”Faithfulness Itself“

Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, in an essay that critiques Alcott’s own attitudes about social class, examines Hannah Mullet, one of Little Women’s most-overlooked characters. Alcott’s narrator, she argues, “renders Hannah Mullet utterly unmemorable, to the extent that most readers, and likely a majority of Alcott scholars, would be hard pressed to recall her full name.” Exploring a character who has been almost untouched in Alcott scholarship, Petrulionis places the March family housekeeper and cook “in the historical context of mid-nineteenth-century domestic servitude” while also looking closely at the significance of the major scenes of Hannah’s appearance in the novel. In her investigation, Petrulionis argues that Hannah “must be viewed as an essential complement to Marmee. Without her bifurcated role as both family intimate and maid-of-all-work, Little Women ’s beloved mother-of-all-wisdom could not exist.”