What Alice James needed was a friend

Reading more about the sad life of Alice James - what chance did she have, really? We see her as the youngest of five and the only girl - and very often teased by her parents' literary friends and by older bros., esp. William - and a lot of young girls could stand up to that and even give it back, or else is a sense relish the role of the only little girl in the clan - but evidently not AJ. What she really needed was an ally - it seems that everyone else in the James family was paired off: William and Henry, Wilkie and Rob, mom and dad - leaving Alice the loner. This was particularly troublesome bcz of Henry Sr.'s weird propensity for travel: he was always trying to expand the horizons and experiences of his children, and the older ones, at least the 2 older boys, seemed to thrive on that regimen but less so the middle brothers (haven't gotten to this part of the narrative in Strouse's bio of AJ but if memory serves both of the middle brothers had severe alcohol problems) and not at all for Alice. What she really seemed to need was a friend, a companion, or several, of her own age - but the family was constantly moving and when they did settle in it seems their social life orbited around the father and his literary-philosophical set. After they leave Newport in the 1860s - depressed by the hollowness of the society life (although the older boys like the out of doors on Aquidneck Island) and moved to Cambridge, where they finally settled for life, Alice at last seemed to have a few friends - but by that time the damage had been done: she is showing the first signs of the mysterious nervous disorder that troubled her for the rest of her life (interesting parallel to Henry's mysterious wound or injury - probably to his groin or his balls, it seems, though Edel weirdly protests that he hurt his back - so why the mystery and secrecy then? huh?) as she realizes she will have to temper down her feelings and live quietly in the background. Family is now overly protective and solicitous and Alice becomes like a hothouse flower, very delicate and endangered. Still see no particular evidence of her writing genius, although Stouse's occasional quotations from her diary or letters show that she was sharp-witted and could turn a phrase - a long way from writing a novel or even a story, however.