Little Women: The 2019 movie

I know that the new Little Women deviates away from the book  but I still sing praises of it! II have discussed previously on my blog about some of the other books I have read about Little Women because it was a book I loved as a child and a book I still love as an adult. I do enjoy revisiting this novel on a regular basis. I was rereading a recently issued paperback of the book when my husband surprised me on Christmas with a beautiful 100 year old hardcover copy of Louisa May Alcott's book. I wanted to be sure to reread it before seeing the movie that I was reading excellent reviews of the movie and could not wait to see it for myself.

Warning: The rest of this blog post contains spoilers of the new movie

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The book was originally published as two books:  Little Women covers the childhood of the Alcott sisters and Good Wives is the continuation of the story of the Alcott sisters as they venture adulthood. The movie starts out with their venture into adulthood, where Good Wives begins.  The narrative folds out by showing the viewer flashbacks to the Alcott sister’s childhood as it weaves into the story.

The womanhood of the girls is fleshed out a lot more than what you read in the book. Amy March declares that her only hope to make it into the world is to marry well, it is not an act of snobbery as in other movie portrayals. It is her own assertion that she wants to find a way to thrive in this world as a woman who has limited opportunities in the context of her time.  Meg declares that she WANTS to have a family when Jo is trying to convince her to run away from her wedding and pursue the stage. Before this she has often come off to me as the older sister who seems eager to embrace her own domesticity. The characters come off as more complex in this movie than they do in the book in the second half of the novel.

I have joined many in my sentiments of disdain for Amy March in my  impressions of Little Women and often found that I wanted her to experience more vengeance after she burns Jo's manuscript and never liked her that much. But it was not until this new movie release that I found that Amy proves to be a feminist in her own right…which is a very fresh interpretation of this story.

But my love for this new movie doesn’t end with this new interpretation of Amy March, I love how it nods to Louisa May Alcott’s original intent.  Jo March is interviewing a publisher at the beginning of the movie as she is looking for a home for her new book. This conversation that she has with the publisher were things that Louisa May Alcott went through in attempts to get her novel published. She WAS told that women needed to be married or dead at the end of a story…and originally did not want to have Jo March married off.  The end of the movie the way she talks the publisher about Jo’s marital status demonstrates the changes she had to make crafting the grand gesture between Jo March and Professor Baeher uplifting that writing is Jo March's true love. This suggests that her romance with a man is pure fiction as she ends the movie embracing her newly published book. Jo March was a fictionalized version of Louisa May Alcott who never married. I imagine that Louisa May Alcott would approve of the nod that the new movie made to her original intent with the book.

I approve of the way these changes are made in the movie.  While we do have a long way in allowing women to continue to make their own choices and embrace different types of paths, it does symbolize that as an American culture that we have gone in the direction of encouraging young girls to make their own choices and chase their own dreams. The added depth to the character’s adult lives that I never experienced in reading the book highlights the level of acceptability that we now have. The 1994 movie that I watched numerous times may not only be the movie that I associate with my youth but also the movie that I associate with a different time.  Women have come to be more empowered in my own lifetime and this new movie may not only be the movie I will return to as an adult but also the movie that I will associate with a new century.