CRITICAL REFLECTION ON LAMENTING THE LOSS THROUGH INTERDISCURSIVE WRITINGS OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT AND EMILY DICKINSON

Abstract

his critical study investigates American women writers, Emily Dickinson and Luisa May Alcott’s works in the wake of Lucy E Frank and Phillippe Aries’ literary scholarship of Cult of Mourning. Further, it aims at exploring the celebration of death as cultural practice in America. This celebration was categorized as “an orgy of the weeping and mourning” and grew common as a “Cult of Mourning”. It is significant to mention that the practical writings of Alcott and Dickinson expanded the horizons of religious and moral poetry. Present research while highlighting the artistic and discursive (while using multiple genres including poetry/elegies, biographies, and letter writing) writings of the selected women writers interrelate mourning as a cultural practice with that of literary expression. This research is significant because it discusses these women writers’ bold stance and their striking role in demonstrating death, pessimism, and deprivation as a pathway to define success. It concludes that these American women writers have played a momentous role in men centered world to keep the tradition of elegy alive and reveal eventual triumph and anticipation by discovering a way to survive the loss.