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| Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888 |
The other week I reread Little
Women for the first time in ages, for academic purposes. No really,
enjoyable though the process was, it was actually for academic purposes. But from
a very non-academic perspective, I was struck by how my reception of Louisa May
Alcott’s novel has changed over the years.
When I was 16, like when lots of little women are 16 or 12,
19 or whenever they first read it, it’s all about Jo and Laurie, and the
tragedy of Beth. Many a tear has been shed for Beth, and many a frustrated
reader has puzzled not only at Jo rejecting Laurie, but Laurie then going off
and marrying Amy. It's not that I didn't understand why Jo and Laurie weren't suited to each other, but Amy? Not to mention the uncomfortable reaction to Jo marrying
Friedrich Bhaer. I mean, I kind of got that being a poor academic is cool in
theory, but he must be 40 if he’s a day!
This is hardly an original response, as evident from a quick
Google search, as well as a 2011 book called Little Women and Me. Written by Lauren
Baratz-Logsted, it’s about a 14-year-old girl who finds herself transported
back to the 1860s March household and goes about trying to right literary “wrongs” -
namely Amy ending up with Laurie, and Beth dying. No, I haven’t read it,
because I don’t really go in for that sort of put-yourself-in-a-classic-novel thing. Also, it
suggests a reading of the book far too influenced by the 1994 film adaptation starring
Winona Ryder, Christian Bale, and Claire Danes. I enjoyed the movie, but it’s
very much Jo with supporting player sisters, and although it does a great job
with the young Amy, the screenplay denies her any agency as an adult. She’s an
ornament without depth, so with the inevitable movie plot truncation her
marriage to Laurie is not only sudden, but really rather perplexing. Another
issue I have with the movie, which I will elaborate in another blog post is how
they’ve conflated Josephine March the character with Louisa May Alcott
the historical figure by making Jo the author of a book called “Little Women.”
Isn’t in the novel. Didn’t happen. Stop changing the story.
Anyway, now that I am much closer to 40 than 16, a lot of
those things that I didn’t like about the novel just seem so very right now.
For one thing, Meg and her marital-maternal muddles are
significantly more interesting. First time round I barely paid her any
attention. Meg - BORING! Drank some champagne at a party, got a bit flirty,
married Laurie’s teacher, and then had twins. -Ah, young Erin, you bad
proto-critic, that’s pretty much the film plot. Clearly I was skipping bits as
I read and ignored the chapters where she’s a stressed out young mother and not
especially doting wife for a year after the twins were born. - DIDN’T CARE!
These days I’m decidedly more sympathetic to the pragmatic
homeliness of the novel, and quite approve of Marmie’s advice to get someone
else to watch the kids and go out with your husband.
However, the most surprising thing was how invested I was in
Amy and Laurie, not to mention how completely bleeding obvious their marriage
is from the very beginning of the book. I mean, 16-year-old Laurie doesn’t
fancy 12-year-old Amy, or anything like that, but Alcott makes it quite clear
that Amy is the March girl for him. And vice versa. It’s not just that Laurie
saves Amy when she falls through the ice, but he does that wonderful thing many
of us wanted from slightly older boys when we were 12 or 13: He teases Amy, protects her, AND pays proper attention to her. He essentially treats her like
a grown-up and takes her concerns seriously, which is more than can be said of
her sisters. Laurie takes the trouble to visit Amy when she’s in exile/quarantine
at Aunt March’s house, and signs her laughably earnest will. Furthermore, when
he lets slip about things not looking good for Beth, he doesn’t then dismiss
it, but straightforwardly answers her questions.
And how did I possibly miss that it is Laurie whom Amy
clings to just as she heads off to Europe? Just as she realises that “a whole
ocean was soon to roll between her and those who loved her best...”
“[...] and if anything happens, I’ll come and comfort you,”
whispered Laurie, little dreaming how soon he would be called upon to keep his
word.”
But Laurie is being big brother Laurie here, and in my
Jo/Beth focussed reading, I could only see the dread of Beth’s eventual death
in this chapter. Laurie loves Jo after all, and surely this will follow the standard
L.M. Montgomery-type plot where the heroine thinks she’s just pals with the
hero until she suddenly realises that such jolly friendship is actually love.
Alcott more or less invented the “girls” novel, so she
didn’t have to follow any such plot patterns. Jo is quite resolute that she
doesn’t see her boy Teddy in that way, and why should she? She’s his friend,
she knows they’d make each other miserable, and more to the point, she doesn’t
love him that way. Alcott is stridently warning against the tendency to force a
romance out of a good friendship. Tis better to be alone than to settle for
love.
I’m digressing somewhat (incidentally, if you’re at all
concerned, this is not the style of my academic writing).
So where was I? Laurie. He’s a very well constructed character
and no mere dreamy teen love interest. In particular, he struggles with the
slowly dawning realisation that he loves Amy. He really has to reconcile
himself to the notion that the two sisters are swapping places in his
affection. It’s not just a matter of showing up one day in Nice, seeing Amy,
and thinking, “Oh well, Jo won’t have me, this March girl will do.” Alcott also
lets Amy figure out a few quandaries of her own before admitting that
it was Laurie all along. And that’s the thing, it’s all along for both of them.
More importantly, the surprise for me as an adult reader was
my sudden interest in Amy as a character. I had totally written her off as the
slightly bitchy, kind-of accomplished one. All style, no substance. Perhaps a
bit Samantha Mathis working with an sparse script. But let me tell you, Amy has
substance. Sure, she likes to dress well and knows that she can easily play the
ornament of society, but Amy is still a March girl, and heir to her mother’s
principles. She sorts Laurie’s indolence out as no one else can, and lectures
him admirably on living up to the opportunities you have been given: “But I did
really well at Harvard! Wah!” - “You’re a rich boy from Concord, Massachusetts,
anything less would have been appalling, so snap out of it.” (I paraphrase of
course.)
More importantly, Amy is an artist, and a proper one to boot.
Somehow that slipped me by. Arguably a better painter than Jo is a writer. She’s
in Europe not to dabble, but to learn art, and she doesn’t give it up to get
married; she realises that no amount of talent and energy will create genius: “I
want to be great or nothing. I won’t be a common-place dauber [...].” Laurie recognises the same thing with his music.
There are so many interesting discussions to be made about
the domestic trajectory of Little Women.
Why did Jo have to marry at all? Alcott never married, but it was
1869 and guess what lovies, we still want our heroines to settle down in 2013.
There is also a sense of resignation in the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence
returning from artistic Europe to sensible hard-working American life in
Massachusetts. Much has been made, for instance, of the narrative implication
that they will only have one child: young Bess who may be as sickly as her Aunt
Beth. You can perhaps imagine the academic ponderings about this great marriage
of beauty, talent, and wealth resulting in some sterility and decay. Jo and
Friedrich after all go on to run their school and have two fine healthy boys of
their own. Robust American Transcendentalism for the win!
Or maybe Alcott just didn’t want to give Amy everything.
Because life doesn’t give you everything. Or maybe it’s a story and sentimental
plots need some contrived balance.
Now this domesticity doesn’t mean that Laurie and Amy stop their
music and art altogether. In fact, we last see Amy perfecting sculpture so she
can be certain of a physical reminder of her infant daughter - God, that choked
me up so much. I actually had to excuse myself from the living room while
reading and run to double check what happens to Bess. [Plot spoiler: she’s
still alive in Jo’s Boys. Phew.
Struggle in vain to stop tears over fictional potential for fictional
character.]
To paraphrase Hugh Haweis, a 19th-century music writer, we
take from art that which we are capable of receiving. At 16, Jo was the
character most like me, lack of musicianship notwithstanding - and I had no
intention of being like Beth! I notice Meg now, because I too am managing children and husband and life. And perhaps I care about Amy this time around because I have found myself with a blond, artistic daughter who worries about her curls and may one day
be dreadfully concerned about the shape of her nose. And I know those
superficial foibles have little bearing on her talents, her firm sense of self
and her place in this world.
I’m also at a point with my music where I’m not satisfied by amateurism,
but I know my abilities have slipped. I might be scribbling here, but I can’t
force genius from my choral squawkings.
Most importantly, my biases and wants as a reader shape my analysis, but they can’t change a plot.
For my part as a critic, I argue that we have to accept the Transcendentalist
philosophy of the novel: Jo is no sentimental heroine to be married off to the
good American boy, despite all of Laurie’s wild Italian roots. Instead, Alcott has
created in Bhaer the solid-hearted, plain-living, and intellectual Romantic-with-a-capital-R
hero worthy of her Jo.
If you don’t like that, then I strongly suggest you reconsider Amy.
