Eight Cousins Illustrated

Eight Cousins, or The Aunt-Hill was published in 1875 by American novelist Louisa May Alcott. It is the story of Rose Campbell, a lonely and sickly girl who has been recently orphaned and must now reside with her maiden great aunts, who are the matriarchs of her wealthy Boston family.Each chapter describes an adventure in Rose's life as she learns to assist herself et al. observe choices. Rose must define for herself her role because the only woman of her generation in her family and as an heiress in Boston's elite society.Motherless for many of her life, 13-year-old Rose looks to her many aunts, her friends, and therefore the housemaid Phebe as feminine role models. At an equivalent time, she is suddenly confronted with a male guardian and 7 male cousins, none of whom she knows well, after losing her beloved father, the sole man in her life.Like all of Alcott's books for children , the story takes a high moral tone. Various chapters illustrate the evils of cigar-smoking, "yellow-back" novels, haute couture , billiards, and patent nostrums, while promoting exercise, a healthy diet, and wholesome experiences of the many kinds for women also as boys. Alcott uses the novel to market education theories and feminist ideas, many of which appear in her other books. for instance , in choosing Rose's wardrobe, Uncle Alec rejects current women's fashions (such as corsets, high heels, veils, and bustles) in favor of less restrictive, healthier clothing. Although he discourages her from the professional study of drugs , he educates her in physiology, a topic her aunts consider inappropriate for women , so she will understand and take hold of her own health. Rose is ready for a career as a wife and mother, yet is taught that she must take active, thoughtful control of her fortune so she will use it and social position to the simplest advantage of the larger community. Written in an age when few women had control of their own money, property, or destinies, Alcott's portrayal of Rose's upbringing may be a bargain more revolutionary than 21st-century readers may realize.The sequel to Eight Cousins is Rose in Bloom (1876), which continues Rose's story into young adulthood, depicting courtship and marriage, poverty and charity, transcendental poetry and prose, and illness and death among her family and friends.