How Did Henry David Thoreau And Emerson Influenced My Life

In November of 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, I entered the world as the child of Abigail May and Bronson Alcott, about a year after my sister Anna had been born. In addition to Anna, I had two younger sisters, Elizabeth and May. At the time, my father “was one of the most respected and sought-after men in Boston” (Cheever 6). He had opened a progressive elementary school named the Temple School in which the basis of learning was through exploration of stories and poems by analyzing the meaning of the words; typical education of the time included primarily reading, writing, and arithmetic (“Education”). He and my mother were both committed to educational reform by way of progressive education, a similarity in their morals which brought

However, a large impact on my personality came from the people with whom my family acquainted in Concord. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were good friends of mine and my father’s. Their transcendentalist perspectives influenced me tremendously; transcendentalism is the philosophy that all nature and humanity is imbued by divinity. Thoreau and Emerson placed great importance on the notions of feminism and communal living. Communal living was a belief that my father held very close to heart, and feminism was one which I was intrigued and enthralled by throughout my life. Also, Emerson and his family were significant financial supporters of my family; they helped us in times of economic need. At one point, Thoreau and my family both lived in the Emerson household (35). Being in the closely connected town of Concord, Emerson created “the most extraordinary literary community ever gathered in a small town” (36). Through discussions on long walks with Emerson and Thoreau, I came to appreciate nature and it was by their brilliancy of writing that I was able to see “the simplicity of great writing and the possibility of an ordinary character becoming a hero or heroine” (87). Hence, the beliefs of transcendentalism, the abolitionist cause and the Civil War, and the discrimination of women in the 1800s all shaped my experiences, and in turn, my writings shaped the way in which American history played