This article was written by Suzanne Morse
The New England landscape and communities that Louisa May Alcott both cherished and used as inspiration for her writing have changed drastically in the intervening years. Today, two museums remain dedicated to exploring and explaining the lives of the Alcott family: The Fruitlands and Orchard House. Both museums bring to the forefront of their mission Louisa May's sensibility towards nature and society as they strive to remain relevant to American society.
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On June 1, 1843, Bronson Alcott moved his young and growing family into the Fruitlands farmhouse in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts. The Fruitlands experience was an experiment by Bronson Alcott to put his philosophical beliefs regarding community, family, and the individual into action. This was a test of the practical implications of Transcendentalism. Alcott's main partner was a man named Charles Lane, an admirer of Alcott's who left England to form the commune. In total, there were about 20 people living in this utopian community, which was dedicated to shared labor, the prohibition of animal products (and labor), and abolitionism. At its height, the consociate family (the term its members applied to themselves) received visits from such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a close friend of the Alcotts and George Ripley, one of the participants of the Brook Farm community.
The community did not last long. The constant travel by Alcott and Lane, who were off expounding their views to others around the region, strained the working conditions on the farm. Furthermore, Lane was pressuring Alcott to dissolve ties with Alcott's family, which Lane felt was an impediment to achieving true transcendentalism. By January 1844, the Fruitlands utopia had failed, the Alcotts had left the farmhouse (on the urging of Mrs. Alcott, after her husband went into a deep depression) and Charles Lane had joined Harvard's nearby Shaker community. Years later, Louisa May Alcott, who was ten years old during her tenure at Fruitlands, would present the world with a fictionalized version of this tale, in the form of the story Transcendental Wild Oats.
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