Louisa May Alcott‘s Emersonian Use of The Pilgrim‘s Progress

Roberta Seelinger Trites connects the use of The Pilgrim’s Progress in Little Women with the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She argues that Alcott “uses The Pilgrim’s Progress to articulate a number of very Emersonian principles. In that sense, The Pilgrim’s Progress serves as an intertextual palimpsest painted over various Transcendental texts in Little Women . Alcott appears to have used The Pilgrim’s Progress to hide her Transcendental agenda.” Alcott, Trites argues, “relied on a text popular with the reading public, an alternative text to Emerson’s essays that superficially demonstrated many of the same values but that was more accessible to juvenile readers: John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress .” By doing so, “Alcott creates a philosophical space in which her female characters can articulate ideas about language, nature, and self—and without fear of censure.”