Little Women: Ambition and /or Benevolence

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  Mujercitas, ambición y / o bondad.

The magazine SpeakUp, which has been of use to me on many occasions,  published this September an issue accompanied by a DVD of Greta Gerwig’s film versión of  Little Women.  It is to be supposed that this DVD will be used in more than one classroom this season. Although the film is visually beautiful and I share its director’s love for Louisa May Alcott’s work, I believe it will not be easy to follow and understand by those who have not read the novel previously. The script, nominated for an Oscar, leaps merrirly – and dizziingly - from one period in the lives of the novel’s heroines to another.  Scenes in which the girls are grown women are followed by scenes from the past, when they were still children. The fact that the same actresses interpret these characters all the while, only adds to the confusion. Only true fans of the novel can appreciate what has been done with it in this film. More than the little guidebook the magazine provides to explain the film will be needed for a neophyte to grasp what´s happening. By the way, I have spotted a mistake in page 6 of the guidebook, where it says that the male protagonist lives with his uncle. This is not so. He lives with his grandfather.  There is no uncle whatsoever. I repeat that the magazine has been useful to me. It is not my intention to criticize it. It is that this is a special occasion.

I publish this post precisely because I wish to give some keys that can help explain the film or even the novel in the classroom, and also because the 29th of November is Louisa May Alcott’s 188th birthday.

INTERPRETATIONS:

Like all good literature, Alcott’s novel about four sisters who grow up in liberty but with ethics admits  diverse interpretations. The different films and plays  and even the musical that have adapted this novel have stressed one or another aspect of this work. Thus, the movie version filmed in 1933  emphasized the precarious financial situation of the March family, so audiences that were sufferning the Great Depression could relate to the characters. The 1949 film instead, and due to the Second World War, stressed the importance of sacrifice and effort to be made when there is a war to be won. In the case of Little Women, this was the American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, depending on which side you were on, North or South. The 1994 film focused on how talented and creative the sisters were and how they wished to fulfill their dreams in a world in which women had few possibilities beyond a convenient marriage or a badly paid job in primary education.  And the 2019 film, which is the version that concerns us here, carries this need to triumph as far as it can and maybe further.

To understand what the 2019 film has done with the novel it is necessary to understand each of the members of the March family as well as the book’s minor characters. 

THE OLDER FOLKS

Mr. March is an idealist and an activist who is fighting for the abolition of slavery. He spends the greater part of the novel at the front. He writes inspiring letters to his daughters encouraging them to be good but also effective. He is one of those people who, in their wish to favor the underpriviledged, give even more than what they have. This is why his family is not as well off as their friends and neighbors.

Mrs. March has to see to everything her husband has no time for. It is clear her daughters will not be rich heiresses who can easily catch a husband. They will have to make their own way in the world and their mother prepares them to do this with dignity. Mrs. March does not only look after her own family. She also sees to the Hummels, a family of very poor immigrants. She and her daughters deprive themselves of the few fancies and caprices they can afford to benefit the Hummels.

Aunt March is rich. And she means to keep being so. Which is why she hardly ever helps anyone. She considers her nephew, Mr. March, a dreamer. The little help she offers her family consists mostly of hiring one of the girls to keep her company.

Mr. Lawrence, the March family’s neighbour and the grandfather of the girls’ best friend,  is also wealthy. More sentimental than Aunt March,  he is kind to the girls, treating them to delicious party food and allowing them the use of his piano and art gallery. When the March family has serious problems, he comes to their aid.

Hannah, Mrs. March’s faithful servant, looks after the girls like a second mother, especially when Mrs. March is away. Hannah also helps the girls care for the Hummels.

THE SISTERS AND THE MORAL PAP  

Louisa May Alcott humbly said that the many books she wrote for children were only moral pap. However, in this pap is also the grandeur of her work. In the 19th century there were people who wanted to be good. And in fact, that is what Little Women is about. Four little girls who wanted to be good. They did not only ambition material success.

In order to progress and become better persons, each of the four sisters identifies what she considers to be her worst defect. Throughout the novel, they will try to overcome these defects.

Meg, the eldest sister, finds vanity to be her weakness. Many readers feel that Meg is the least interesting of the sisters. I have heard some consider her a born loser. But the truth is that Meg cannot be easily understood by those who are not as sensitive as she is. Meg is not really as vain as she thinks she is. In truth, she is attracted to beauty. At first this attraction appears as an urge to own lovely clothes and trinkets. But it grows into something else. Meg is not very ambitious. She doesn’t need to triumph and be famous. In a chapter where the girls and their friend discuss their dreams, Meg says all she wants is a beautiful home full of pleasant people. Her loyalty to her father and his ideals and her ability to see what is beautiful lead her to a marriage that dooms her to a life of relative poverty. Meg marries a poor man because she realizes that he is morally superior to her other, wealthier beaus.  And more beautiful on the inside.

Jo thinks that wrath is her worst sin. She is hotheaded and angers easily and this often has unhappy consequences. Jo is aware that as a woman she has few possibilities to get ahead in a world designed for men. She would love to join the army and fight in the war and even considers disguising herself to do it. Jo does dream of fame and success as a writer, but she wants this also because she wishes to help her family. Jo not only earns a little money for her family as Aunt March’s lady-in-waiting. She also gets to publish a truculent story or two in the kind of  press sensation lovers read. Alcott wished this character to remain single, but her editors put pressure on her and she had to find Jo a husband. In Little Men, one of Little Women’s  sequels, we find Jo running a very special school for children with her husband.      

Beth is pathologically shy. She has to overcome her shyness to be able to function in society. When Mr. Lawrence gifts Beth with a piano that belonged to his departed daughter, Beth, in gratitude, dares to embroider a pair of slippers for him. This is quite an achievement for a girl like her. But though the idea of going to a party terrifies her, Beth is able to see to the needy. While caring for the Hummels, Beth catches a disease that mines her health and eventually exposes her to tuberculosis. Beth dies, leaving a huge gap in the family.

Amy, according to almost everyone, is selfish. In truth, she is more practical than selfish. She wishes to become a great artist, but when she finds that she is not as good a painter as she would like to be, she decides to opt for a fine marriage. Amy is the favorite of competitive readers, because by the end of the novel she seems to be the winner among the sisters, obtaining both love and wealth.  But Amy does not obtain love until she runs a risk. She puts her heart before her desire for riches and says no to a very, very wealthy suitor she does not love. Her reward is to marry everyone’s favorite boy, who is also conviniently rich, though not as much as her rejected suitor.

THE HUSBANDS

Theodore Lawrence, Laurie to his friends and Teddy to Jo, is the male hero of this novel. An orphan who lives with his rich grandfather, he observes his little neighbours  from a distance until the bravest of them dares to speak to him. Although he becomes Jo’s dearest friend, Laurie has his moment with each of the March girls. Meg coincides with him at a fashionable party where they get  to discuss vanity. Timid Beth admires his vitality and sighs wishing she could be like him. Jo hears her sighing and thinks Beth is in love. She rejects Laurie’s advances hoping this will give Beth a chance with him. But it is Amy who gets to marry him. Some people say that Laurie marries Amy because he wants to form part of the March family, having none of his own. But the avid reader of fairy tales will think differently. In one chapter, Laurie is a hero who saves Amy from drowning in a lake. In another, Amy has been sent to live with Aunt March so she will not catch the scarlet fever from Beth. Laurie promises to make the time she spends there less difficult by visiting her regularly. And, like a true gentleman, he keeps his word faifthfully. Though he does not notice this till the end of the book, Amy always brings out the best in Laurie. 

John Brooke is Laurie’s tutor. Very well educated and gentle, but also very poor. He falls in love with Meg as soon as he sees her, but she does not respond at once. Brooke is present during many of the young people’s outings, and it is there that Meg notices how much better a man John is than her other friends. Brooke also accompanies Mrs. March to the front when her husband is ill and has to be seen to. The March family is very grateful to John for this and he becomes a good friend of the family. But Meg only decides to accept his proposition when Aunt March warns her not to  marry this penniless man because she will be miserable all her life. Meg defies her aunt, but unfortunately, Aunt March’s warning proves to be true. Though John works  very hard, struggling to support a growing family, he dies young, leaving Meg a widow with three children.  From then on Meg has to depend on others for help. In the sequels Little Men and Jo’s Boys,  all the members of the March family are unanimous in their praise of the departed John. Even the younger generation considers him the best of the men in the family. But when Daisy, Meg and John’s daughter, decides to marry an orphan who means to earn his living playing the violin, Meg does not easily grant her blessing. I cannot help complaining here that the character of John Brooke was treated miserably in the 1994 film. He appeared to be a fatuous man who even dressed extravagantly when poor John hardly had enough to buy himself a new coat when his old one needed to be recycled.

Frederick Bhaer is another well educated and cultured  good man who lacks a fortune. His lot improves when he marries Jo, for Aunt March leaves her a grand estate in her will. This is Plumfield, where the couple found a school together.  Though Alcott’s Bhaer reminds one of Santa Claus, being older, benevolent, bearded, cheerful and German with an accent, films usually represent him as an attractive and interesting foreigner. In the novel this man always supports Jo and in the sequels they become a successful team of co-workers.  But the 2019 film gives no importance to this complicity so as  to highlight Jo’s independent character.

THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC  AND THE CATHOLIC MAID

The ambition that drives the little women to succed in this world, so much admired today, is nothing but a manifestation of the Protestant Work Ethic. One must work hard and strive to be successful here and now to be able to enter Heaven later. The March family was Protestant and they took religion very seriously. I will now mention what is probably the second most read book by Protestants after the Bible and its influence on Louisa.

The Pilgrim’s Progress was written by John Bunyan and published for the first time in 1678. It is an allegorical novel in which a man named Christian abandons his home to try and find the way to Heaven. This pligrim makes it to his destination, but not before visiting many dangerous places and meeting many conflictive  beings that could have impeded him from attaining his goal. At least four of the chapters of Little Women bear titles that are inspired by Bunyan’s book.  These chapters are:

Chapter 6 – Beth Finds the Palace Beautiful

Chapter 7 – Amy’s Valley of Humiliation

Chapter 8 – Jo Meets Apollyon

Chapter 9 – Meg Goes to Vanity Fair.

Bunyan’s work, so important for Protestants, is little known among Catholics because in it one of the beings that menaces Christian’s salvation is the Bishop of Rome himself. But when Louisa May Alcott wrote her own novel, times had changed a little and the hostility between Papists and Protestants was not as virulent as in the 17th century.

In fact, one of the characters of Little Women is Esther, Aunt March’s French maid. Esther is both French and a Catholic, and during Amy’s stance at Aunt March’s, she explains to this girl that the rosary is not a necklace but a n instrument to aid in prayer. Esther creates a small chapel in a closet and there, before an image of the Blessed Mother, Amy, though she does not dare to employ the beads, finds comfort in praying for the recovery of her sister. In this way, Alcott’s novel does more than one might think for the cause of peace  by placing  the goodness there is in ordinary people over the struggle of leaders for religious power.

I hope these notes will not be only considered anachronistic, and may help to comprehend Alcott’s work as well as world history a little better.  May they also serve as a reminder that goodness also counts.