“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.”
- Jo March - Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Stare at the screen. Sit still. Wonder with thoughts. Never in my life have I been so immersed in a movie, have I been perplexed by its ending and pondered the life of women in the past century.
Little Women movie, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women directed by Greta Celeste Gerwig, is undoubtedly a world for girls. Though I have not read the original Little Women book, according to the NewYorker, it has long been regarded as a lasting inspiration and momentum for other female writers like Nora and Delia Ephron, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Smiley, Anne Tyler, Mary Gordon, Jhumpa Lahiri, Stephenie Meyer, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and A. S. Byatt, to name but a few.
1. The time
Little Women was published in 1868, a year marked with the first introduction of the federal women's suffrage amendment in Congress by Senator S.C. Pomeroy of Kansas. Take a look back then, during the early 1800s, women-led a life that is no different from a bird’s. They were ‘held captive’ in their ‘cages’, precluded from the outside world and any activities except domestic duties and giving birth. Socially, women were considered weaker hence under the control of men throughout their lives. The rights for women were lacking, especially when they got married as all their ownerships would shift to their husbands, including their bodies.
“I’m just a woman. And as a woman, I have no way to make money, not enough to earn a living and support my family. Even if I had my own money, which I don’t, it would belong to my husband the minute we were married. If we had children they would belong to him, not me. They would be his property. So don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition, because it is.”
- Amy March -
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
However, they had no other choice since remaining single was humiliating and divorce was not granted. It would be reasonable to say the life of women then was one of the slaveries': carrying out their duty, imprisoning their soul, and shutting their voice. “The society looked at women as asexual beings; people with neither feelings nor a life of their own” (Wayne, 2007, p.17).
In the mid-1800s, women grew more aware of themselves and wanted to break free from the oppression by men. As a result, they started protesting for equal education opportunities and religious activism, performing tasks apart from homes, entering the workforce as nurses and typewriters.
2. Little Women
Little Women is a coming-of-age story of four March sisters living in genteel poverty in Massachusetts in the eighteen-sixties. The eldest is Meg, a graceful, maternal, softhearted girl who is in her sixteen at the beginning of the story. Then comes fifteen-year-old bold and wild, bookish and boyish Jo. She loves to run, head on for perilous adventure and absorb in reading, writing plays, and her own story every day. She would wish she were a boy so she could speak herself, go to places she wants, and be set free. Next comes Beth, the kindest and nicest of all (as claimed by Amy), yet unfortunately dies young. Finally, we have Amy, vain and selfish, yet is cute so everyone loves her.
They are no glamorous characters, just normal dreamy girls. Meg wishes to become an aspiring actress while Jo dreams of being a prominent actress. Beth is a talented pianist while Amy yearns for being a sketch artist. Their childhood was not one complete, as their father is always away for the Civil War, yet they have their lovely mother Marmee and the Laurence next door who always care for them. Their life was one with unreal calmness, filled with chatty conversations, and their plays.
However, as soon as they grow up, troubles find them and slowly the girls give up their dreams and adapt to life. All the girls got married at the end, which normally is a happy ending but personally, I feel like there is something incomplete. I don’t like the idea that they can’t accomplish their dreams, and that all of them, especially Jo - who have always been against the idea of marriage - married in the end.
Having said that, the portrait of Jo March in Little Women still leaves a deep remark on any girls’ hearts. To say the truth, Jo is the dream of women in the nineteenth century. Her great fascination for reading and writing is also theirs, yet they were not that accessible to books as a result of men's domination and social prejudice. Besides, her wish of becoming a writer and the way she works relentlessly and wholeheartedly to achieve so lightened up a fire of passion in girls’ hearts, encouraged them to fight for their dreams in the time when jobs for females were driblets. Jo is the boldest, a girl with a strong will and self-esteem. She dares to speak up, travel now and then, be the backbone of the family, and claim that she will never marry a man, all of which were what women at that time were fighting for. They, as aforementioned, no longer wanted to just stay at home, and be associated with only marriage.
3. Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832 in Pennsylvania and died in 1888 in Massachusetts. Her parents were transcendentalists so their ideology partly formed her into a realistic, independent woman, which completely went against the women standard of the nineteenth century.
Alcott was not only a novelist, short story writer, and poet, but also an abolitionist and a feminist who dedicated all her life to actively fight for such reform movements as temperance and women's suffrage.
An interesting fact is Little Women was loosely based on Alcott’s family. Perhaps that was how each and every character in Little Women was depicted with such affection and understanding. Little Jo March is said to be the most Louisa-like character, as Alcott too was bold and wild, independent and resistant to marriage. The only difference is Alcott remained single all her life. Therefore, once again, Jo’s marriage with Bhaer was one most controversial topic. Some question why Jo does not end up with Laurie, her childhood best friend, as how other novels usually go. Others wonder why Alcott forced our hero Jo, a character that represents herself, to marry a man as it goes against her belief all the time.
4. Its effect
Let’s hear out how feminists, female writers of the time were inspired by Little Women:
“I read ‘Little Women’ a thousand times,”
- Cynthia Ozick -
“I was able to tell myself that I too was like her (Jo March). I too would be superior and find my place.”
- Simone de Beauvoir -
“I would never have become a writer without the example of Jo March”
- Susan Sontag -
“(Jo March was) as close as a sister and as common as grass,” which made writing seem like something even a girl could do.
- Ursula Le Guin -
5. My final words
Little Women really won my heart, gently and profoundly moved my tears. I have just watched its movie adaptation so there are parts that I can not fully understand. I have a lot to talk about Little Women, but find my words powerless in expressing all. Still, I put all my heart and soul into writing this just to introduce you all to this incredible story, which may change your life.