Madeleine B. Stern (New York: Praeger, 1987).

 

            The contest between the two constitutes the entire plot of the tale. The question is not who will yield to whom, the answer to which is implicit in the title, but how long the struggle will take and what steps the taming process will encompass. Each round in the battle of wills becomes more intense: The first bout concerns the trifling question of the return to St. Petersburg; the second, the prince’s cruelty to his hound. As she succeeds in these minor conflicts, Sybil gains a renewed sense of her power. “Once conquer his will, . . . and I had gained a power possessed by no other person. I liked the trial.”

            The third and penultimate round ends in a draw, a kind of mutual taming, highly sexual in nature. Sybil refuses to accompany the prince to his estate in Volnoi, and as a result Alexis abducts her, accompanying the physical act with a very purple passage: “Submit, and no harm will befall you. Accept the society of one who adores you, and permit yourself to be conquered by one who never yields — except to you.” At Volnoi the struggle ends, but not before the serfs have set fire to the estate and wounded the prince. Sybil’s wish to see her “haughty lover thoroughly subdued before I put my happiness into his keeping” is realized at last. The masterful Russian humbles himself, obeys her commands, and wins her as wife. Moreover, at her demand he frees his serfs. Victory is hers, and with the final dialogue the curtain falls:

 

            “I might boast that I also had tamed a fiery spirit, but I am humble, and eontent myself with the knowledge that the proudest woman ever born has promised to love, honor, and —”

            “Not obey you.”

            And so, guided by the New England spinster Louisa May Alcott, the woman Svbil Varna tamed a tyrannical Iartar. In the power struggle betw een the sexes, surely the ultimate has been achieved.

 

            In this quintet of tales, Louisa Alcott achieved much else as well. From her arsenal of skills she drew forth literary techniques that made an artistic craft of the sensational narrative. One thinks of the wonderful opening sentences of “A Pair of Eyes,” combining the writer’s focus upon art and the theater with the suspenseful allusion to the sought-for pair of eves. The mesmerism theme is introduced subtly but immediately, and the threads of art, the stage, and mesmerism are woven seamlessly together.

            In the structure of her most complicated story, “The Fate of the Forrests,” Alcott demonstrated her skillful response to the demands of the serial. I lere, the omens of helix Stahl pose the mystery; the omens are fulfilled and the poison plot introduced; the denouement provides the explanation in the exotic I lindu theme.

            In “A Double Tragedy,” the plot moves inexorably to its tragic end, each episode mounting in tension: the performance of the Spanish play; the appearance of Clotildes husband, St. John; the incident of the bouquet; the costume party; the crime of murder; Paul’s reaction to it; Clotilde’s suicide on stage in the role of Juliet.

            Similarly, “Taming a Tartar” is paced to meet the requirements of the serial, its episodes steadily increasing in interest till the culmination and the victory of the heroine.

            Max Erdmann, artist of the sleepw alking Lady Macbeth; Felix Stahl, “beardless, thin lipped, sharply featured,” with a face “colorless as ivory” and “eves of the intensest black”; the Tartar prince Alexis — all are colorful figures. Especially vivid are Alcott’s heroines: Ursula Forrest, who “looks like one born to live a romance” and w hose “unconscious queenliness” betrays “traces of some hidden care, some haunting memory7, or . . . that vague yet melancholy prescience w hich often marks those fore-doomed to tragic lives”; Agatha Eure, “strong-willed, imperious . . . used to command all about her”; Sybil Varna of the lustrous gray eyes and firm mouth, proud nose and chestnut hair, tamer of a Tartar. These women, joining the gallery of Alcott heroines, are all memorable creations.

            Skilled too is the use made by Louisa Alcott of scenes and episodes of her life that she saw fit to entwine in these tales. A Russian baron, encountered at the Pension Victoria in Vevey, Switzerland, where she was companion to an invalid in 1865, is recognizable in the Tartar tamed bv Sybil Varna.4i A visit to Gloucester and Norman’s Woe in 1864 had literary consequences the following year when “Ariel. A Legend of the Lighthouse” was produced. This tale of a creature of the sea is set in a lighthouse on an island.