While a seance with a few beloved authors sounds like a wonderful plan for a department reunion, Davianne will be relieved to know Louisa May Alcott can respond to her concerns through the timeless medium of pen and paper. It turns out that Alcott more than anticipated her readers’ frustrations with Jo’s choice for a husband. As she wrote in a letter to her friend, Elizabeth Powell, in 1869:
Professor Bhaer was, indeed, a strategic rebuttal to the pressure Alcott felt from both her readers and her publisher. If Jo had to be married off, Alcott wanted to make sure the suitor was as disappointing as possible while also challenging, as Davianne notes, the romanticization of Jo and Laurie’s close friendship.
The latest adaptation of Little Women, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, again casts a young and attractive actor as Professor Bhaer. However, the film also underscores the implausibility of his rainy reunion with Jo. (If you’ve not yet seen the film, be warned that there are spoilers ahead!) Gerwig includes a prior scene in which Jo is asked by her publisher to ensure her protagonist is married by the end of her recently drafted novel. While always an avatar for Alcott herself, Jo’s experiences in Gerwig’s film align even more closely with that of her originator. The final triumphant scene of the 2019 Little Women is of the newly minted author Josephine March clutching a freshly bound copy of her debut novel, her left ring finger deliberately obscured from the audience’s eyes. Gerwig allows us to have it both ways: we watch both the romantic conclusion in which Jo and Bhaer enjoy domestic and pedagogical bliss, and the more feminist one in which Jo remains a “literary spinster” like Alcott, having married the fictional version of herself off in print only.
Drawing on Alcott’s letters, diaries, and other writings, Gerwig’s adaptation is also an interpretation of the novel that achieved the impossible for me: reconciling me to the travesty of Little Women’s sequel. I had the luck as a child to read only Part I of Little Women, merely skimming Part II--published separately as Good Wives--when I was working through my crush on Christian Bale as an adolescent. I loved my red leather-bound edition of Little Women, entirely missing the moral lesson of Vanity Fair by exclaiming over Jenny Thorne’s illustration of Meg in all her finery. Unsurprisingly, a little girl who grew up to be an English professor adored the literary and theatrical games played by the March sisters and never fretted about the possible fates of the younger siblings.
Having grown up in Bedford, where The Pilgrim’s Progress was written, I also appreciated that Alcott adopted the structure of John Bunyan’s allegory for her novel. The contrast with Good Wives was profound: the sequel lacked all literary merit for me. However, Gerwig’s film makes extremely effective use of it as a framing narrative, contrasting the cold reality of the characters’ adult lives with the nostalgic hues of their childhood in a series of flashbacks. Watching Gerwig’s interleaving of Parts I and II, I finally saw how much narrative and emotional sense the later experiences of the March sisters might make. For instance, as Davianne would enjoy, Amy and Laurie’s romance gets far more screen time, potentially rehabilitating the most hated March sister for a new generation. I found myself unexpectedly rooting for Amy, a minor artist wishing for security and respect without discarding the values of her family and upbringing.
I would recommend to Davianne and other frustrated readers of Little Women, as well as those who enjoyed Gerwig’s film for its innovative take on the novel, that they read Alcott’s writing for adults, especially the works collected in Elaine Showalter’s Alternative Alcott. Like Jo, Alcott wrote Gothic fiction and you might find yourself cheering on the anti-heroine of Behind a Mask, an actress-turned-governess for whom marriage as an economic proposition seems like a plausible triumph. Meanwhile, Christie in Work: A Story of Experience, who builds a diverse community of women through her varied labors, is also a worthy successor to our beloved Jo.
Perhaps, after 132 years in the grave, we might finally recognize the trick Alcott played on us and enjoy its perversity as much as she did.
A sequel will be out early in April, & like all sequels will probably disappoint or disgust most readers, for publishers won't let authors finish up as they like but insist on having people married off in a wholesale manner which much afflicts me. “Jo” should have remained a literary spinster but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse & out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect.
Professor Bhaer was, indeed, a strategic rebuttal to the pressure Alcott felt from both her readers and her publisher. If Jo had to be married off, Alcott wanted to make sure the suitor was as disappointing as possible while also challenging, as Davianne notes, the romanticization of Jo and Laurie’s close friendship.
The latest adaptation of Little Women, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, again casts a young and attractive actor as Professor Bhaer. However, the film also underscores the implausibility of his rainy reunion with Jo. (If you’ve not yet seen the film, be warned that there are spoilers ahead!) Gerwig includes a prior scene in which Jo is asked by her publisher to ensure her protagonist is married by the end of her recently drafted novel. While always an avatar for Alcott herself, Jo’s experiences in Gerwig’s film align even more closely with that of her originator. The final triumphant scene of the 2019 Little Women is of the newly minted author Josephine March clutching a freshly bound copy of her debut novel, her left ring finger deliberately obscured from the audience’s eyes. Gerwig allows us to have it both ways: we watch both the romantic conclusion in which Jo and Bhaer enjoy domestic and pedagogical bliss, and the more feminist one in which Jo remains a “literary spinster” like Alcott, having married the fictional version of herself off in print only.
Drawing on Alcott’s letters, diaries, and other writings, Gerwig’s adaptation is also an interpretation of the novel that achieved the impossible for me: reconciling me to the travesty of Little Women’s sequel. I had the luck as a child to read only Part I of Little Women, merely skimming Part II--published separately as Good Wives--when I was working through my crush on Christian Bale as an adolescent. I loved my red leather-bound edition of Little Women, entirely missing the moral lesson of Vanity Fair by exclaiming over Jenny Thorne’s illustration of Meg in all her finery. Unsurprisingly, a little girl who grew up to be an English professor adored the literary and theatrical games played by the March sisters and never fretted about the possible fates of the younger siblings.
Having grown up in Bedford, where The Pilgrim’s Progress was written, I also appreciated that Alcott adopted the structure of John Bunyan’s allegory for her novel. The contrast with Good Wives was profound: the sequel lacked all literary merit for me. However, Gerwig’s film makes extremely effective use of it as a framing narrative, contrasting the cold reality of the characters’ adult lives with the nostalgic hues of their childhood in a series of flashbacks. Watching Gerwig’s interleaving of Parts I and II, I finally saw how much narrative and emotional sense the later experiences of the March sisters might make. For instance, as Davianne would enjoy, Amy and Laurie’s romance gets far more screen time, potentially rehabilitating the most hated March sister for a new generation. I found myself unexpectedly rooting for Amy, a minor artist wishing for security and respect without discarding the values of her family and upbringing.
I would recommend to Davianne and other frustrated readers of Little Women, as well as those who enjoyed Gerwig’s film for its innovative take on the novel, that they read Alcott’s writing for adults, especially the works collected in Elaine Showalter’s Alternative Alcott. Like Jo, Alcott wrote Gothic fiction and you might find yourself cheering on the anti-heroine of Behind a Mask, an actress-turned-governess for whom marriage as an economic proposition seems like a plausible triumph. Meanwhile, Christie in Work: A Story of Experience, who builds a diverse community of women through her varied labors, is also a worthy successor to our beloved Jo.
Perhaps, after 132 years in the grave, we might finally recognize the trick Alcott played on us and enjoy its perversity as much as she did.