In a Midsommar-esque scene excluded from the latest adaptation of Little Women from Greta Gerwig, Winona Ryder as Jo March dancing around a maypole rues, “Change will come as surely as the seasons and twice as quick. We make our peace with it as best as we can, or, as Amy said when she was still a little girl, ‘We’ll all grow up someday, we might as well know what we want.” What Louisa May Alcott wanted, clearly, was to make a name for herself. Not “as a woman,” but as a writer, regardless of the distinction Little Women would give her as a female author. Therefore an author for females to read. Of course, as the autobiographical narrative reveals, Alcott had to suffer through the average scribe’s plight of writing her fair share of schlock to put up for sale in order to make any kind of money off of her creative flair in the not so visionary publishing industry. This often involved tales of “scandal”–sometimes pertaining to murder, lunatics, vampires… or all of the above. Anything to “titillate” the average reader looking for an escape from the humdrum of their daily lives (for remember, though it’s difficult for most to fathom now, this was at a time when reading was the sole means of entertainment).
At the intro of Gerwig’s faithful yet still distinctive to her increasing ascent toward auteur (auteuse?), a title card showcases a quote from Alcott: “I’ve had lots of troubles, so I write jolly tales.” And, on the surface, perhaps Little Women does seem that way–“jolly” (barring the part where Beth dies, which surely you already knew unless you’re Joey from Friends). Yet, upon even the slightest poking in the holes of the overall levity of Jo March’s (ostensible Gerwig go-to Saoirse Ronan, this time around) transcendentalist-inspired upbringing, it’s plain to see that it’s filled with the sorrows and bittersweet pangs of a girl who knows, “I’ll never fit in anywhere.” Even among her three sisters, Meg (Emma Watson), Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Amy (Florence Pugh), who, while also “unique” and artistically-minded, are not as dogmatic in their pursuits nor as fond of their independence as Jo. Qualities that immediately attract the outsider eyes of Theodore “Laurie” Laurence (Timothée Chalamet).
Their meeting occurs within the structure of a flashback, a stylistic approach Gerwig takes that actually deviates quite greatly from the straightforward, linear timeline crafted by Armstrong and screenwriter Robin Swicord (also known for other subsequent literary adaptations including Matilda, Memoirs of a Geisha and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). For Gerwig prefers the piecemeal method of gradually unraveling the nature of the present by reflecting upon the past, one that included the nefarious in any rendering Aunt March (though Meryl Streep gives her more pizzazz than Mary Wickes) reneging on her promise to take Jo to Europe and the nefarious in any rendering Amy burning Jo’s manuscript (a lifelong endeavor, mind you) in retaliation for something as ridiculous as Jo and Meg going to the theater with Laurie and his tutor, Mr. Brooke (James Norton–no Eric Stoltz), without her.
Indeed, Jo seems much less forgiving and saintly toward Amy’s behavior in the Little Women of 2019, particularly when she commits the most egregious betrayal of all: going for Laurie, who has always loved Jo and sworn never to love another. Jo, in this edition, suddenly feels she’s made a mistake in turning Laurie down, writing a letter to him and putting it in the special mailbox of the Pickwick Club (a name the erudite and theater-loving girls adopted for putting on their spectacles as an homage to Dickens). Alas, it’s too late, Laurie has found a way to marry into the March family one way or another. One supposes only “Marmee” is to be blamed (a matriarch who, when played by Laura Dern, comes across as more highly in tune with socialism than Susan Sarandon’s interpretation) for raising such “anomalous” therefore more attractive girls.
To be sure, in 1994’s version, Laurie appears much too eager to abandon that vow of eternal devotion to Jo, which is what makes him less charming when rendered by Christian Bale, who gives it a more intense creep factor for seeming to want to marry a March girl solely to be a part of the family, eventually assuring Amy that it is she he wants more than all the others–though let’s be real: he just has a fetish for free-spirited transcendentalist women, those based specifically on Alcott’s own sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker (Amy), Elizabeth Sewall Alcott (Beth) and Anna Alcott Prat (Meg). While Alcott might have stylized their narratives for the purpose of selling more books, the fact remained that she pioneered a genre–one that made “little women’s” stories relevant, and put them at the forefront (where they always were to begin with, but merely needed the push of financial gain to be deemed worthy of much attention or further exploration). Whether the title was Alcott’s own knowing repurposing of a demeaning phrase or a referral to that Britney Spears phase called, “not a girl, not yet a woman” is at one’s discretion.
Though some of the discrepancies in the Little Women of Armstrong versus that of Gerwig’s are particularly glaring–namely how much more of a developing rapport the viewer gets to see between Jo and Friedrich Bhaer (Gabriel Byrne in the former, Louis Garrel in the latter) in the 1994 edition–one of the most consistent dynamics is that between Jo and Beth (admittedly more angelic when Claire Danes adopted the role). What stands out remarkably in each iteration is the reason for Jo and Beth’s closeness, in many ways, being a result of the latter’s imposed arrested development as a result of being constantly ill therefore unable to really grow up as a normal adolescent, forever stunted by missing out on key experiences. Jo, with her desire for childhood to never end, is simpatico with Beth’s aura of innocence. Her lack of interest in marriage, or any of the other expected trajectories (maybe that’s why it’s easier for all the sisters to get along with her, she poses no threat). In this way, Danes’ Beth is much more layered in the original, particularly when she notes, “I was never like the rest of you, making plans about the great things I’d do.” Always knowing somewhere deep down that she wouldn’t live for very long. And while she might not begrudge her sisters for their own lofty ambitions, the one thing that makes her cringe in pain is their departure so far away from her as she notes to Jo while on her deathbed, demanding, “Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home. But I don’t like being left behind.” So it is that she performs the ultimate “leave behind” by departing from this planet. See? Even non-sexualized sisters can be retaliative.
In Armstrong’s, Jo is at Beth’s side during her death, dutifully waiting for the inevitable. Gerwig, instead, lets hope linger for longer, “allowing” Beth a bit more “stage time” for the purposes of encouraging her not to stop writing (a particularly heartrending scene that occurs on the beach). Even if Bhaer recently criticized her sellout tendencies. And yes, Gerwig gives this notion something of a meta spin when Alcott, in the third act, is negotiating the sale of her masterpiece, insisting upon maintaining copyright if she’s going to sell her heroine down the river by having her get married–a convention Alcott never surrendered to in her own lifetime (perhaps as vindication for Jo’s more saccharine fate). Just as she never did to self-pity for the more reality-laden facts of her life, including a father whose behavior left the family not so much “happily poor” as grudgingly destitute. With the invention of the March family, it seemed Alcott could put a more positive spin on the crueler facets of her circumstance, hence the quote featured at the beginning of Gerwig’s adaptation.
To this end, Gerwig incontrovertibly brings an added level of understanding to the biographical nature of Alcott’s opus, herself fond of writing screenplays that reflect a heroine with an appreciation and reverence for roots, for where one has come from in order to know where she is going. That Gerwig fought to be considered for the latest adaptation as a result of her own passion for the novel and identification with its lead character was further iterated when she stated, “It was something I wanted to do because it was the book of my youth, of my childhood, of my heart, of my ambition, of what made me want me to be a writer, and also what made me want to be a director.” So yes, it cannot be refuted that Gerwig, too, has an undeniable tinge of Jo March-ness in her, not just for her own need to “sell herself” in the room with the man who controls the purse strings but also in terms of her frequent writing partner/fiancé Noah Baumbach as something of a Bhaer figure in her own life. For maybe, in the present, it takes more courage for women to admit that even if they don’t need a man they still want one, something that was also true in the past, but mitigated by the absurd laws that would prevent a girl from paving her own way in this world without being married.
As for the bonds of sisterhood–“a relationship stronger than marriage” (as original 1994 Amy puts it to Jo after stabbing her in the back by marrying Laurie)–well, let’s just say that neither Alcott’s nor Armstrong’s nor Gerwig’s version of events makes the endeavor sound all that devoid of the same level of fierce and ruthless competition that exists between women who aren’t related.
