BY Molly McHugh
The new film adaption of Louisa May Alcott's novel, Little Women is a heartfelt, emotional but yet uplifting story of four sisters through their teenage years at the time of the American civil war. Having not read the book nor seen previously produced films, I was in complete awe of Alcott’s purist storytelling and Greta Gerwig’s phenomenal creative and truthful direction of feminism in the 19th Century.
The four March sisters; Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) each played a defined and personalised character under the care of their mother Marmee March (Laura Derm – who just won an Oscar for her role, whoop!) whilst their father (Odeon Kirk) was pastoring at the Civil War. Greta Gerwig revamped the novel by beginning the film at the sisters’ adulthood, flashing back to their childhood/teenage years.
The first scene begins with Jo, the impulsive writer trying to make her way selling story’s to stern publisher Mr Dashwood (Tracey Letts) at a difficult time where ‘morals don’t sell’. Jo claims her anonymous friend wrote the published stories while she teaches in a boarding house in New York. Denying her love for a further critic Professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), she drops her writing and flees back to New England with news her young sister Beth had fallen ill.
The scene reverts to rural New England seven years previous; andthe March family, struggling to show happy faces through their first Christmas without a father figure. With not a Christmas tree in sight nor presents underneath, Marmee makes the girls pack up and deliver their Christmas Breakfast and spare blankets to a lesser neighbour where children were sick, cold and hungry. They returned home to a full breakfast provided by a wealthy neighbour Mr Lawrence (Chris Cooper) who saw their generosity through his window. Theodore, also known as Mr Laurence’s Grandson 'Laurie', (Timothée Chalamet) became best friends with Jo March and became a brother-like figure to the rest of the sisters.
Beth, the younger of the sisters, was too timid to attend school where physical abuse was popular in a time of low funding for girls’ educations. Beth stayed at home doing chores, following her mother’s kindness caring for sick children and practising her love for music on Mr Lawrence’s daughter’s piano. Beth was rewarded with a gift of the Laurence’s piano, but unfortunately her care for others left her ill with scarlet fever. Amy was shipped off to live with Aunt March (Meryl Streep) due to a fear of catching the fever, where she perfected her painting and aspired to become a well-known, fine artist. In an era where women could only be successful by marrying rich as expressed by Aunt March (a wealthy widow) Amy was gullible and travelled to Europe with Aunt March meeting Fred Vaughn (Dash Barber) who proposes to her.
Meg, the eldest of the sisters, who remembered the times when the Marchs had money was a pretty, girly girl, who liked nice dresses and to be seen as proper to society. Meg, battling her greed through a tough time of illness and war, soon became aware of the value of money and the importance of her health and family. Meg marries Orphan John Brooke (James Norton) and has twins becoming a stay at home mother near the family home.
As Beth becomes sicker, she persuades Jo to write her stories and read them to her. Jo stays by her side until she takes her last breath. Amy arrives home with a plot twist marrying Laurie, and Jo’s heart sinks until Professor Bhaer arrives with condolences and she realises her true love. After the loss of Beth, Jo picks up her pen and writes endlessly for days and days a novel based on the life of the four sisters called ‘Little Women’. She takes it back to Mr Dashwood as her own and negotiates the book to be published at a fair price and the way she wants it. Jo uses the money from the book and Aunt March’s house left in her will to start up a school for girls and boys where the three sisters teach education, art and music and no longer live in poverty.
For me, this film was an eye-opener seeing how the March sisters were entertained by the art of play and the simplicity of spending time together with the absence of television, mobile phones or even transport. A film of honesty, strong morals and realism is exactly what this generation needs to see, and I hope the novel – or others from this era - create many more adaptions for future generations to come.