skits.

At Uncle Alec's recommendation, Aunt Plenty teaches Rose how to bake break and Aunt Peace teaches her how to sew. One afternoon Rose discovers Charlie and Archie smoking and encourages them to quit, then Aunt Jessie has Will and Geordie burn their yellow-back novels. Although Uncle Alec discourages Rose from the professional study of medicine, he educates her in physiology so she can take charge of her own health. During the family Christmas dinner Archie's father Uncle Jem shows up after being at sea for several years. In February Rose contracts a serious cold while waiting for Mac in the winter weather. When Charlie finds out, he chastises Mac. Feeling remorseful, Mac visits Rose in her room in the middle of the night and begs for forgiveness, which she grants. Still recovering, Rose gives Phebe some schooling to. Archie and Charlie have an argument about Charlie's choice of friends, and Rose resolves it by encouraging both boys to apologize. Now having lived at the Aunt hill with Uncle Alec for a year, Rose is free to choose with whom to live. Because she has come to love him, Rose chooses to stay with Uncle Alec.

Characters

Rose Campbell: The central character of the novel is the daughter of the recently deceased George Campbell, one of six Campbell brothers who are nephews of Aunts Plenty and Peace Campbell. She is heiress to his considerable fortune. (The Campbells, wealthy residents of Boston, are of Scottish descent, and some of them are engaged in the China trade.) Rose, 13 1/2 at the beginning of the novel, is a pretty and sweet-natured child without marked talents of any kind. She has never known her mother and has lived apart from the rest of the Campbell family all her life. As the story opens, she is mourning the death of her father and awaiting with apprehension the arrival of her unknown guardian, Alec Campbell. She speaks French fairly well, and is slightly vain (as becomes apparent when her uncle wishes her to refrain from the wearing of tight belts around her waist).

The aunts of the "Aunt-hill"

The Campbell brothers, uncles of Rose and nephews of Aunts Peace and Plenty

A sixth brother-in-law, Aunt Myra's deceased husband, is never named.

The Campbell cousins, in order of age

Other characters

The Alcotts themselves would summer in a location called "Happy Corner" in Walpole, New Hampshire, but the description of "Cosy Corner" places it within walking distance of Mount Washington, very likely in Intervale. In the 19th century, New Englanders who could afford it went to the mountains or the seashore for the fresher, cooler air considered sovereign for physical and mental complaints.

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References

  1. "The December Monthlies". Buffalo Evening Post. November 21, 1874. p. 2.
  2. Cohoon, Lorinda B. (2008). "A Highly Satisfactory Chinaman: Orientalism and American Girlhood in Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins". Children's Literature. 36. Johns Hopkins University Press. doi:10.1353/chl.0.0018. Project MUSE   237804. Boston, associated with the independence of the United States, also has one of the nation's oldest Chinatowns, so it is significant that Eight Cousins takes place just outside of that city, with the Campbell family import/export business based in its ports.