Jo, Rey & Other Strong (But Lonely) Female Characters

Mary meet little woman appreciators Today's comment shout out goes to StopItLol who says the following I just can't stop thinking about how Jo March would be a raging feminist in these days Just imagine her speaking out about woman's rights on social media and protesting on the streets How she would go out of her ways to break the patriarchy because it's just bullshit She would also take her husband with her.

Don't tell me she wouldn't because she would And Fritz would just stand there looking at her in awe because she is such a strong woman And he's so happy that he found her She'd write fantasy books that portray the different types of feminism using novels to explain everything Because everything is more fun when you use your imagination What makes a little woman interesting is that Jo doesn't start out as a feminist To be honest,

I don't think any one of us start out as a feminist She's actually quite a misogynistic character for most part of the book series And when she becomes more influenced by her sisters and Fridtig she becomes more feminist When Jo is with Laurie,

They both treat women like objects But when Jo is with Fritz,

She begins to treat other women a lot better because he does And same happens with Laurie when he is with Amy I always enjoy our discussions with Emily This time we'll be talking about the portrayal of female characters in the media And this episode is sponsored by Audible If you are like me and you enjoy a good story Audible is the place for you and you can use the affiliate link in the description to get 30 days free trial And by doing that you are supporting the making of this podcast This is Small Umbrella in the Rain,

Little Woman Podcast Jo March,

The portrayal of strong but very lonely female characters in the media I think I talked to you about this before I talked a few days ago or like last week Remember when I said,

Oh it doesn't really make sense how better Gerwig has divided up the two timelines Into a very happy and perfect timeline and then this really grim and more moody timeline I was thinking about it and I was like,

Before I met you Stuart,

I was like this makes no sense Because what was so rosy about the civil war,

About living in the middle of the civil war When their dad is away,

He could die,

He could die in action and also they were poor And the whole reason that Marmie was angry all the time,

You know why she's angry every paper light Is because she's watching her kids live in poverty It's not great and they have to save on things and they have to make personal sacrifices And things were so perfect,

That dichotomy does not make sense And it also takes away of course from the very optimistic American message in the story Which is that,

Yeah you take away lessons that you learned in childhood And then you apply them to adulthood to make your circumstances better Like adulthood is not,

It's not supposed to be sadder than childhood Like the two stages of life,

They are connected And so people in my video were explaining to me,

Oh you see the color grading Is to highlight how one timeline is supposed to be darker than the other And one's more optimistic and great And I'm like,

That makes it worse for me Because that goes against all the messages that I've got out of the book One of my friends said that Jo is made to be a martyr in Greta Gerwig's film That double timeline really shows that she's this romancous person in these childhood images And then this martyr in these gritty terrible adulthood images I felt that they killed Bette just so Jo would become a writer That's not why Bette exists,

That really bothered me You know all that stuff being this very childish immature person When she's interacting with Fredrik,

That goes against the novel as well And then that part of her almost accepting Laurie's proposal What was that about?

So none of that really resonates with the novel If you look at childhood with roasting classes Especially in this case,

You will lose all the context that there is Yeah,

And basically talk to them about how the civil war is almost pretty much erased in the 2019 film And I think they try and bring it in maybe a couple times like in scenes with Marmee When she's volunteering But apart from that,

It is very much absent Because the 1994 and even the 2017 were still grounded in that reality In fact 2017 emphasizes the civil war the most Out of all of these adaptations Because remember they added in a part with John going off the road We had more of their father's perspective It was a really interesting angle,

I thought it was really great That's what growls the whole story in reality That's the thing,

Because she was saying that life is hard,

But you make the best out of it No matter what stage of life you're at I almost feel like Greta Gerwig,

She looked at that first part of Little Women So the Little Women,

And was like,

Oh this is so great And the second part of this novel,

Joe went off and got married And all of them,

And my favourite couple didn't become a fan So I don't like it,

I think it's just a statement of how she perquered her personal preference of the two books Of the two parts,

I don't know,

Frankly it's just not an honest interpretation You're just being very biased between one part of the story versus another Alcott's cooler,

Amy Lynn Birch,

She did some criticism on this She said that if you change the narrative of Little Women So basically when the story of Little Women is being changed Then you are just starting to spread false information about the Alcott's If you change the narration of Little Women,

Then you change the narration of what people think about the Alcott's Louisa,

She was a nurse in civil war,

She knew what the war was like And I don't see her as,

But then I guess people don't like it when she kind of settles down to marry someone But I'm kind of like,

Well,

No one forced her to become feminine again I don't think she even really puts that aside I think she just is like,

Well,

I'm ready to be an adult,

Be a productive adult Take care of my family,

I think she's comfortable with that And I think Jo is like 28 when she gets married Yeah!

She's super old in the 19th century context when most girls married when they were 17 But I think it's not about rejecting marriage at all You know,

When Louisa was alive,

Most marriages,

They weren't love marriages And she saw lots of very unhappy marriages around her because they were not based on love They were based on money and comfortable life Louisa wanted to promote that idea that you should marry for love if you are going to marry someone The Marchisters,

The Mother March,

They say to make,

You should be 21 when you get married or older Nowadays,

If you are 21 and you get married,

People are,

That's way too young age to get married Louisa is promoting the idea that a love-based marriage Is a pro-marriage between two fully formed adults Yeah,

Exactly That's how I interpret her take on things Because I don't think we have many very young marriages in the novel even Because I know for Mae,

You know,

Marnie and their father,

They actively make her delete the marriage Like,

I mean,

They like John,

But they actively make him wait Yeah But also they want John to be in a stable living Yeah First,

Which is totally legitimate Jo is like in her late 20s,

I think,

You know,

Amy is what in her,

She's got to be in her early mid-20s Yeah Yeah,

I think she's very pro-find yourself Yeah Which I think is not even something that we see a lot in young adult novels even at these days Yeah,

Very true Yeah,

Like,

Yeah,

Because a lot of young adult novels are just like,

Oh,

We're 17,

We're going to be together forever And we're like,

You know,

Like Little League of Women is just like,

No,

You need to wait,

Hold up,

You're not a fully formed person And this is how you know that she was like a more mature woman when she was like,

You know,

And I appreciate it Yeah,

That sort of like,

You know,

Pulling off and being like,

Yeah,

Maybe I'm not like a fully formed person yet I think that's a totally balanced thing that we need more in fiction I think this is part of the first conversation that we had,

This narrative that Louis wasn't interested in love or marriage But then you can read her diary,

Tell this man who she had crushes on Yeah And even considered marriage,

It is a weird narrative Yeah,

No,

I think people were very resistant to this in the comments on my video Because they were like,

No,

She admired them,

She just admired these men,

Like,

You know,

As artists No,

No I think it was more than that There was a lot more than that Yeah,

No,

I'm pretty sure,

A lot of people,

They,

I don't know,

They're so attached to this one narrative about her that I feel like They're a little bit delighted,

If you went into the research without your own sort of preconceptions then,

You know,

You would see this Which is baffling to me how people think that Pritikharwink did her research so much Like,

Going into making the film,

Because I'm like,

All the things she's saying,

All the things she did in the film This doesn't indicate that she knew about the writer,

That she even wanted to acknowledge She had her own narrative that she put in and then she picked the bits just in what she was saying Like the whole,

Like,

Oh,

Like,

You know,

Louisa didn't want Jo to get married but then she wrote in a love interest just to,

Like,

You know,

Please her publisher Which,

You know,

Doesn't track when you consider that Louisa wrote,

You know,

What,

Two sequels?

Yeah On his marriage Daniel Sheely,

He made the research on the letters that Louisa wrote with her publisher,

Came to the conclusion that,

You know,

All the marriages were Louisa's idea But it's so funny because I was doing the research on these stories that Louisa had been reading The love story between Jo and Pritik and then Amy and Laurie,

You can trace them back to the stories that Louisa was reading as a teenager And some of them also to the relationships that she had with these men who she had brushes on Or maybe it was something deeper,

Kind of miss the whole story if you don't pay attention to that I was speaking with a friend of mine who was a big Amy fan and they'd been doing this research on May Alcott and then Louisa's relationship with her May and then Julian Harton who was,

You know,

Their neighbour,

He had a crush on May and also he was very artistically inclined And he didn't want to go to college and then May Alcott,

She was like sort of scolding him about that And I was wondering,

Oh,

Okay,

Like Louisa might have got some of her inspiration from there If you just say that only tomboys are feminist,

That's only going to harm the feminist movement The political landscape now,

I don't know if you observe this in a lot of fiction now,

I think I talk about it a bit in my new video,

A lot of media now shows these people who are made to be single in order to be strong Star Wars Rise of Skywalker came out this year as the new Little Women For me,

Like,

You know,

The main character,

If she's a female,

She ends up alone She's like this glorious,

Powerful person and she's alone Lots of people sound very depressing because I'm like,

Well,

This person who craves family,

Like Jo,

By the way,

Who's so lonely,

Really ends up alone And I think the fact that Jo in this adaptation goes through a very similar process I mean,

She ends up with her book,

Her glory,

And then she ends up alone And that's how she remains strong and independent Which I think also is very harmful to feminism as well when you show a few modes of being strong Being a strong independent female And especially in the particular context of that story,

I think it's actually quite harmful as well Because you're saying,

Oh well,

Only Jo got to be accomplished And the only way she was able to be accomplished was by not being with anybody Not knowing anyone,

Which is not natural to write Like we discussed how Emerson was a positive influence on Louisa with her writing So basically,

If Jo doesn't have really contributing to her character arc She would have remained in this state of writing these novels that she got trashed So she would not have grown as a writer and she would not have become this billionaire who people were chasing crickets in her backyard If you erase Louisa's character,

Jo doesn't get her character arc at all She doesn't get her family,

She doesn't get to start a school,

And she doesn't become a writer Yeah,

Definitely I think especially in the group,

I think she also takes away some of the influence,

The mutual influence of even Laurie and Amy's relationship Because I don't think she shows why this relationship works,

Or justifies why that relationship works But by erasing Friedrich,

And you also erase the nature of Laurie and Amy's relationship,

The foundation of that relationship You don't acknowledge how relationships are actually quite influential in your life You are just showing that you really shouldn't need anyone When in fact,

Sometimes your partner is the person who really influences your work,

Really helps you to be the best person that you can be That is very much missing from the adaptation And I think it's a very important scene of Little Women,

Is having someone who helps you be productive Yeah,

Very true And I read this bit of a horror quote from Louisa from the time when she was in her 50s and she was really struggling with her illness And she wrote,

She's envious to her sisters,

And she sees their marital happiness So it's sad how people just ignore these kind of things But I think a lot of people don't really like to believe that Louisa would have actually felt loneliness Because she's kind of become this imaginary character for some people One of the things that Jo does in the book,

And then something that also affected Louisa's life was that She did not want that people saw her vulnerable,

Which is a very masculine trait,

If you think about it There's this quote in Little Women where Laurie is like,

You never show anyone your emotions You are this blank face,

And I can get through to you,

You don't let anyone in So I think that's why this relationship that she had with Frith was important because she became a bit softer and more open You can't always operate without a bit of masculine and feminine influence And Jo aspires so much to the masculine part of herself I think she forgets that feminine natures or feminine traits are actually really important to being a complete person as well I think Laurie,

When she allows a feminine influence into his life,

That's when he actually really develops There's this moment with Laurie,

He doesn't really care who he's going to marry But then he has all these mushy thoughts about Amy,

It's quite funny You can see how he's sort of transcending at that point Maybe this is not all that there is to composing Trying to pretend that you are a composer,

A lot of his problems,

I don't think they didn't have that much to do with Jo or Amy I think they had to do with his parents and his background A lot of other things that are never in the adaptations But you really have to try to read into the sub-context of the novel to understand his mind Yeah,

Yeah He basically grows up most of his life around his grandfather,

He's a bit of an austere character He grows up with a male tutor Even when he goes over to the marches,

Because he's craving to be an influencer,

He doesn't know it But the thing is,

The person he's closest to is Jo,

Who's really finding femininity in herself She's not acknowledging it So he has an idea about having sort of a family and having that warmth But he doesn't really know how to synthesize that into his life Even when he hangs out with women,

He doesn't know how to make feminine attributes into a strength He only really knows how to do when Amy really sits in bound and says You're being a really lazy person and you're not making anything of your life And then that's the best of the point when it actually goes into his mind When he actually takes it in I think what it comes to Jo and Amy is essential differences Amy is someone who,

She understands the way the different parts of the society work She has this complete understanding how to behave and how to approach people,

Make the life work for herself But then Jo is the opposite She believes that the society is against her So she has this kind of idea,

I need to fight against the society in order to get things Amy believes that you work for the society,

Then you get things You go by with the route that has been led to you Jo's interactions with 3D kind of makes her a bit more Amy-like person Because he guides her,

If you want to break it into the publishing industry You need to become a better writer and this is how you do it Then he gives her a set of Shakespeare's novels and then he's like You absurd people around you,

Pay attention to the characters And Jo starts to observe him,

Which is really funny And that's when she calls for him When Jo becomes a better writer,

She gets into the publishing industry She becomes very successful So in a way she incorporates some of these things that Amy did And Amy became a positive influence in that sense for Jo as well And she was observing the way she was getting the things that she wanted Jo took influence from Amy in a way They weren't in opposition to each other But it was great talking to you Yeah,

You too,

It's a great talk We've been talking for almost two hours I'd love to talk with you again about other scenes at all If you'd like to I always enjoy our conversations I have two Little Women videos in mind actually I'm reviewing the Little Women 2017 I want to do a review on that Because the commenters have been asking me to do a review So I'm just like,

Fine,

I'll do a review And I also want to do another video called My Favorite 5 Seconds of Little Women 1994 I'm going to watch this Remember the scene from Little Women 1994 when Jo reveals that she cut her hair And she and Marnie actually have a moment And I think the way that is edited and written is actually quite interesting And I think it's one of the,

For me,

It's actually a huge turning point in the film And I think really sets the tone for the second half of the film as well So I want to do an analysis of that Sounds good Yeah,

Well I'll be really interested to hear other people that you interviewed on the podcast as well I know you talked about Laurie with somebody We'll probably talk online And I guess I'll talk to you later then Okay,

It's great talking to you Here is a quote from that Vermillion Flycatcher The movie was also promoted not only as the ultimate take on the novel based on the previous claim But sneakily tried to be about women finally made by women Which went even as far as Meryl Streep saying that it was the first time it was directed by women When in fact,

Gervick is at the scene of the film And the movie is about a woman who is a woman who is a woman who is a woman who is a woman When in fact,

Gervick is at least the third woman adapting little woman for the screen The 1994 movie was written and directed by a woman and so was the 2017 miniseries and the 2018 movie The notion that the marriage at the end is stacked on reviews either bad reading,

Comprehension or a stubborn refusal to actually read the text The novel starts with the first separation of the March family,

Meg's wedding And as time passes and Plott moves forward,

The separation grows more and more Jo is no longer Aunt March's caretaker Amy leaves for Europe,

Jo herself has to leave to try and make Laurie stop thinking of her Then Laurie leaves,

Then Beth dies and at the turning point of Jo's arc She feels lonelier than ever,

Crushed under the weight of Beth's home responsibilities Like she has been forgotten and left behind The plot twist is that there was someone that saw her,

That knew her,

That understood her That had been loving and thinking of her all along from a distance When adaptions forego the plot point of the poem to achieve circular structure by Jo writing little woman,

This gets obscured The movie acknowledges this aspect of Jo's growing loneliness but doesn't follow through it till its last consequences Where there are the ways of solving Jo's loneliness than marriage Sure,

Make her get involved in an orphanage or school in New York Make her meet good friends with which she could build a community at Bloomfield But that requires chasing the structure of good wives in a significant way And Gerwig didn't want to or,

I suspect,

Couldn't,

Really depart from the text that way The way she gets around it is by mocking it Which for someone that has,

As their intended respect in the original author,

Is kind of nasty There isn't a trace of irony in the ending of the book So you are either appealing as definitive interpretation a throwaway line in a letter Or think that Louisa May Alcott is a clumsy writer The real,

Truer ending seems to be the publishing of the book But achievements don't fend off loneliness,

Not in a satisfactory way Anyone that has had an achievement knows this Publishing a book and keeping the royalties while being great in and of itself Is not the natural resolution of loneliness It's the natural resolution of insecurity or of overcoming great exterior obstacles Which is in a way an aspect of Louisa May Alcott's story But not of Jo's in either the novel or the movie So the movie tries to keep the canon ending Because studios won't have it another way while mocking it Because Greta Gerwig doesn't like it and giving an alternate ending that is left vague But also giving some crumbs to the Jo and Laurie fans with the take me back letter And the golden flashback of their friendship And that's what I think besides of the publicity focusing on stepping on the work of other women that came before her Is the core of the intellectual dishonesty of this movie If you really think you need to liberate Louisa May Alcott Then you change the plot to take the professor out of the equation for real If you accept the canon ending or of another expression of the other's wishes Then you keep it as a real ending or at the very least don't mock it Here goes also the transformation of Ritik's character into a jerk I guess she is referring to the scene where Fritz says that he doesn't like Jo's stories When in the novel he does not like sensationalism as a genre And Jo herself has discomforts with sensationalism as a genre But did Greta Gerwig thought of that?

No she didn't,

She didn't even read the novel Or that's what I think because everything that she has said about it does not happen in the novel Back to the quote In my opinion a refreshing way of telling the story would have been of telling the story within a story Tell Louisa May Alcott's little woman Show us Louisa May Alcott's struggles as an author trying to get published Carry us through the process of writing the novel Through writing and rewriting and struggle with the editors Show us scenes from the novel as they come to life under her pen Give Jo her canon ending Give Louisa May Alcott the final victory of publishing and keeping the royalties But that doesn't seem to be the movie the studios wanted What was wanted was another version of novel Little Woman and make it so that it has star power and comedy fees feminism And to do so it needs to reject marriage and femininity while at the same time do lip service to it with a throwaway Make telling Jo that her dreams are important too never carries on into something in the plot It needs to satisfy people that dislike the canon ending for different reasons while still keeping it And that's exactly what this movie does far more than honouring authorial intent and liberating Louisa May Alcott As an iconic line from a character in a series would say Have you ever stopped to consider the turn out of the rebellion business?

Think about it So many people fighting the system and the system keeps getting wealthier There are lots of really good points here And I have heard lots of people saying that Gerwig should have done a movie about Louisa May Alcott But even if she had made a film about Louisa she should have included Louisa's love for Henry and her fling with Lettice Leswissniewski Since Gerwig constantly complained about Friedrich's looks would there had been similar issues with Henry?

A lot of people of the time said that Henry was attractive but not handsome He was handsome to Louisa If you read Louisa's correspondence with her publisher Thomas Niles The only requirements he had in terms of the book was to change Larry's looks to be more handsome It would be interesting to know why he didn't ask Louisa to write Fritz to be more handsome But maybe it has something to do with Friedrich's looks being based on Henry And truly the novel she doesn't really like pretty boys or effeminate looking guys In the letters Louisa and her publisher they do discuss about branding Louisa Like Emily and I discussed earlier a lot of people see little woman as a young adult novel But in the 19th century Louisa's brand was to be someone who wrote educational books for children And because of that she did not want the public to know about her past and her relationships Especially about the relationship with Lettice Leswiss because he was so much younger It seems that the men who she did care for and loved they died Men like Henry and John Surrey,

Then the men who were fond of her Cared more of her as a maternal figure rather than an equal partner And that must have been difficult I guess we could say that Louisa May Alcott was afraid of the cancel culture And one of my friends said that someone with such huge celebrity status like Louisa had Would not have opened up to the public about their loneliness Because she was properly afraid that people would make fun of her And she was ashamed of it.

That is actually written into Little Woman Louisa writes that Joe was not afraid of falling in love But she was deadly afraid of what the other people are going to say about her She is especially afraid what Laurie is going to say And that he is going to make fun of her Which is not something that he does because he has grown as a person If you demand that Joe is Louisa,

Which is what Greta Gerwig does The bookbinding scene doesn't make any sense because it is a well known fact that Louisa May Alcott Did not care that much about Little Woman And I 100% think it has all to do with her love life Louis' personal favourite book was Moods Which is a very good anthology to look at how Louisa saw Henry And it is a book that she always went back re-writing And then Greta Gerwig says that Joe needs to feel herself as a winner Which is why she hired a hot French guy to play Friedrich Because,

Quote,

How could she say no to beautiful Timothy Samalay Those were literally her words Showing the novel she doesn't find Laurie attractive She calls him girly and he is harassing her And like Emily said,

Showing that toxic masculinity Not just in Laurie but in his and Joe's relationship That would make an actual feminist statement You can't say that you are being truthful to the author and then make fun of her work In this case it seems to be Louisa's loneliness that is being made fun of Now the thing is,

When Louisa first published Little Woman She thought of it pretty highly But the more popular the book came and then she got more and more letters people asking her to marry Joe to Laurie She got more and more frustrated with the novel And it's like what one of my blog readers said That if Friedrich is based on someone who Louisa was in love with Which he is,

That would explain why Louisa was very frustrated by the little girls who were writing her Who were writing her and asking her to rewrite the ending of the novel Alcott Schooler Susan Bailey said that writing the happy endings for her heroes was a coping mechanism for Louisa That goes along with Louisa's belief for reincarnation That in the next life she gets the life that she wanted with the person she was in love with We can say the same about writers like Jane Austen She passionately fell in love once in her life Family did not approve,

She had to give him up And then she relived her love story and wishes of life she wanted to have in her novels So Louisa's liberation was not being free from her editor's request Since regards to Joe,

The editor did not make any request Louisa's real prison was her loneliness In the novel when Friedrich returns it's because he has found a poem that Joe wrote about her loneliness That poem was based to a poem that Louisa herself had written about herself And if I quote Chrissy West No law waits for her except the love that she must give Neither which makes her happy For Louisa's loneliness was not the liberation That was the actual prison The work alone does not satisfy her Sometimes I wonder if more people would know about Louisa's loneliness Would they be that much against Friedrich's character?

I don't think they would be What surprised me was that Gerrit presented herself as some sort of Louisa Mayalcott expert And then she said that Louisa didn't care about love or romance And if you do a simple Google research on Louisa and Henry Tarrow and Ladi Wysniewski You know that's complete BS And Gerrit said that she wanted to do a good job with Amy and Laurie Yet romanticizing Laurie and then have a show changing her mind about the proposal How come is that a way to honor Amy and Laurie?

Since none of that happens in the novel And for those of you who have not read the book Jo does not send any kind of letters to Laurie Laurie actually proposes Jo again And this happens the moment Laurie realizes he has feelings for Amy So when Jo's response arrives and she says no Laurie is actually quite happy about it Some who I know read the book for the first time after they saw the 2019 film And they said that because Greta Gerwig had said that Louisa hated Friedrich's character They were expecting Jo in the book not to like him But then were surprised when Jo in the book cannot shut up about him The theme Laurie,

Theme Bear,

Theme whatever That is a construction entirely made up by the filmmakers They never show you the real reasons why Jo rejected Laurie Why she fell for Fritz That is something that we can trace to Louisa's own life Here is a quote from Alcott Schooler,

Jamie Lynn Burch I am interested in why Gerwig thought it was so important To include anecdotes and quotations from the Alcott's lives Without giving the Alcott's a place in the film Everyone wants a little woman to be about the Alcott's Says Eva Laplante,

Author of Marmy and Louisa We are greeted by this fact at the very beginning of Gerwig's film I've had lots of trouble so I write jolly tales The quotation reads as an epic craft,

Yet in some ways This film seems to disregard those real troubles Instead choosing the easier little woman as a vehicle for Louisa May Alcott's real life Louisa May Alcott experienced the bizarre world of fame in her lifetime She was asked to stand on a stage and turn in a complete circle for her adoring audience Fans got grasshoppers out on her lawn as souvenirs But when she answered the door she disappointed her readers She was not Joe March,

She was not spry or youthful When Joe lamented,

I can't get over my disappointed in not being a boy Because she wanted to go to war We have to realize that Louisa May Alcott did go to war And in the end it cost her her life In fact her own father said that if he had known the cost He would never have let her go I can think of many ways to represent Alcott in the film and keeping her separate from Joe I can imagine a narrative voice,

Hence writing in a cold house Maybe that wasn't the story Gerwig meant to tell Yet she included so many of the details of the Alcott's own lives That it seems she wanted to I wonder if any of this helps us to understand little woman any better Little woman can stand alone as art without Louisa's life and the other lives of the Alcott's as crutch But I am interested in where we draw the line In how and why we want to mislead the audience into a blurry line between life and fiction Everything that is told about the Marches effects to what is told about the Alcott's Thank you for listening Take care and make good choices