Bronson Alcott’s Search for Eden: Fruitlands

In September of 1837, as criticism of his Temple School grew, Transcendentalist philosopher and educator Amos Bronson Alcott received a lifeline: a lengthy correspondence from an English admirer. Having learned of Bronson’s grand experiment through the reading of Record of a School (written by Bronson’s assistant, Elizabeth Peabody), James Pierrepont Greaves had created his own Temple School, naming it Alcott House. Following the closure of his Temple School in 1841, Bronson traveled to London in 1842 to visit Alcott House, returning six months later with a partnership and a vision. While in England, Alcott met Charles Lane, an English Transcendentalist, disciple of James Pierrepont Greaves, and admirer of Bronson Alcott. Together, the two men founded their utopian community in America, beginning in Concord in October 1842. Nine months later, the group moved to the Wyman Farm in Harvard, purchased by Lane. Alcott, his wife and four girls along with Lane and his son, joined a handful of followers at Fruitlands on June 1, 1843.

Alcott and Lane’s goal was to facilitate the return to the Garden of Eden through diet and high-minded ideals, this according to Richard Francis, the author of Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. Such ideals had to address societal wrongs, especially slavery. Francis described Fruitlands as “a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of cities, with their consequent social injustice, poverty, and environmental deterioration.”¹ In response, the Fruitlands community removed themselves from the general public in order to create a new and perfect society.

Master bedroom

Members of Fruitlands were considered a part of a “consociate” family based on like-mindedness rather than blood relations. Seeking a higher form of life in the Spirit necessitated a radical examination of the nuclear family, which created bonds undermining the interests of the consociate. Lane believed that future generations would be perfected by the absence of such ties. Eden therefore would be reclaimed through an austere manner of living, eating, and thinking, all leading to man’s restoration with nature, and communion with God. By abstaining from conjugal relations and the use of any materials produced by slave labor; and, by replacing meat, dairy products, tea, coffee, and alcohol with raw fruit, vegetables, coarse grains, and water, the Garden could be reinstated, injustices addressed, and people would, in turn, be perfected.²

The library

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alcott’s closest friend, proved prophetic after visiting Fruitlands writing, “They look well in July, we will see them in December.”³ Once boasting thirteen members, Fruitlands would last just seven months, leaving Lane, his son, and the Alcott family destitute. In the end, the lofty goals would succumb to the existential conflict of human relationships: between husband and wife; parents and children; friends and allies; individuals and the community.⁴ Francis concluded that “Fruitlands was essentially a drama in which a particular group of people interacted with each other, intellectually and emotionally. It is that interaction which gives the experiment its fullest significance.”⁵

The attic

That struggle would have a lasting effect on then ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott. She responded thirty years later with satirical humor inTranscendental Wild Oats.The trauma of Fruitlands seared into Louisa the purpose for which she would live out her life: taking care of her family (especially her mother), providing for them materially, and giving them financial security. It was an unlikely outcome of an experiment based on the renunciation of commerce and materialism, byproducts of an industrial society. Thanks to the merits of her hard work (especially the best-sellingLittle Women), Louisa would provide her own version of utopia to her immediate family within the confines of a fine antique home in Concord known as Orchard House.

Photography by Susan Bailey