Piccole donne in cucina

In the domestic life of the March family, portrayed in Louisa May Alcott’s masterpiece, Little Women, and in its sequel Little Women Growing Up, there is no lack of exhilarating pages about Jo and Meg’s experiments with the stove, both willing and problematic, as well as about the invitations to lunch, in grand style but unfortunate, of little “lady” Amy, while only the shy Beth seems to find satisfaction in homemaking, so much so as to deserve from her sisters the nickname of “angel of the hearth”. Life in the March household, however, offers a somewhat idealized image of what life was like for Alcott and her family, troubled by poverty and often jeopardized by the exaggerated idealism of her father, Amos Bronson, a radical vegetarian, maniacal about a lifestyle inspired by the canons of “purity” of body and soul and all caught up in the need to propagate his philosophical beliefs around the world, at the cost of neglecting the welfare of his wife and daughters. Tracing the salient points of the double novel and the life of its author, the theme of food emerges in Piccole donne in cucina in its everyday life and is investigated by Elisabetta Chicco Vitzizzai in its historical specificity, with the recovery of many recipes in use in American cuisine of the nineteenth century and in particular in the traditional cuisine of New England, where the Alcott family lived and where the events of the four March sisters are set.