Louisa May Alcott’s adult novel Moods, as her preface to the 1882 edition indicates, represents both her youth and her maturity. But the preface is a bit misleading: Alcott implies that thirty years passed between the inception of Moods and the revised edition, when in fact, Moods was a product of the early 1860s. Eighteen years separate the novel’s first publication in 1864 from its reappearance in 1882. Perhaps Alcott exaggerated her immaturity on first writing Moods because of the adverse criticism it then received. In any event, the work is that of one who has already served her literary apprenticeship. Her editor at Roberts Brothers, Thomas Niles, admired the novel and repeatedly urged Alcott to write another in the same vein.When she seemed unable to produce one, he persuaded her to obtain the copyright from Loring, its original publisher, so that Roberts could publish a new edition. Both the early edition, from which she was forced to omit a number of chapters, and the revised edition, in which she apparently restored them, present the tragic disparity between a woman’s expectations and opportunities and a man’s. The problem that the heroine, Sylvia Yule, inherits from her parents is not so much a moody nature as a rigidly gendered world that allows no scope for her prodigious energy and talent. Counseled by the man she loves to forget herself and live for others, Sylvia resolves to live for the man who loves her, denying her own needs for both passion and achievement.Thus Alcott, in her first published novel, explores the issues raised by Margaret Fuller in her feminist tract Woman in the Nineteenth Century, including many of the dilemmas and double binds that continue to confront women today.
In 1991, Sarah Elbert edited the 1864 edition of Moods for Rutgers University Press and appended the chapters omitted from that edition. What follows is the first modern reprint of the 1882 edition, providing, arguably, a reading experience close to the one Alcott originally intended. The 1864 Moods, however, contained a subplot in which Adam Warwick was romantically entangled with an unprincipled Cuban beauty, a complication dropped from the 1882 version.A second major difference, which Alcott alludes to in her preface, is the substitution of a happy ending for the original tragic one. A third, and perhaps the most important, difference between the two texts is the restoration of several original chapters, including “Moor,” which illuminates his character; “Warwick,” which depicts the initial meeting between him and Sylvia; and “Sermons,” in which Warwick’s advice leads Sylvia fatally astray. In addition, crucial scenes were restored to other chapters, including Sylvia’s dramatic performances in “Afloat.” The restored chapters and passages, most of which appear in the first half of the book, contain images and allusions that prepare the reader for what is to come. But they also point toward the original tragic conclusion.Thus, perhaps the ideal version of Moods would be one in which the omitted passages are restored and the original ending retained. One cannot help being impressed, however, by the myriad minute changes Alcott made in the second half of the 1882 edition to prepare for the reconciliation of Sylvia and her husband.And many of the earlier foreboding images still serve to foreshadow the death of Warwick as well as the harrowing of Sylvia’s soul.