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A review by teresatumminello
Moods by Louisa May Alcott
4.0
Edited March 8, 2018 (see below)**
Before Alcott's publisher would print this, her first serious novel for adults, written before her more famous works for children, he had her cut it in half. Alcott regretted this and years later when she received back her copyright, before republishing it herself, she rewrote it, reinserting some of the left-out chapters, cutting the beginning and changing the ending. The first published version is what I've read.
While the melodrama of some of the scenes, especially the beginning and the end, may be off-putting and the characters mere mouthpieces for Alcott's themes, I found it well-written. And those themes are what I found the most intriguing, especially the idea of unmatched pairs and the long train of evils arising from marriages made from impulse, and not principle. There is also a theoretical discussion among the characters about divorce, a daring topic for the time.
As with Bronte's Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, Alcott's 17-year-old Sylvia Yule (her pastoral name fits another theme) desires a friend much more than she desires love, but what she ends up in is a love triangle and she's in way over her head. If only Sylvia could've had the past thirty Faith (also aptly named), who is single by choice, as a friend sooner. Alcott seemed to be working on the idea that marriage is not the be-all and end-all of life (another daring idea for the time), not to mention the be-all and end-all of a novel.
In the preface to the republished version, Alcott states the original publisher's version made it seem as if marriage was the theme of this novel and that's not what she intended. Instead, the original purpose of the story was ... an attempt to show the mistakes of a moody nature, guided by impulse, not principle. She was right that this did not come across in its first published form.
**
I'd hoped to read Alcott’s second version of this novel straight through, in the form she’d rewritten it, eighteen years after she first wrote it. But there doesn’t seem to be a copy like that in existence any longer, only in this form of her revisions and additions noted and attached in footnotes and appendices to the originally published text. So instead of rereading the whole book, I read only the new-to-me passages. I've switched my original review (see above) to the edition containing these.
Reading the new sections was enough to see that the changes Alcott made—especially the complete excision of a subplot that had started off and complicated her story too much—were for the better. Of course she had eighteen years of wisdom and writing experience behind her, needed for the complicated subject she was tackling. I had rated the original 3 stars and have now upped it by one.
This edition also contains a review written by [a:Henry James|159|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1468309415p2/159.jpg] of the original Moods. Because a review by James of a different Alcott work is mentioned in notes to the introduction, I was prepared to be outraged at his snarky condescension and, yes, there is that, even downright meanness; but the review is very funny in that inimitable Jamesian way and he does grant Alcott some grace in his last paragraph. He absolutely slammed the aforementioned subplot that she ended up removing eighteen years later, so she likely remembered his review—how could she not.
I don't want to end on James, so I will note that now that I've read [b:Margaret Fuller: A New American Life|13202058|Margaret Fuller A New American Life|Megan Marshall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398193540s/13202058.jpg|18385004], I see the debt (the editor of this book calls it a "tribute") of Alcott's dramatic penultimate scene to Fuller's tragic end.
Before Alcott's publisher would print this, her first serious novel for adults, written before her more famous works for children, he had her cut it in half. Alcott regretted this and years later when she received back her copyright, before republishing it herself, she rewrote it, reinserting some of the left-out chapters, cutting the beginning and changing the ending. The first published version is what I've read.
While the melodrama of some of the scenes, especially the beginning and the end, may be off-putting and the characters mere mouthpieces for Alcott's themes, I found it well-written. And those themes are what I found the most intriguing, especially the idea of unmatched pairs and the long train of evils arising from marriages made from impulse, and not principle. There is also a theoretical discussion among the characters about divorce, a daring topic for the time.
As with Bronte's Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, Alcott's 17-year-old Sylvia Yule (her pastoral name fits another theme) desires a friend much more than she desires love, but what she ends up in is a love triangle and she's in way over her head. If only Sylvia could've had the past thirty Faith (also aptly named), who is single by choice, as a friend sooner. Alcott seemed to be working on the idea that marriage is not the be-all and end-all of life (another daring idea for the time), not to mention the be-all and end-all of a novel.
In the preface to the republished version, Alcott states the original publisher's version made it seem as if marriage was the theme of this novel and that's not what she intended. Instead, the original purpose of the story was ... an attempt to show the mistakes of a moody nature, guided by impulse, not principle. She was right that this did not come across in its first published form.
**
I'd hoped to read Alcott’s second version of this novel straight through, in the form she’d rewritten it, eighteen years after she first wrote it. But there doesn’t seem to be a copy like that in existence any longer, only in this form of her revisions and additions noted and attached in footnotes and appendices to the originally published text. So instead of rereading the whole book, I read only the new-to-me passages. I've switched my original review (see above) to the edition containing these.
Reading the new sections was enough to see that the changes Alcott made—especially the complete excision of a subplot that had started off and complicated her story too much—were for the better. Of course she had eighteen years of wisdom and writing experience behind her, needed for the complicated subject she was tackling. I had rated the original 3 stars and have now upped it by one.
This edition also contains a review written by [a:Henry James|159|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1468309415p2/159.jpg] of the original Moods. Because a review by James of a different Alcott work is mentioned in notes to the introduction, I was prepared to be outraged at his snarky condescension and, yes, there is that, even downright meanness; but the review is very funny in that inimitable Jamesian way and he does grant Alcott some grace in his last paragraph. He absolutely slammed the aforementioned subplot that she ended up removing eighteen years later, so she likely remembered his review—how could she not.
I don't want to end on James, so I will note that now that I've read [b:Margaret Fuller: A New American Life|13202058|Margaret Fuller A New American Life|Megan Marshall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1398193540s/13202058.jpg|18385004], I see the debt (the editor of this book calls it a "tribute") of Alcott's dramatic penultimate scene to Fuller's tragic end.