Period of time.

Alcott, who continued to write until her death, suffered chronic health problems in her later years,including vertigo. She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning. During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Recent analysis of Alcott's illness, however, suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not acute mercury exposure. Moreover, a late portrait of Alcott shows rashes on her cheeks, which is a characteristic of lupus.Alcott died at age 55 of a stroke in Boston, on March 6, 1888.Many of her thriller stories and poems were published after she died..She is recognized as the person who wrote LITTLE WOMEN.
Little Women possesses many qualities of the didactic genre, a class of works that have a moral lesson. Little Women does not preach directly to the reader, however, as did much didactic fiction of its time. The narrator refrains from too much explicit moralizing, allowing us to draw our own lessons from the outcome of the story.
Because Jo learns to behave and becomes a lady at the end of the novel, it is possible to assume that Alcott wants to teach her readers that conformity is good. Interestingly, however,  So while Little Women can be called a didactic novel, the question of what it teaches remains open.