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

[osprey_archer]

I don't remember if Laurie says that; I'll keep an eye out for it as I reread. There are a number of different threads in this book that I'm keeping an eye on.

And YES, there's definitely a lot going on with gender & Jo & Laurie - Jo is a very boyish girl, Laurie a girlish boy, and they sort of meet in the middle as two of a kind (whatever kind that is)... and getting married would force them into these very binary roles which might destroy the very thing that draws them together.

There is an element of flirtation in Jo & Laurie's relationship even at the beginning of Little Women. Maybe in an odd way they felt more free to explore that later on, once they were married to other people and COULDN'T spoil their own camaraderie by marrying each other.

[kore]

Oh wow, it's twistier than I remembered. This is in chapter forty-three, "Surprises":

“Jo, dear, I want to say one thing, and then we’ll put it by forever. As I told you in my letter when I wrote that Amy had been so kind to me, I never shall stop loving you, but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you changed places in my heart, that’s all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me, but I never could be patient, and so I got a heartache. I was a boy then, headstrong and violent, and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it was one, Jo, as you said, and I found it out, after making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that I didn’t know which I loved best, you or Amy, and tried to love you both alike. But I couldn’t, and when I saw her in Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. You both got into your right places, and I felt sure that it was well off with the old love before it was on with the new, that I could honestly share my heart between sister Jo and wife Amy, and love them dearly. Will you believe it, and go back to the happy old times when we first knew one another?”

“I’ll believe it, with all my heart, but, Teddy, we never can be boy and girl again. The happy old times can’t come back, and we mustn’t expect it. We are man and woman now, with sober work to do, for playtime is over, and we must give up frolicking. I’m sure you feel this. I see the change in you, and you’ll find it in me. I shall miss my boy, but I shall love the man as much, and admire him more, because he means to be what I hoped he would. We can’t be little playmates any longer, but we will be brother and sister, to love and help one another all our lives, won’t we, Laurie?”

But then they do flirt and romp later on anyway! I think you're quite right, that once they're in settled and much more conventional marriages, they're safer in a way to keep their old bond and explore it. I remember thinking as a kid Prof Bhaer had DIED in the later books (I was mixing him up with John Brooke probably), he just didn't seem to be there that often, but Teddy is still there, and very involved with Jo's boys.

While we're talking family and love in the 19th century, I think I could never deal with Bhaer because he's so closely linked with Mr March who is the idealized Bronson Alcott, and Louisa praising two idealized Bronson Alcotts is two hundred too many for me. I didn't get the feeling Jo was a daddy's girl so much -- we see a lot more of her and Marmee -- but Louisa and her father were so twined together.

[osprey_archer]

Mr. March is so entirely Sir Not Appearing in this Book in Little Women that it's kind of hilarious. Louisa wanted to write a story about family love and togetherness and the way she did it was to literally write her father out.

[kore]

IT IS VERY HILARIOUS. I was (and am) so grumpy when Geraldine Brooks won a goddamn Pulitzer for writing him back in. No, let him stay offstage! Altho Laurie does bring him back, but even after that he's sort of like this benign ghost wisping around.