Meg puts on her borrowed finery because she is tired of being the poor girl. Jo writes her shocking tales because they support her needy family. Also sadly invisible to Laurie and Bhaer is the fact that the behaviors they find undesirable are largely compelled by the March sisters’ lack of money. Laurie and Bhaer speak in good faith, yet are largely oblivious to the depth of the pain they are causing, or the extent to which they are forcing Meg and Jo into the undesired position of upholding society’s ethical norms-a status quo that can be maintained only at the price of a woman’s freedom.

What makes Gerwig’s take so notable is that she sees both sides of the situation with equal conviction. Read: ‘Little Women’ is a sparklingly clever new take on a classic Gerwig has heard the similarities between them her film makes the two moments rhyme thematically and lingers on the hurt and indignation that the two men heedlessly cause. In the novel, these scenes occur far apart, with no obvious linkage. Laurie chides Meg for her attire at a party, which she considers beautiful and he deems immodest and Professor Bhaer arraigns Jo for publishing lurid stories that he regards as a waste of her talent and that he fears will subvert her readers’ morals. While these inner struggles are amply addressed in the film, Gerwig convincingly proposes an alternative reading: A considerable source of pain in Alcott’s world is the disapproving masculine gaze, so often clad in the guise of moral judgment, that can bruise a woman’s self-esteem and steal her self-expression.Īlcott’s novel presents two powerful instances of such criticism. The prevalent reading of the novel is that the chief evil that must be fought and subdued is the flaw in each character’s own breast, whether Jo’s temper, Laurie’s laziness, or Beth’s shyness. A visually gorgeous period drama, the film poses a question of eternal relevance: How can a person behave unselfishly without annihilating herself?Īmong children’s classics, Little Women is virtually unique in its lack of a personified villain. I’m so sick of it! But-I am so lonely.” While firm in its support for Jo’s assertion that women have a broader destiny than just romance, Gerwig’s Little Women makes some of its strongest points about the nature of love-its aches, its sacrifices, its disappointments.

I am so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. They’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty. This article contains spoilers about the film Little Women.Īt a pivotal moment in Greta Gerwig’s outstanding new screen adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the heroine, Jo March, exclaims to Marmee, “Women have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts.

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