Transnational Relationships, US Feminism, and the Labor of Dark Foreign Men in the “New World” of Europe in Louisa May Alcott’s Diana and Persis

Abstract

This paper examines romantic relationships between U.S. and non-U.S. citizens in Diana and Persis, Louisa May Alcott’s 1879 sentimental novella set in Europe and based on May Alcott’s life. The essay argues that Alcott uses sentimental, transnational relationships and the adulation of France and Italy to question gender and racial inequities in the U.S., as well as to encourage U.S. American women to escape the dominant patriarchal ideology through emigration to Europe. Although these transnational relationships propagate a feminist agenda that challenges gender and racial hierarchies in powerful ways, the novella also complexly participates in the subordination of dark foreign Others and the US imperial project.

Keywords

• Louisa May Alcott
• sentimentalism
• transnationalism
• feminism
• imperialism
• gender