Museum Studies Blog at Tufts University

I spent the past week with family. On the last day of my youngest sister and my mom’s visit to Boston, we journeyed out to Concord to spend the afternoon at Orchard House — the home where Louisa May Alcott scribbled furiously away at a book about her and her three sisters, beloved around the world to this day as Little Women.

Like many girls across the globe, my two younger sisters and I grew up enchanted by this story, just like our mom before us. We were children who, like the March (and Alcott) sisters, loved to put on meticulously written and rehearsed plays, and swore that we would never love anyone else the way we did each other. So it was unsurprising just how much we related to these four girls when our mom introduced us to the 1994 film adaptation of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy’s lives; and just two years ago we sat tearfully in the movie theater watching Greta Gerwig’s acclaimed version, which resonated just as deeply for different, more grown-up reasons now that we are different and more grown-up. My littlest sister, who adores Alcott’s book and is a talented artist just like young Amy, knew that when she visited her two older siblings in Massachusetts, Orchard House was the highest-priority destination.

Concord is a beautiful place, and with the deep reds, browns, and oranges adorning every tree at this time of year, it seems especially magic — not to mention conducive to great art and philosophy. “There was something in the air here,” my middle sister mused upon realizing just how close the home of the Alcotts was to that of their dear friends Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Alcotts’ parlor was frequented by these and other Transcendentalist thinkers, where conversations about such subjects as abolition, education, suffrage, and the restorative powers of nature flourished — conversations in which, unlike in most contemporary households, the Alcott girls and women were allowed and encouraged to participate.

No wonder, then, that Louisa May felt perfectly comfortable making such unconventional decisions as leaving home to serve as a Civil War nurse, refusing to ever marry, and making her living as a writer.

Like other historic house museums, the introductory video and guided tour at Orchard House give plenty of focus to the daily lives of the Alcott family — Bronson and Abigail, and their four daughters Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth, and May — that inspired the events of Little Women. But the ideals and actions of the Alcotts, which make them so extraordinary both in their day and ours, are what truly take center stage at this museum.

This was a family who not only talked about abolition but provided asylum to fugitive enslaved people, refused to wear cotton produced by the enslaved, and provided shelter to radical abolitionist John Brown’s widow and daughters after his execution. They were vegetarians in an era when the humane treatment of animals was hardly a thought for most people; they advocated for education reform which would lead to the end of physical punishment and more time for children to spend outdoors; they fought for women’s rights and ensured that the women in their family receive the best opportunities to follow their dreams. In an especially touching display of parental love and belief in his children’s gifts, Bronson Alcott built a writing desk for Louisa and an art studio for May, both of which visitors see on the tour. 

Our time at Orchard House concluded with a call to action, imploring us to embody one of the Alcott family’s main tenets: to believe in our fellow human beings and support their dreams and aspirations. Who knows how many of today’s children might grow up to be Louisa May Alcotts, if only their gifts and beautiful minds are fostered and believed in, the way hers were?

After snapping plenty of sister and mother-daughter photos outside the house, we took our time on the walk back to the train station — paying special attention, now, to the autumn leaves, the fallen black walnuts, a rainbow in the sky. We talked about family, about beauty, about love and kindness, about standing by one’s convictions no matter how fierce the opposition, about daring to look at the world in a different way. We talked about the power of believing in each other and those around us.

Orchard House provides a prime example of all that historic house museums can accomplish in our current moment. Rather than highlight the furniture, clothing, food, and daily life of a particular era, or limit its interpretation to poignant but ultimately shallow anecdotes about a single historical family, this museum seeks to stir something deeper in the hearts of those who walk through its doors. It encourages visitors to do right, to think anew, and to undertake what is sometimes the bravest, most unconventional challenge: practicing kindness. On the pages of Little Women, and in every room at Orchard House, this important legacy permeates.

For more information on Orchard House and how to plan your visit, check out their website here.

Emily Dickinson is a figure shrouded in mystery. We have her beautifully exultant poetry to give us clues about who she was — poetry that, curiously, she did not want published during her lifetime. She wrote many letters, but most of them were burned upon her death. She was a writer, but really didn’t leave behind much documentation. She is hard to get to know — making her a special challenge for a museum.

Over the summer, as an assignment for the Revitalizing Historic Houses course, I interviewed Brooke Steinhauser, who is the Program Director at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. Out of a list of potential interviewees — all professionals in the field, all well-acquainted with experiencing the joys and solving the problems involved in historic house museum work — I chose her, having always had an interest in Emily Dickinson.

It was a great decision. Brooke was wonderful, so open and happy to answer all my questions. I really wanted to get at the heart of this issue: how do you teach a figure who was, famously, so private? How do you make her legacy come into focus, and present who she was in a clear, digestible way to visitors?

Brooke’s answers fascinated, surprised, and inspired me. She talked to me about how much Emily Dickinson means to so many people — and not all for the same reasons. Because there is so much we don’t know about her, there are many possible avenues of explanation, potential answers to the question “who was she, really?” This allows each and every visitor who walks into the Emily Dickinson home to come in with a slightly different Emily in their mind and heart.

Different people identify with Dickinson in varying ways. Her decision to become reclusive resonates with many, as it likely can be explained by mental illness. Or perhaps it was a physical illness or disability that led her to become such a private person. Or, as has been posited in more recent times to explain why she chose not to marry, maybe Dickinson was a gay woman. She is a symbol and an icon for numerous different groups of people because of all these possibilities.

There are many Dickinsons. According to Brooke Steinhauser, each is valid. She explained to me that because there are so few concrete answers about who Dickinson was, conversations at the museum can “dwell in Possibility” — which, of course, Dickinson herself espoused in one of her poems. Visitors can approach her with their own perspectives and ideas, and the museum can guide them in understanding why those answers to the questions about this woman make sense, while also presenting other possible answers. It is the job of the museum, Brooke said, to “complicate while celebrating” Dickinson’s legacy, and to hold visitors’ hands to that end, meeting them where they are in their own personal journeys with the poet.

Respecting what the subject of a museum means to each individual visitor is important. In the case of someone like Dickinson — about whom we have so few answers, only her art and the walls in which she lived — questions, uncertainties, and possibilities are okay. Not knowing all the answers is okay. This actually provides a unique and special opportunity to value the visitors’ own ideas and thoughts.

As a training historian, of course, I hold the truth very dear. It does matter, and museums are places where truth should be valued more than almost anywhere else; we have a responsibility to accurately inform the people who visit our sites, ready and expecting to learn. We owe that to them. But we also owe them our respect, our gentleness, our open minds, and the humble assertion that just because we work inside the museum, it doesn’t mean we have all the answers. We never can — not really.

We will probably never have all the answers about Dickinson. The museum’s mission statement promises to “spark the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice,” and by allowing its visitors to “dwell in Possibility,” it certainly fulfills that goal.

Dickinson means a lot to people. If her museum can spark their imaginations with possibilities about who all she may have been — just like her beautiful poetry has for over a century — I think that’s a definite win for the museum world, and something to be admired and aspired to by other institutions.

The Emily Dickinson Museum is closed for a major restoration project until spring of 2022, but their website has incredible resources and ways to explore. Check it out here.