osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2022-02-13 10:43 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-02-13 10:43 am
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Little Women Sunday
Little Women is flying by! I remembered it being a longer book than this, but when you're doing a chapter a night it zips past. Today we reached the part where the Marches get a telegram informing them that Mr. March is very ill in the hospital, and Mrs. March must come at once, and in order to fund the trip (or rather get some extra funds for the trip) Jo sells her hair - her "one beauty"! - to a barber.
In at least one of the movie versions - I can't remember which - Aunt March refuses to lend the money for the trip, and only Jo's sacrifice of her hair makes it possible for Mrs. March to rush to her husband's side. But in the book, Aunt March gives the money, so Jo's haircut is a gallant but unnecessary sacrifice. There is probably a lesson here about the Inherently Virtuous Nature of Sacrifice in Alcott's fiction: even if giving something up is unnecessary, even if it's actually useless and doesn't help anyone, it's still inherently virtuous.
Maybe it's good training for the days when you have to give up your fresh hot Christmas breakfast to the poor starving Hummel children down the street. (Which is a useful sacrifice that actually does help someone!)
The girls have also just had a conversation about their dreams for their lives. Poor Meg really gets a raw deal, doesn't she? Jo gets her writing fame (and finds it rather a poisoned chalice; but nonetheless she gets it!), Beth gets to stay home with her sisters, and although Amy does not become the best artist in the world she DOES get to travel and study art and marry a rich man... whereas Meg gets none of the things she asks for. No gorgeous mansion, no beautiful dresses, no legions of servants! Just a husband. And John Brooke is fine I guess, but how many girls dream of falling in love with fine I guess?
littlerhymes and I were talking about March sister identification - you have lots of Jos and a fair smattering of Amys and even some Beths (you'd think that as a writer I would be a Jo, but in fact I have always considered Beth my Alcott alter ego), but I don't think I've ever met someone who identifies with Meg, and I think it is, in part, because none of her dreams come true.
In at least one of the movie versions - I can't remember which - Aunt March refuses to lend the money for the trip, and only Jo's sacrifice of her hair makes it possible for Mrs. March to rush to her husband's side. But in the book, Aunt March gives the money, so Jo's haircut is a gallant but unnecessary sacrifice. There is probably a lesson here about the Inherently Virtuous Nature of Sacrifice in Alcott's fiction: even if giving something up is unnecessary, even if it's actually useless and doesn't help anyone, it's still inherently virtuous.
Maybe it's good training for the days when you have to give up your fresh hot Christmas breakfast to the poor starving Hummel children down the street. (Which is a useful sacrifice that actually does help someone!)
The girls have also just had a conversation about their dreams for their lives. Poor Meg really gets a raw deal, doesn't she? Jo gets her writing fame (and finds it rather a poisoned chalice; but nonetheless she gets it!), Beth gets to stay home with her sisters, and although Amy does not become the best artist in the world she DOES get to travel and study art and marry a rich man... whereas Meg gets none of the things she asks for. No gorgeous mansion, no beautiful dresses, no legions of servants! Just a husband. And John Brooke is fine I guess, but how many girls dream of falling in love with fine I guess?
littlerhymes and I were talking about March sister identification - you have lots of Jos and a fair smattering of Amys and even some Beths (you'd think that as a writer I would be a Jo, but in fact I have always considered Beth my Alcott alter ego), but I don't think I've ever met someone who identifies with Meg, and I think it is, in part, because none of her dreams come true.
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I know Anne Boyd discusses in Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy how the "IRL Meg" Alcott sister had wanted to be an actress, but Alcott hadn't given book!Meg this aspiration because it wasn't ~proper~ (not sure if this was her decision or her publisher's?) although she does end up giving it to Meg's daughter Josie in Jo's Boys. I think the 2019 movie might lean into it? (Possibly comes up when Jo tries to convince Meg not to marry Brooke??? Unclear.)
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