Louisa May Alcott’s Pets

Pet keeping first became a popular way of life among Americans in the nineteenth century. Across the span of the century, texts for children actively participated in the shaping of pet keeping culture by instructing the next generation on how humans might best engage with domesticated nonhuman animals. This essay sheds light on Louisa May Alcott’s participation in this history by examining a number of her pet stories for children, all of which raise serious questions about the ethics involved in pet keeping. Specifically, Alcott’s “Cocky Twitters” (1874), “Buzz” (1868), “Huckleberry” (1873), and Under the Lilacs (1878) provide space for readers to reflect on how pet keeping affects the animals themselves, and to consider the obligations of humans who seek to make a pet out of an animal. In varying degrees, these texts both reveal and express apprehension toward the anthropocentric nature of pet keeping; in these stories, the practice often benefits humans at the expense of their pets.