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My name is Heidi and I am employed and paid hourly by the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU to edit Wikipedia. My supervisor is Rachel Helps (BYU) and I will be drawing upon the library's Louisa May Alcott collection as I expand this article. I've decided to work on this one because in its current state it has very little in the way of plot or background. I'm going to expand the plot and add sections that include publication history, background, and themes. Feel free to join me or ask questions—I'd love to collaborate together! P.S. My COI declarations are on my userpage. Heidi Pusey BYU (talk) 18:43, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ Rachel Helps (BYU) I'm still researching for the themes and working on the reception section, but I thought I'd add the background/publication and plot sections in the meantime. When you have time, could you look over what I have so far? Or you can wait until I add the other sections. Heidi Pusey BYU (talk) 22:22, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Heidi Pusey BYU, yes, I would be glad to. Here are my notes:
Background section
a very interesting section! I learned a lot!
whoa, she wrote so hard she paralyzed her thumb? Is impression paper a kind of carbon paper? I would like a wikilink to Carbon paper if it is.
I remember that Alcott knew Thoreau in real life, so it makes sense that she would base a character on him. Did she also know Harriet Tubman in real life?
Does Work support or contradict the ideas in "The Public Function of Women" (does industrialization decrease Christie's domestic labor)? Depending on what you find, it might make sense to include a deeper discussion in the themes section.
what is the [sic] referring to in "To My Mother, Whose Life [sic] has been a long labor of love."?
go ahead an write a topic sentence for the first paragraph explaining how the work on the novel was broken up into several intense writing sessions over ten years.
were the Eytinge illustrations done for the book version, or were they part of the serial version?
"In 1875 Sampson Low published Beginning Again. Being a Continuation of Work, which consists of the last eleven chapters of the Roberts Brothers edition." - I need a little more information here (which maybe you don't have). Is there any indication why the last eleven chapters were published alone? Was the beginning of the novel weak?
Plot section
"When he proposes, she refuses because he is patronizing." It seems like it would be more NPOV to say that she perceived his proposal as patronizing. Maybe there's a different way to say it, like, he didn't see her as an equal? You know the story, so you can figure out if that would make sense.
Shades of eugenics in the Helen story... I'm curious if that will come up in the themes section later.
When Christie contemplates suicide, is she on the brink of homelessness? That seems like a significant causal factor.
End of the third paragraph: does Christie return to the Sterling household? cliffhanger!
"A year after the American Civil War begins" - does this indicate that some time has passed in the novel? Or is the American Civil War ongoing during the whole novel?
Thank you! I just did the "[sic]" to indicate that's how Alcott did the capitalization (in case someone coming in to copy edit thinks it's a typing error). Do you think it's unnecessary? If so, I can take it out. I'm not sure why Sampson Low published the book in two volumes; I haven't come across much besides the bare fact, but perhaps I could find something else with a bit more digging. Several reviewers did consider the first part of the novel weak because it is so episodic (which will come up in the reception section), but it hasn't been related to the existence of two different volumes in the British edition.
Hmmm. Your question about the use of [sic] led me to the Manual of Style (MOS). MOS:SIC says that "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected". So I think you could take out that [sic] and modernize the capitalization, based on MOS:CONFORM, which says "Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text[m] should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment, provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text."
I know that it was a common practice in the 19th century to publish long novels in multiple volumes (to make binding easier). For example, North and South (Gaskell novel) was published in two volumes. Gaskell added two chapters to her novel when it was published as a book. Was there any mention of Alcott changing the text between the serialized version and the book publication? Maybe that would explain the renaming of the publication of the second volume (like if it had extra material). Something to look for as you write the other sections of the page. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:45, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. I'll go ahead and modernize it, then. There wasn't any mention of Alcott changing the text in the things I read, but I could specially look into it. Heidi Pusey BYU (talk) 17:56, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rachel Helps (BYU), I can't find anything directly explaining why Sampson Low published the book in two volumes, but I found a general explanation as to why publishers broke books into multiple volumes, here and here. Would it be considered original research if I wrote something like, "In 1875 Sampson Low published Beginning Again, a Continuation of Work, which consists of the last eleven chapters of the Roberts Brothers edition. It was common practice for British publishers to break a novel into two or more volumes for publication"? I would use these websites to support it. Heidi Pusey BYU (talk) 19:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ Rachel Helps (BYU) and BenBeckstromBYU. I've added some more information to the page. There's still a little more I need to add to the themes and I need to rework the lede, but I'd like some feedback on what I have so far. Following are some questions I have:
Is there too much information?
Do there appear to be any instances of original research?
Are there instances when ideas don't quite connect or a piece of information feels out of place?
How is the voice—is it encyclopedic and neutral? If not, where do I need to fix it?
The only concern I have reading through this is the whole "weight" thing, but I think that if there is that much scholarship and detail about the book you should be good. I think you also do a very good job at keeping up citations. It flows and reads about as well as most other encyclopedia entries. BenBeckstromBYU (talk) 20:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For the themes section, I can see that you have been improving its organization. There are a few times where you say "Alcott argues". Since she's writing fiction, it's a little more removed than her simply arguing something (although if you are summarizing her ideas from letters or other non-fiction, please clarify that). It would make more sense to me to focus on what the narrative does, and what inferences other scholars make. For example, instead of "Alcott argues that a woman learns more if she has various jobs," you could write that Work makes a case for women gaining knowledge through multiple jobs. How does Work make that case? Do any of the scholars mention that?
On that note, I think you can include more details from the novel in your discussion of the themes. The Great Gatsby has a themes section that summarizes supporting details from the plot for the various themes. The works you're citing should do the same, so it should be a matter of going back to them and summarizing the part that led to their conclusions. One place you already do this well is about class separation: "Hendel claims that this encourages "class separation" within the workforce. Christie herself avoids taking factory jobs because she feels it would be below her social class of gentlewoman, and Carolyn Maibor argues that "ethnic prejudice" comes out when Christie refuses to work with Irish women." The "struggle for independence and identity", "social reform", and "mental health" sub-sections also have good summary of textual support for their arguments. One example of where I would like to know more is "Hendel writes that “Alcott’s published work alternately embraces and disputes the claim that a woman’s highest vocation is to serve her family." Hendel explains that this is demonstrated when Christie’s story begins and finishes in the domestic sphere." How does beginning and ending the story in the domestic sphere lead to the idea that Alcott is ambivalent about a woman's obligation to her family? To see if you are communicating clearly, I recommend summarizing the argument of each paragraph in the first two sub-sections, as if you were explaining it to another person (as an editorial exercise).
In the mental health section, did any of the critics mention eugenics along with Bella's decision not to marry? In the plot summary, her decision seems to be directly connected to the discovery that her sister Helen suffered from mental illness and its genetic causes. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I can see your point about "Alcott argues". I'll go in and fix that, as well as provide more contextual information from the narrative itself. As far as eugenics goes: critics discuss how the mental illness was hereditary through the paternal line and how the Carrol children don't want to perpetuate it, but critics do not discuss eugenics in detail. They mostly talk about how Mrs. Carrol married for money and disregarded her husband's gene. Heidi Pusey BYU (talk) 21:15, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Hendel writes that 'Alcott’s published work alternately embraces and disputes the claim that a woman’s highest vocation is to serve her family.' Hendel explains that this is demonstrated when Christie’s story begins and finishes in the domestic sphere." Hmmm. Upon a closer look in the source itself, it looks like this statement is about Alcott's work in general. As such, the author doesn't really give any specifics. I'm going to remove this part because I'm thinking I extrapolated here. Not an ideal mistake (when are they ever?), but at least I can fix it. Heidi Pusey BYU (talk) 21:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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