Louisa May Alcott was a 19th-century American writer best known for her novel Little Women, which is set in her childhood home of New England and loosely based on her experience growing up with three sisters. Alcott’s works are influenced by her unconventional upbringing. Both of Alcott’s parents were transcendentalists, meaning that they adhered to the idealistic belief in people’s innate goodness and worth. They were part of a group of writers and thinkers, including famous American intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who advocated for women’s rights and suffrage, workers’ rights, educational and lifestyle innovation, and other humanitarian causes. Alcott shared many of her parents’ humanist values, leading her to serve as a nurse at the start of the Civil War, support abolition, join the women’s suffrage movement in the 1870s, and write for publications promoting women’s rights.

Eight Cousins, published in 1875, reflects the transcendentalist outlook instilled in Alcott from a young age, particularly in the characterization of Uncle Alec. He is a transgressive thinker who challenges many parenting and educational norms of the time. He does not send Rose to finishing school and instead develops her intellect in traditionally masculine subjects, like geography, and promotes self-reliance and financial independence through lessons in accounting.