A Long Fatal Love Chase

Gather 'round, children, and hearken to my tale of a young girl who longs for adventure and love, gets what she wants, and ... immediately acts like a selfish little chit who didn't mean it, please!
Whatever, Rosaline. Your cautionary tale in sensationalist clothing (or is that the other way around?) did nothing at all for my moral health; I still lust after rogues, walk barefoot on precipices, and would gladly sell my soul for a year of freedom.

I was apprehensive about this book even though I love Louisa May Alcott because the title and the reviews painted the book as a Harlequin romance-like book. But the writing was strong and complicated love-hate relationship between a stalker and the stalked woman was very well-done and just as relevant today. I was surprised that a woman who never married had such insight into unhealthy male/female relationships.

I also can see why it was not published when she wrote it. As I read it, I thought about Jo being admonished by Professor Bhaer to write more wholesome stories. But though I loved Little Women, this book was refreshing for its lack of the "preachiness" that gets tiresome in Alcott's more well-known books.

If you're a fan of the sensation fiction of Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon, you need to read Louisa May Alcott's contributions to the genre under the name A.M. Barnard. She writes the most wild stories, and I cannot decide if it is because she's an American writer and she can get away with more, or if this is just her style. That being said, this novel wasn't actually published during her lifetime, so it was still too shocking for an 19th century American readership.

"A Long Fatal Love Chase" was written 2 years before "Little Woman" was published. This novel is occupied with some of the same themes that make an appearance in her shorter sensation stories: primarily, the struggle of power between man and woman. I read another show more review that interpreted this story as a romance, and the chase as an erotic foreplay. I would strongly disagree. The chase in this book is not part of the romantic appeal, it is the desperate flight of a woman away from an evil man who she was romantically connected to. She remembers times she was happy and longs to go back to that innocence, but she chooses the difficult path and runs. He stalks her throughout the entire continent and her flight is for personal autonomy as much as it is for morality. He calls for her to submit to his will and then "he'll be her slave." I believe that Alcott is pointing out the utter stupidity of this patriarchal rhetoric.

Rosamond was an interesting heroine who climbs out windows, walks along roofs, and flees across the continent. She was very capable, and I loved the unlikely female friendships she develops along the way. Tempest is a typical sociopathic sensation villain and I hated him. Alcott connects him to the Mephistopheles from his first appearance, and that satanic imagery continues throughout the rest of the story to be contrasted with the pure priest character introduced in the second half of the book. This allegory seems to be the focus of the story more than capturing a type of "realism."

This book is quite the page-turner. It does get repetitive due to the structure of the book, but it is such a quick read and it kept me on the edge of my seat. The suspense never lets up once it gets going. Now I have to track down the rest of Alcott's sensation fiction because, although it has a lot of the sensation tropes, it still manages to feel like it's doing something different. show less

It kept my interest, I cared about the characters (although I didn't feel I knew them very well). It was a fun read, certainly more entertaining than Little Women, which is too wholesome for my tastes. (At least the first half; I never got around to the rest of it.)

A sweet, innocent, but impetuous young girl (18) falls in love with an older, dangerous man. He really loves her and is willing to cause the death of others to keep her; so it's a selfish love. When she realizes that he has deceived her, she runs away and is befriended by good, kind people, but....well, I don't want to spoil everything, because it looks as if everything will work out pretty well until the last page or so, but the title is not misleading. SPOILER: Tempest, show more trying to kill the man he sees as his adversary for Rosamond's love, unwittingly kills her instead. Realizing this, he then kills himself: A fatal love chase for both. Oh, and there is a character named Willoughby, who is English and not at all like Jane Austen's character of the same name.

I don't know why the book was not published until 1995; it was written in 1866 and turned down by Alcott's publisher. Maybe the fact that Philip Tempest already has a wife when he marries Rosamond or the platonic love between Rosamond and a priest or the unfavorable depiction of the other Catholics in the convent where she takes refuge or the positive depiction of an actress. In fact, almost all the women in the story are good and the men range from despicable and scary to perfect. Or, the fact that the author says that Philip is charming and does everything he can to please Rosamond but gives no examples. Finally, this is a good example of a Lilith/Eve story, with Philip Tempest as Lilith and Father Ignatius as Eve. show less

I found this an interesting novel on several levels. I have never read any of Alcott's novels, such as Little Women, which have a reputation for being wholesome tales for YA's. The writing here follows Victorian convention for naivete and often overstated (wink, wink) hints as to unspoken character thoughts, but the subject matter is more adult oriented with an obsessed man stalking an innocent but flighty heroine. There are undertones of Alcott's emerging women's lib attitude, and the entire mix is made more interesting by the knowledge that Alcott wrote and re-wrote this several times attempting to have it published and acknowledged. The book holds the reader's attention and is an interesting contrast to her other works.

"I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom," cries impetuous Rosamond Vivian to her callous grandfather. Then, one stormy night, a brooding stranger appears in her remote island home, ready to take Rosamond to her word. Spellbound by the mysterious Philip Tempest, Rosamond is seduced with promises of love and freedom, then spirited away on Tempest's sumptuous yacht. But she soon finds herself trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit. Desperate to escape, she flees to Italy, France, and Germany, from Parisian garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau, as Tempest stalks every step of the fiery beauty who has become his obsession.

A story of dark love and passionate obsession that was considered "too show more sensational" to be published in the authors lifetime, A Long Fatal Love Chase was written for magazine serialization in 1866, two years before the publication of Little Women. Buried among Louisa May Alcott's papers for more than a century, its publication is a literary landmark—a novel that is bold, timeless, and mesmerizing." show less

Rosamond is a young woman of seventeen who is tired of her isolated, safe life with her unsentimental grandfather. When one of her grandfather's cardplaying students, Philip Tempest, enters her life, she is captivated by his charm and good looks. Tempest is a personable and determined man with dark secrets in his past, and an unfortunate resemblance to Mephistopheles. When he wins Rosamond from her grandfather in a card game, he sweeps her off in his yacht and marries her. They have a year of happiness (for Rosamond loves him too) until events conspire to reveal a secret that would drive Rosamond from him forever.

Rosamond is an interesting heroine and her penchant for escaping out of windows reminds me of Marian from Collin's The Woman show more in White. Philip Tempest is very much like Marcus Vinicius of Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis in his utterly relentless pursuit of the woman he loves, but unlike Vinicius Tempest never repents. Yet for all that I could not dislike him... is it terrible that I was rooting for him til the bitter end? The hints of mythology and literary villainy added great atmosphere to the story.

A Long Fatal Love Chase was considered too sensational to be published during Alcott's lifetime, even though she did go back and try to expunge the scandalous parts. I have to say I enjoyed it a great deal more than Little Women. Classic though it is, I never could get over the moralizing that seems to appear on every page of LW. A Long Fatal Love Chase was different. Though the plot was somewhat contrived, the characters were interesting and I really did want to find out how things would end. I should have just looked at the title for that... show less