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

[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.

[osprey_archer]

In the book Amy does it in a fit of childish rage, but there is at least one adaptation where she's as cool and calculating as a Bond villain (YES, MAXIMUM MISERY), so there are clearly some people who feel that way about it!

[littlerhymes]

It definitely reads as childish rage to me! And she follows Jo onto the ice for similar reasons - they left her out of their GAME, and she is NOT a baby, and she will SHOW THEM! (She is clearly a baby.)

[osprey_archer]

Amy, the BABIEST BABY. Someone should put her in charge of a puppy to channel her excess energy.

[asakiyume]

Yeah: that is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT THING from childish rage, and I feel like you're creating a different character/telling a different story if you portray Amy that way when she was written as just in a childish rage. I mean fine: movie adaptations can do what they like, but that really feels like Fanfic Amy versus Canon Amy ... (basing my opinions entirely on what you say about the plot rather than informed judgment from my own experience)