![]() ![]() I don’t like it much when Dickens does it, and I wasn’t any more keen on Alcott’s version, especially since sometimes she doesn’t quite manage to get the affectionate warmth into it that Dickens usually does. So, not content with giving herself the annoyingly twee pseudonym of Tribulation Periwinkle, she caricatures the people she meets and finds ways to mock them – their looks, their manners, the way they speak. Quite clearly, at that stage in her writing development Alcott had been reading a lot of Dickens, because not only does she refer to him on several occasions, but she adopts that kind of arch humour and tone of social superiority he employs from time to time, especially in his own factual writing. ![]() While mildly interesting in showing the difficulties of getting around during war-time, it does become somewhat tedious, mainly because of the tone she employs. The first quarter of the book is taken up with her journey to the hospital in Washington. She only spent six weeks in the military hospital before falling ill with typhus and being persuaded by her father to come home, but during that time she saw first-hand some of the horrific injuries inflicted on the soldiers and the pretty basic and sub-standard care they got afterwards – in her hospital, at least, though she makes it clear there were other much more highly regarded hospitals at the time, too. ![]() This is a short account of Louisa May Alcott’s brief career as a nurse during the American Civil War. ![]()
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