My Very Own Little Women

My favorite movie of all time is Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Not simply for the incredible costumes and sets, nor for how the actors create an entire world of characters with complex emotional lives and understandings of the world. Rather, I continue to love this movie because I see myself in the characters. I have spent my entire life surrounded by strong, modern women. From my two older sisters to my powerful, kind mother to the gaggle of female cousins and aunts whom I get to see multiple times a year, my world is built on the lived experiences of the women who came before me and beside me. Each woman in my life is unique in her goals and desires, and yet, they all believe in feminism, for a society that treats women and men as equals, with equal expectations and a lack of stigma. This is why Gerwig’s rendition of Louisa May Alcott’s work is so powerful to me: it accentuates this multifaceted nature of womanhood. 

Combining Louisa May Alcott’s original writing and Greta Gerwig’s feminist vision, the 2019 film version of Little Women takes into account a dimension that was less explicit in previous depictions: a complex understanding and radical acceptance of feminine expression. Alcott wrote the novel in 1868 about the story of four sisters growing up in mid-Civil War Massachusetts, not poor, but definitely not rich either. The girls grow up without their father for most of the novel as he is away on the front lines, so their childhood is simply them, their mother, Marmee, and their servant Hannah. The book follows the four sisters as they navigate life and pursue their passions. Jo, the oldest, aspires to be a writer and a success. Meg dreams of a quiet, stable life with a family she loves. Beth, the quietest sister, longs to play the piano. Amy, the baby of the family, yearns for wealth, greatness, and love. All of them portray feminism in different ways, but as Meg explains in the movie, “Just because my dreams are different than yours, doesn’t mean they are unimportant.” 

Gerwig brings newfound agency and life into each character and explains that feminism isn’t the act of placing one gender above another, but lifting each other so we are all at the same level. She portrays the difference between the diverse desires of women to emphasize that there is no single correct way to exist as a woman, but that a patriarchal society will make many ways of being a woman undesirable. The key difference between Gerwig and Alcott’s interpretations is underscored by how marriage is portrayed in the film. In the book, Alcott explains that, although marriage is often a means to an end, it should be focused on love and care. For example, Alcott accentuates that the character Meg married not for money nor finances, but rather because she truly loved her husband. 

Gerwig, however, takes a different approach and emphasizes how marriage must be based on reciprocated feeling, and even treats marriage as a threatening presence: a dangerous intrusion to be feared, rather than loved. This becomes clear with a key bit of dialogue between Amy, the youngest sister, and Laurie, their close family friend, who doesn’t understand his privilege as a rich man. 

Amy: I’ve always known that I would marry rich. Why should I be ashamed of that?

Laurie: There is nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you love him.

Amy: Well, I believe that we have some power over who we love. It’s not something that just happens to a person.

Laurie: I think the poets might disagree.

Amy: Well, I’m not a poet. I’m just a woman. And as a woman, I have no way to make money, not enough to earn a living and support my family. And even if I had my own money, which I don’t, it would belong to my husband the minute we were married. If we had children, they would belong to him, not to me. They would be his property. So don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition when it is. It may not be for you, but it most certainly is for me. 

To me, this dialogue is one of the most important in the entire film because it details exactly what power men had within a patriarchal society and how, when that power is normalized, it is viewed as a given. Amy asserts herself in her agency by emphasizing that she is well aware of how the world works. At the same time, she is well aware of how to operate within it; this is what gives her power. Therefore, Amy can gain agency over herself and the situations that she is put in by understanding how the system itself works.

However, I’m not sure that everyone would see such a conversation as so feminist and forward-thinking. Some might see it as an exemplification of the lack of power women had in the past. This would make a modern viewer much more interested in the autonomy they have right now, rather than focusing on the struggles of the past. Neither perception is wrong, and both exist in how Gerwig aims to portray this narrative. This exhibits how feminism doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it morphs with the system and philosophies, and often looks extremely different to different people. 

I believe that this film holds up extremely well in a modern context because it touches on the expectation that women must be all or nothing. Gender expression and aspirations look different for everyone. All of the women in this movie exist in relation to themselves and each other, rather than in relation to a man. Gerwig and Alcott teach us that being a modern woman, being a feminist, does not mean that one must forgo or be defined by love and marriage.