via GIPHY
It is a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who has ever read Little Women that Amy is the Absolute Worst and that Jo should have married Laurie.
And, not only should Jo have married Laurie (who is a boy and extremely hot), she should NOT have married an old man who is not hot in any way, was prone to mansplaining, and was probably some kind of bear shapeshifter.*
Baby sister Amy spends the first half of the book being the most annoying brat to inflict herself on a long-suffering big sister, which is bad enough when you are a long-suffering big sister yourself and can relate. But then she commits the unforgivable sin of burning Jo's writing in a fit of pique.
The only copy of the words that Jo wrote. Burnt.
Words that flowed out of her like a deep river gliding effortlessly down to the sea. Words that wouldn't let her sleep at night, jangling in her head so loud she had to get out of bed, light a candle, and desperately scribble them down just so she could get them to shut up. Words she wrestled out of her brain and pinned to the paper. Words that would embarrass her later in life but for now seem like a work of staggering genius. Words that were good and worth saving. Words that she struggled to find and slaved over and could never reproduce no matter how hard she tried. Words she totally forgot to back up in the Cloud.
I couldn't have been more horrified if Amy had set fire to the family house and then put Marmee on a spit to roast over the coals.
Jo may have forgiven her but I have not.
Then Friggin' Amy who is the Absolute Worst gets to go on a trip to Europe instead of Jo just because Aunt March wants to actually enjoy herself by taking someone she actually gets along with.
And then, Friggin' Amy, the Destroyer of Words, actually MARRIES LAURIE despite the fact that everyone is still shipping him with Jo and will to the end of time.
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| Via Relevant Obscurity See also Tomato Nation. |
Essentially, LMA has been on my shit-list for the past 40 years or so.
But other than that teeny, tiny, whopping great grudge which I was intending to take to my grave, I actually love Little Women.
I am Jo. Or I wanted to be. All she ever wanted to be was a writer. She was a tomboy whose best friend was a boy (I had no idea how to talk to boys) and a maverick who runs off to New York to actually be a writer in the great big world despite the patriarchal system that said there was no way she would make it. That was how I wanted my life to go.
I could even imagine that my sisters were Meg, Beth, and Amy, mostly because I have three sisters and I'm the second oldest, just like Jo, and mostly because I was best sister-friends with my next younger sister, my "Beth", and my baby sister, my "Amy" used to bug the shit out of me.**
I read the book several times back in the day and have seen most, if not all of the movie adaptations. The Katharine Hepburn one, the June Allyson one, the Winona Ryder one. The tv mini-series where Captain Kirk was Professor
I know the plot forwards and backwards and upside down. I almost didn't go to see the latest version because I know the plot forwards and backwards and upside down. But then I read that the director was Greta Gerwig and that she had done something to make it new.
Basically, she solves the problem of Amy. For that matter, she solves the problem of Jo.
Instead of following the timeline of the novel, starting with their childhood adventures/sins and working up to the happily ever after that is marriage and career fulfilment (for some), the movie starts with Jo arriving in New York, carrying her portfolio, pursuing the true romance she has always dreamed of - her love of words.
Meanwhile, Amy is in Paris, working on a painting, dreaming of being a great artist, when she meets up with Laurie. He is mourning the loss of the love of his life with the traditional European bacchanal of wine, women, and Eurail passes. She calls him on his shit and helps him get past it all while being remarkably sensible about the realities of a poor woman's life in the 19th century, marriage being practically the only career that a woman without sufficient artistic talent can aspire to, marriage to a rich man the only way out of genteel poverty.
The grown-up, admirable Amy is there in the book too, but it's a lot easier to forgive the unforgiveable when you meet Good Amy first and the Book Burning is shown in flashback. You can't get too attached to LaurJo when the narrative gives you LaurAm first. Timing is everything.
Jo also meets a handsome young man (who is not old and not a bear) but the romance takes a backstage to her writing. Sure she dances with him at a hot New York dance club and takes his literary criticism to heart, but those scenes take up far less screen time than the scenes of her scratching out words with her pen, arranging her pages on the floor, talking to her sisters about whether a book about the domestic lives of young women is "important" or not (spoiler alert: it is!), and negotiating a copyright contract with her publisher.
A copyright contract. Someone was negotiating a copyright contract on a big screen right in front of me.
I got so excited, I almost shouted at the screen, "Don't sell him your copyright outright! Make sure you retain merchandising rights! Negotiate a clause about sharing it in a scholarly repository!"
I know it is not a normal response to get excited about a copyright negotiation but I did.****
The publisher actually has to negotiate Jo's romance/marriage into the climax of her book because apparently maintaining control of your work and ensuring that you make a living wage from it isn't sexy enough for some people. Personally, I needed a cigarette after that scene and I don't even smoke.
In the LMA book, Jo's ursine boyfriend organizes the publication of Jo's work (I mean, he didn't even have the right to authorize publication because that is the exclusive right of the author!!!) and presents the printed book to her as a fait accompli.
How much more satisfying it is to see Jo in charge, brave enough to bring her book to the publisher herself, inexperienced enough to not know what copyright is but not afraid to ask, smart enough to know it's worth more than she's being offered.
This was also the Jo I always wanted to be and I didn't even know it.
*There is actually a sub-species of romance novel about women falling in love with bear shapeshifters and apparently they are quite good in bed (I mean, I've heard rumours about books like that) but I was unaware of said genre at the time I read LW, probably because LMA probably invented shapeshifting bear romance, and also because I hadn't gotten around to wondering how good anyone was in bed yet.
**But not now. Love you, D-Squared! Also I have an older brother who is technically the second oldest but he is temporarily omitted for the purposes of inserting myself into this particular fictional world.
***and Laurie Partridge was Jo!
****You can retire the girl out of the copyright office but you can't get the copyright officer out of the girl
