Little Women Sunday

[osprey_archer]

littlerhymes and I have been rereading Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and I thought that other people might enjoy chatting about the book too so I'm going to do a weekly post just about wherever we've gotten up to in the book, comparisons to the movies etc., just whatever comes to mind.

Today seemed like a good time to start because we just got through the MOST DRAMATIC chapter in the book, by which of course I mean the chapter where Amy BURNS JO'S BOOK and Jo in retaliation doesn't tell Amy about the weak ice in the river, and Amy falls through it and ALMOST DIES.

Critics give nineteenth century novels a lot of guff for their focus on teaching their heroines to control their tempers, but honestly I think it's much more noteworthy just how much temper these heroines get to display in the first place. How many novelists today would have the guts to have a girl burn her older sister's prized possession in a fit of temper? Or to have said older sister retaliate in a way that might have got her little sister killed? (Or an Anne of Green Gables style "breaking a slate over that obnoxious boy's head," for that matter.)

I think a lot of modern day people are theoretically in favor of "women's anger," but not actually in favor of the real fruits of losing one's temper, or prepared to think particularly deeply about the fact that women (just like men) sometimes get angry for reasons that are neither just nor righteous. (Ask anyone working retail.)

Anyway! I just recently watched the 1934 Katherine Hepburn adaptation, which cuts this scene entirely. (I still haven't seen the 1949 adaptation, but it's on the docket.) In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Amy Boyd Rioux complains that the Hepburn adaptation shortchanges Jo's writing career, which I don't agree with - we actually see quite a lot of that, including Jo's entire melodramatic Christmas play that she and her sisters put on for the neighbors. What the movie ends up cutting are scenes like Amy's burning of Jo's book, which focus on the more complicated aspects of relationships between the sisters.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

What the movie ends up cutting are scenes like Amy's burning of Jo's book, which focus on the more complicated aspects of relationships between the sisters.

I'm like 99% sure the Greta Gerwig adaption keeps this scene!

[legionseagle]

It absolutely does; I was yelling at the TV (personally, the way everyone including Jo ends up blaming Jo for the whole business rather than the hypocritical little monster who behaves appallingly and gets away with it at the cost of a few crocodile tears and a ducking does my head in every time.)

[osprey_archer]

You might enjoy the 2017 BBC adaptation, which really leans into the interpretation of Amy as a budding little psychopath weeping crocodile tears.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the Gerwig adaptation is much more focused on the relationship between the sisters than the 1934 version. The bit where Jo tells Meg, "You'll be bored of him in a month, but WE will be interesting forever!" I can't remember if that's in the book or not (I'll find out when we reach that chapter, I guess!), but I do think the sentiment is expressed in Jo's general attitude toward Meg's marriage.

[kore]

What I always remember is Jo saying "Why can't I marry Meg myself and keep her safe in the family!" and everyone's just like, oh LOL Jo, and even as a kid I was like o.0

[rachelmanija]

That's an excellent point.

[osprey_archer]

The part about the modern attitude that is theoretically in favor of (appropriately targeted) anger but deeply uncomfortable with any actual outburst of temper?

[rachelmanija]

Yes.

[asakiyume]

Yes. Seriously.

[cyphomandra]

Jo’s book and Emily’s (in LM Montgomery’s Emily’s Quest) are my favourite terrifying manuscript burning sequences, by which I mean that I am still incapable of reading them without secretly hoping that this time the work in question might survive :D

I’m rereading Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm (a memoir) at the moment, which has a bit on Little Women. She feels Jo’s actions are entirely justified.

(also, I have a hazy memory of reading an edition of LW that included a magazine written by the girls (in small print at the front or back), but I’ve never found it again and I wonder if it was a) from another book - possibly Coolidge’s Katy series? or b) made up by someone else for that edition? )

[osprey_archer]

The part where Emily burns her own book because Dean tells her it's no good! (DEAN PRIEST HOW COULD YOU.) One of the great tragedies of literature tbh. It sounds like just the sort of book I might enjoy, too, if only Emily hadn't burned it and also it had ever existed in the first place...

I think Jo's actions are eminently understandable (who wants their little sister WHO JUST BURNED THEIR PRECIOUS FAIRY TALE BOOK to tag along on an ice skating trip?), but I can also see why the very real possibility of Amy's death shocked Jo out of her rage. Fate sort of called her bluff: she didn't exactly intend Amy to die, but that was definitely something she knew might be a consequence when she didn't warn her about the ice... so I can see why she felt responsible when it almost happened. (And as much as I would want to set on fire anyone who burned MY sole manuscript of anything, I don't actually think that is or should be a hanging offense.)

I know in Little Women the girls write the Pickwick Portfolio, which is a little magazine of their work. Usually I think it's just part of the text of the novel, but maybe you read a special edition which had it typeset in some special way?

[kore]

I HAVE HATED DEAN PRIEST EVER SINCE I READ THAT BIT. How could he! He lied! He wanted to tank her career just to make her dependent on him! UGH.

(Too bad he doesn't fall through some weak ice....)

[cyphomandra]

Dean is just the worst. Petty and creepy and manipulative (and the text tried to make you feel a tiny bit sorry for him!!).

In my head the magazine was longer and had bits not in the text but I suspect I have made those up :D

[kore]

Amy burning Jo's book and then Jo not telling Amy about the ice is one of the most sibling-esque things I have ever read. No one can really stick it to you like family. (That said I am really entirely on Jo's side. HOW COULD SHE??)

What I also always remember is Mrs. March telling Jo about her anger, even if she emphasizes suppressing it (ugh). And then afterward Jo picks up on little signs that her mother is angry, but not letting it out. I don't think I ever had a conversation like that about anger with my own mother!

[osprey_archer]

It's PEAK sibling drama honestly. No one can make you as mad as your siblings! No one's possible death can knock you dead like your siblings'!

To be fair, if I were in charge of two hot-tempered children and one of them had just BURNED THE PRECIOUS MANUSCRIPT and the other retaliated by ALMOST LEADING HER TO DROWN, I too would be focusing hard on the importance of controlling one's temper so one does not commit a murder in a red haze of rage.

[kore]

To be fair, if I were in charge of two hot-tempered children and one of them had just BURNED THE PRECIOUS MANUSCRIPT and the other retaliated by ALMOST LEADING HER TO DROWN

LOL, excellent point! Especially since there are two other daughters to raise as well!

The combinations are fascinating, too -- Jo and Beth are soulmates, but total opposites; Meg and Jo don't really get along but are together as the oldest; Jo's real foil is the pretty and manipulative Amy, who could be the heroine in a more conventional novel. And I don't think Amy and Meg are that close, but they both love the good life, only Meg's marriage pretty much cures her of that.

[legionseagle]

But Amy isn't supposed to be on the ice! (And this is made absolutely clear in the Gerwig version.) Amy has not been invited to the skating party because she's (in the Gerwig version, at least) in disgrace for the book-burning and in the book, so far as I recall, because she's still ill from whatever caused her to miss the pantomime which is why in revenge she burnt the book.

[littlerhymes]

I am loving all these threads! I am not exactly on Amy's side in the sense that burning your sibling's beloved items, creative or otherwise, is really not on BUT I feel I understand her action as something one would do in a moment of burning rage. Of course she shouldn't have burned the book. But anger is very powerful and sometimes you make regrettable decisions that cannot be undone! (Me looking at the rest of the comments: I see I am alone in my rage lol.)

[osprey_archer]

The book burning provokes STRONG FEELINGS no matter how many years have passed since the reader first read it! I too am like "Well it WAS horrible, but also Amy WAS just a child and she acted in burning rage and don't we all sometimes do things in a temper that we regret later..." but I think if I had first read this as a child, I might be unable to forgive Amy to this day.

Fortunately for Amy, as a child I never made it past the chapter where Mr. Laurence gives Beth her piano. I didn't finish the book till I was in my twenties.

[troisoiseaux]

I thought Amy was The Worst as a kid but I appreciated her a lot more when I re-read Little Women as an adult, and-- yeah, burning the book was a jerk move, but she was like, 12? Both Jo and Amy are literal children, their impulse control is understandably not the greatest.

[asakiyume]

No! I don't really like Little Women as a story, but conceptually, I totally agree with you--regardless of the angry thing done. It seems unfair to get all dismayed that she burns a manuscript when in reality red-heat-angry people do all kinds of awful things, and it's not really about the harm done but about the anger. ... I mean I haven't read LW in a thousand years, and maybe Amy is totally calculating about it? Like Yes... YESSS THIS WILL CAUSE MAXIMAL MISERY--in which case I retract my point--but people **kill** people in a red rage and totally regret it afterward. ... Maybe volunteering in a jail has given me a warped perspective on this...

So, putting aside the actual details of Little Women: I agree with you.

[lilysea]

Oh, I remembered how I HATED Amy when I first read it.

I always wished it had been Amy who died of illness, and not the Saintly One...

[osprey_archer]

It's always the Saintly One in this kind of book. I think it's a reaction against earlier didactic literature where it's always the Naughty Ones who die horrible contrived deaths.

[asakiyume]

A strong AMEN to your penultimate paragraph. And the one before that! I guess people do get rightly angry that the heroes in male-focused aren't expected to rein in to the same degree--or maybe it's not that they're not expected to rein in, but that they're expected to for reasons of principle rather than gender. And what you're saying in the penultimate paragraph--which is actually a stronger feminist statement, I'd say--is that women should *also* be asked to rein in for reasons of principle rather than gender. "Don't burn things in a fit of anger; it's terribly destructive and not good for human relationships" as opposed to "Don't burn things in a fit of anger; it isn't ladylike."

[osprey_archer]

I think American culture - perhaps especially progressive American culture? - has a bunch of different contradictory beliefs about anger that don't mesh with each other or reality. There is some recognition that uncontrolled anger is bad because it can be so destructive (as you mention above, in the white heat of rage people commit murders that they instantly regret!) - but also the belief that the Anger of the Oppressed is inherently valid and good, and either won't be expressed destructively, or that destruction will be a creative destruction that lets a new society bloom (and sometimes an ethic of "fuck the collateral damage along the way.")

There's something condescending about this, IMO: there's an underlying belief that women's anger can be safely encouraged because the poor little things can't do anything too destructive.

And of course Oppressed are just as capable as the Unoppressed (Less Oppressed? How many people are truly unoppressed these days) of going into a rage because, idk, their latte is not appearing as swiftly as they would prefer.

But yes, I think you really hit the nail on the head that people should be asked to rein in their anger for reasons of principle rather than gender (or any other demographic reason they might be asked to rein in their anger).

In re: gendered expectations of anger: in Little Women, it's Mr. March who is Marmee's example of a truly well-controlled temper. So clearly the Marches/Louisa May Alcott, at least, believe that men ought to keep their tempers on tight leashes, just as much as women.