Summary: 'I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom,' cries Rosamond Vivian to her callous grandfather. A brooding stranger seduces her from the remote island onto his yacht. Trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit, she flees to Italy, France, Germany, from Paris garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau - stalked by obsessed Phillip Tempest.
Two years before Little Women, serialized in a magazine under the alias A.M. Barnard in 1866, this was buried among the author's papers over a century.
MY THOUGHTS:
Whew, Louisa May Alcott does Wilkie Collins here. This is the Gothic thriller she wrote a couple of years before Little Women. My edition's title is abbreviated to, 'The Chase' but I prefer to use its full dramatic, somewhat spoilerish name. It was rescued from the woodwork and published posthumously as recently as 1995!
Rosamond Vivian is stuck in a home near the sea with her gruff grandfather, and longs to stretch her wings. In the very first paragraph she declares that she'd gladly sell her soul to Satan for a year of freedom. Enter Phillip Tempest, a 'pupil' of her grandfather's. He sports a scarred forehead and looks exactly like a picture of Mephistopheles, the folklore demon. A tree that was planted the day of Rosamond's birth is struck down by lightning the night she meets him, but she overlooks this chilling omen and falls prey to his charm.
They get married and she cruises around the Mediterranean in his yacht, the Circe, having the time of her life. Then Rosamond discovers what a bad egg he is; a liar with a seamy past who's completely devoid of conscience. Rosamond decides to flee, but Phillip is always on her trail. Even though the world is a huge place in which to vanish, especially given rudimentary 19th century technology, Tempest and his creepy henchman, Baptiste, keep tracking her down.
The scenes of the novel, scattered across Europe, include a convent and a lunatic asylum. When Rosamond gets to know the heroic and sexy young Father Ignatius, who made his vows a bit too prematurely, she realizes that her love for Tempest was based on naivety and restlessness. Yet her girlhood mistake is there to haunt her. She can't throw off the stalker from hell, who presumably never heard the saying, 'If you love somebody, set them free.'
If you think it sounds melodramatic and theatrical, you'd be right.
In terms of the Little Women universe, this reminds me of a plot Jo might have written for Meg to act the leading role in. And to judge from Jo's experiences writing sensationalized potboilers in the big city, Alcott herself became a bit shamefaced about her earlier writing. Although Louisa initially enjoyed writing it and resisted her publisher's request to come up with a wholesome 'book for girls', it appears from the earnestness of her subsequent work that she later changed her mind. I suspect this is the style of work Professor Bhaer surmised that Jo was ashamed to own up to. It is of material such as this that he states, 'I'd rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad trash.' (Haha)
'She was living in bad society, imaginary though it was... she was feeding heart and fancy on dangerous and unsubstantial food.'
That's Alcott's nineteenth century way of commenting that stories like this may well be the junk food of literature. There's nothing overly shocking or gratuitous about The Chase, but nothing inspiring or stirring either. I understand how Alcott might been embarrassed about the quality of her earlier work in retrospect. Now I wonder if it's fair or ethical that this should have been brought to light for publication so long after her death, for I'm willing to bet she wouldn't have wanted it to be.
The dastardly Phillip Tempest states, 'I like horrible books if they have power.' Fair enough, but I'm not convinced this fits that bill either.
'Overcome by conflicting emotions of gratitude and grief, surprise and shame, Rosamond covered her face and threw herself at the feet of the actress.'
In a world in which authors are encouraged to tread lightly, 'show not tell', and rarely name emotions, this is shockingly heavy-handed writing.
Yet it's very interesting for Alcott fans to trace her personal development. Although the distinct genres make it a bit like comparing apples to oranges, the Little Women universe is far more to my taste.
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