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!

[rachelmanija]

That's an excellent point.

[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? )

[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!

[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.)

[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...

[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."