Little Women Podcast: Jo Marries Goethe

Louisa Mayagot,

Great American writer,

Was born in 1832,

The same year great German writer and poet Goethe passed away.

Was that a sign?

Louisa became familiar with Goethe as a child,

Thanks to her father Bronson who had Goethe's biography in his small but selective library.

By the end of her life,

Louis had managed to collect all American editions and some of the German editions of Goethe's works,

And often sent notes to her friends to let her know when new editions were available,

So she could complete her Goethe collection.

This is what Alcott Schooler Christine Doyle writes.

By the time Alcott wrote Joost-Boys,

Which is the last Little Woman book,

In 1880s,

She had spent a lifetime reading Goethe,

And he was still clearly and consciously important to her.

In 1876 and again in 1883,

She had made attempts to collect as much of his work as possible.

She wrote to her publisher Thomas Niles,

Quote,

Thanks for the Goethe book.

I want everything that comes out about him.

Louisa was actually born in the first American town that was settled by German immigrants in 1683.

This was Germantown in Pennsylvania.

Louisa was born into a time when Americans started to consume German literature,

And there was somewhat a German epidemic in New England.

This was also the time when American universities started to include German books into their collections,

And many of these educational reformers were transcendentalists like the Algots.

During those years,

German immigrants and German literature made a powerful impact on America.

Quoting historian Russell Nye,

Although Irish immigrants were the most numerous,

Marches in Little Woman and Algots in real life were descendants of the Irish immigrants,

Germans were close behind,

Numbering 1.

3 million in 1860s.

In addition to their Protestant heritage,

Which made the typical German immigrant far less suspect in America than the Irish Catholic,

German immigrants were welcomed for their,

Quote,

Socially sophisticated tradition that included food,

Art,

And support for education.

The attitude towards immigration varied depending on the location.

Areas like New England,

Where there was a long history of German immigration,

People were naturally a lot more accepting.

But this was not the case in many other places.

In Little Woman,

Joe points out the difficulties Friedrich has finding a job because he is an outsider and speaks with broken English.

We can assume that this is why the local universities do not wish to hire him,

Despite the fact that he was a teacher of philosophy in Germany.

When Friedrich proposes to Joe,

He says that he is going to move to the West and work as a teacher there,

And the two agree to wait and work for their shared future.

This probably is a reference to Louis's love for philosopher Henry Thoreau,

Who to Louis embodied the ideology of the West.

West in the popular imagination refers into the last frontier of American settlement.

By some sub-day,

German immigrants were,

Quote,

Adaptable,

Ambitious,

And strongly patriotic.

Just such an immigrant is Friedrich Baer,

Whose character allows Algots to acknowledge many of the positive aspects of German culture that the new immigrants embodied.

Thoreau,

A renowned professor in Berlin,

There endures anonymity and poverty in America to honor his promise to his sister,

Who had married an American and wanted her two German-American sons to be raised there.

Get this deal today a huge figure in Germany,

And in Germany one must read at least some of his works to get into the university they want.

Lots of research has been done between the similarities in Louis's novel A Long Fatal Love Chase and Goethe's Faust,

But the connections between Goethe's writing and Little Woman is just beginning.

Friedrich and Joe are both mixed characters.

Louis wrote Joe to be an idealized version of herself.

Therefore,

Joe also has elements from women who Louis admired.

Louis wrote Friedrich to be her own ideal man,

So Friedrich has elements of men who Louis loved and admired,

And Goethe was one of these men.

Friedrich as a character has striking similarities with Goethe that go beyond their German background.

When Joe writes Let Her Home,

She describes Friedrich for the first time.

Mrs.

Goethe told me he was from Berlin,

Where we learned and good,

But poor as a church mouse.

Goethe was not poor as a church mouse.

He actually came from an aristocratic background.

But Friedrich shares Goethe's intellectualism,

And the book gives hints that if Friedrich would have remained in Germany,

He would have risen into great fame because of his intellectualism.

In his native city,

He had been a man much honored and esteemed for learning and integrity.

Joe felt proud to know that he was an honored professor in Berlin,

Though only a poor language master in America,

And his homely,

Hard-working life was much beautified by the spice of romance which this discovery gave it.

Goethe's native city was not Berlin,

He was from Weimar,

But the two cities are only 100 miles away from each other in the same region,

Quote from Meckernamknet.

By the time when Hocklrodt wrote Little Woman,

Berlin was gaining more and more importance and would become the capital of the new German Empire in 1871.

There are also similarities between Goethe's and Friedrich's personalities.

Both were family men and loved children.

Their characteristics include kindness and largeness of heart.

Friedrich loves kids and is very good with them.

After his sister Mina passed away,

He adopted his nephews,

Franz and Emil,

And raised them as his own.

For Joe,

That Friedrich has children,

Especially boys,

Is actually something very attractive.

Throughout the novel the narrator,

Louisa,

Mentions how much Joe loves boys and hanging out with boys and boys' energy.

Joe loves to observe how Fritz interacts with children.

When she is staying at New York,

She spies on him and little Tina,

Who is the daughter of the French maid at the boarding house.

Joe writes,

Tina has lost her heart to Mr.

Bear and follows him about the house,

Like a dog,

Whenever he is at home,

Which delights him as he is very fond of children.

Goethe's biographer Herder writes that Goethe was a great child all his life,

Eager to learn and willing to keep whatever he had to make others happy.

One of the things that Joe finds attractive in Friedrich's character is the way he is always ready to look after people and himself,

Which is contradiction to Larry's behavior,

Since for the most part of the novel,

Larry doesn't know how to be an adult or how to look after himself,

And he expects that once he marries Joe,

Joe shall become his caretaker,

Not an equal partner,

Which is what Amy later becomes.

In Little Woman,

Louisa hints that Friedrich's father might have abandoned his family.

This explains why Friedrich loves his sons and his nephews,

And wants to be an exceptionally good father.

He kissed his living son's head,

Remembering a father who left and never returned.

Goethe had a complicated relationship with his father.

He didn't approve his son's artistic endeavors,

And this is a topic Goethe often handles in his novels.

Young men often act out against the purgatory lives of their parents.

It is part of their rebellion.

Both Goethe and Louisa lived during time periods when marriages were based on economic factors and not the matters of the heart.

Both writers encouraged their readers to reject the economical factors and only marry for love.

This was a very radical idea of the time.

One of the books that Louisa found from her father's library was Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

Like Little Woman,

Wilhelm Meister is a bildungsroman coming of age novel.

Little Woman,

And perhaps its most famous storyline,

Joe rejecting Laurie for Friedrich,

Can be traced to Wilhelm Meister.

Wilhelm starts out as a naive and idealistic young man who has a passionate affair with the actress Marianne.

Wilhelm loves Theater,

And he struggles to balance his passion for the arts and the expectations his family has for him,

Taking on the family business.

He runs out with the Theater company,

Only to see how the Theater world slowly consumes his soul with its ruthlessness.

Then he meets Natalia,

A woman very different to Marianne,

Who helps him to gain back his self-worth.

So in this story,

Marianne is more of a show type of character,

And Natalia is Amy type of character,

And Wilhelm is the Laurie archetype.

The story also includes an important side character called Friedrich.

For her 18th birthday,

Louisa's good friend,

Philosopher Wilder Emerson,

Gave Louisa a copy of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship as a birthday gift.

This copy,

Now in the Houston library at Harvard,

Is well worn and marked with Alcott's marginal comments,

Showing the care and attention with which she read Goethe's novel.

In Little Woman,

When Joe is staying in New York,

Friedrich gives her a copy of Shakespeare's novels as a Christmas gift and encourages her to study character.

Louisa cited Emerson calling him as her Goethe.

Goethe was a literal inspiration for her,

And Emerson offered support and encouraged her to read and study character.

Friedrich embodies them both,

And it makes sense that Louisa would give Joe a partner who not only supports Joe's creative journey,

But is an essential part of it.

Louisa called both Goethe and Wilder Emerson as a God of my idolatry.

Goethe became a way for Louisa and Emerson to deepen their friendship through intellectual conversation in reaching both of their lives.

Many of the annotations in Louisa's copy of Wilhelm Meister are associated with romance.

For example,

She underlined the heading of the chapter 9 of volume 1,

Marking the passage where Wilhelm feels as though he is infused with new life,

As he falls deeply in love with his first love,

Marianne.

Furthermore,

In volume 3,

Chapter 4,

Louisa annotated a scene where Wilhelm and Natalia talk in the garden about love.

She penned in the word beautiful after their private conversation.

This sounds very similar to what happens between Amy and Laurie when they are in the garden at Weywey and Joe and Friedrich under the umbrella.

Quotes from Christine Doi's Mignon's song,

The cultural level suggested by Friedrich's profession,

And more specifically by his knowledge of Goethe,

Also helps to validate the connection between him and Joe.

Algert had penned a quote from Margarett Fuller's Woman of the 19th Century regarding Wilhelm Meister's female connections.

The note in Algert's handwriting of Flyleaf reads,

Quote,

Am Fuller says,

As Meister grows in life and advances in wisdom,

He becomes acquainted with women of more character,

Moving from Marianne to Natalia,

Who expresses the Minerva side of things,

Mignon,

The electrical lyrical nature.

In this light,

It is possible to read Joe March's transference of affection from Laurie to Friedrich as a form of rising due to her own growth and advancement in terms of character.

Laurie is always a boy to Joe,

But Friedrich is a man.

Laurie possesses charm and culture.

Friedrich,

As we see,

Is cultured,

But also steady and well-grounded.

He speaks both to her down-to-earth practicality and down-to-earth imagination.

When he and Joe together reprise Mignon's song after Friedrich's surprise arrival at the March home later in the novel,

It is a clear statement of the fitness of the union,

The union of America with some of the best European culture and for Friedrich,

Fulfillment of the American dream.

He is much more than a funny match for Joe.

Louisa read Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship first time as a child,

And it was a novel that she always went back to.

The way Laurie is chasing Joe is very similar to what happens in another famous novel by Goethe,

Sorrows of Young Berta.

Louisa's affection to Eliza Follin's biography about her husband,

Charles,

And the love story between an American woman and a German immigrant is also reprised in Little Woman in chosen Friedrich's characters,

Another book that Louisa read in her early youth.

This knowledge can change the course of Louisa Mayagov's research,

Especially when it comes to Louisa's own perceptions on Little Woman Part II.

Daniel Sheely writes in his essay,

Wedding Marches,

Yes,

Some of that we can see in Louisa's own life,

In her relationships between young Lediislas Wisniewski,

Laurie,

And philosopher Henry David Thoreau,

Friedrich,

Which is probably the reason why Louisa later in life tried to detach herself and her own love life from the love life of her literal counterpart,

Because it became all too personal,

Charlene Brooks declares.

Another reason Alg grafted the direction of Joe's life in this way was because she seemed to want to marry but never did.

It seems likely,

However,

That she did have at least two different love interests in her life.

Perhaps Alg decided to give Joe what she herself always wanted,

Marriage and a family.

After doing this research for a few years now,

I come to the same conclusion.

When I read Louisa's letters from her later life,

She says she is happy for her sisters when she sees them flourishing in their marriage years.

She envies them,

And she feels lonely,

And she believed that in her next life she would get the things she wanted but never could have in the present,

A safe and loving relationship and children of her own.

Greta Gerwig has been very vocal how much she hates Friedrich's character.

I don't know what her problem is,

But there is one thing that annoys me to no end.

In every one of her interviews,

Gerwig argues that Friedrich forces Joe to use the word tau,

And I can't even fathom how absurd that is.

When you study German,

One of the first things that you learn is that there are two ways to address a person.

There is du,

Which is what you use when you are with someone you are very close to,

And then there is sie,

That you use when you are discussing with someone who is not very close to you.

In the 19th century,

When German literature was translated into English,

Du became tau.

When Friedrich and Joe call each other du,

It means that they want to be close to one another.

In the book it says that Joe thought tau was a lovely salabile.

It sounds that Gerwig is just making excuses to spread hate speech about a fictional character and it doesn't have any base on reality.

This is what Christine Doyle writes.

When Joe terms Friedrich's request to use tau in addressing him,

Quote,

Sentimental,

By privately thinking it's lovely,

He says,

Sentimental,

Yes,

Thank God,

Weak Germans believe in sentiment and keep ourselves young with it.

Your English,

You,

Sounds so cold.

Friedrich,

In fact,

Retains his German accent throughout the March novels,

Occasionally dropping German words and phrases such as mein San and Wartheland into his speech despite his much improved command of English.

For example,

In Little Woman Friedrich says haf,

But then in Little Man and Joe's voice he says haf.

Like Friedrich's defense of religion,

His sentimental language is significant in both cultural and literary context.

Algo seems here to be standing up for emotion in the face of a state New England culture.

Sirals of Young Werther,

Novel that first skyrocketed Goethe into great fame,

Has been often used as an example of the over-sentimentality of the German Sturm und Drang movement.

Luisa was heavily affected by the Sturm und Drang and in her youth consumed and wrote these stress and thunder tales.

Despite of being more realistic novel,

Little Woman is written in sentimental language and this applies to all of Lewis' novels,

Children's books and the adult books.

Friedrich is sentimental,

But so is Luisa Mayagut.

Lewis' real life love interest and possible lover,

Henry David Thoreau,

Also used tau in his love poems when addressing his loved one.

Joe describes Friedrich to look like a regular German.

He has brown hair and bushy beard,

Kind blue eyes,

Big hands and big feet and he has kind tone in his voice.

This description is similar to Friedrich Schiller's first impression on Goethe.

His appearance greatly lessened the idea I had conceived from hearsay of his imposing and handsome person.

He is of middle height and looks and walks stiff.

His countenance is not open,

But he has beaming eyes.

The expression of his countenance is serious,

At the same time that it is benevolent and kind.

He has brown hair and appears older than I should say he really is.

His voice exceedingly pleasing and his conversation flowing lively and amusing.

It is a pleasure to listen to him and when he is in a happy mood which he was on this occasion,

He is fond of talking and takes an interest in what he says.

Friedrich's looks and his somewhat stoic personality can also be traced back to Henry David Thoreau,

But like Goethe,

Henry as well opened up in company,

Especially when the conversation was lively and interesting.

First thing Joe hears from Bär is his singing Gens du das Land,

Do you know the land,

To himself.

The opening line of Minions love song from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.

Here again is literary intertextuality of Wilhelm Meister in Little Woman.

By having Bär sing Minions song to himself,

Alcott not only chose a direct connection between Bär and Goethe,

But also an emotional connection between herself and Goethe.

Louisa points out that both Joe and Friedrich are familiar with Wilhelm Meister.

In the chapter surprises,

Friedrich comes to court Joe and Joe asks him to perform Minions song with her.

Now we must finish with Minions song for Mr.

Bär sings that.

You will sing with me,

We'll go excellently well together,

He asked.

A pleasing fiction by the way,

For Joe had no more idea of music than a grasshopper,

But she would have consented if he had proposed to sing a whole opera,

And well put away peacefully regardless of time and tune.

It didn't much matter for Mr.

Bär sang like a true German,

Hardly and well,

And Joe soon subside into a sublude hum that she might listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone.

North to the land where the citron blooms used to be the professor's favorite line,

For das Land meant Germany to him,

But now he seemed to dwell with peculiar warmth and melody upon the words.

Thee,

O,

Thee,

Might I with thee,

All my beloved,

Go.

And one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation that she longed to say she did know the land and would joyfully depart tighter whenever he liked.

How did Joe knew that this was his favorite line?

They must have had deep one-on-one discussions about Goethe.

This is a quote from little woman fan Christina.

Maybe she noticed how a certain gleam came across his eyes as he sang the line.

Maybe his lips turned upward into a smile when the lyric comes up,

No matter how many times he sings it.

Or maybe it was because of the warmth in his voice as he spoke of his home that Joe recognized as she speaks of her home.

But she notices,

She notices all the little things of Friedrich,

But had yet to have a reason why.

But when she leaves New York and she is alone after bedstead,

She thinks of those little things and smiles to herself.

When he comes to her home,

She thinks about that line,

Home,

He is her home,

He is home.

There is another way to interpret this chapter.

Minyan's song is about departure and reuniting with your loved one in the afterlife.

Louisa believed that in the next life she would meet her loved one again and then she would get the life that she had wanted.

Maybe this scene was written about Henry.

Same way as the Umbrella chapter,

Henry had the same Goethe's books as Louisa and he was also a good singer and when he would come to visit the Algots,

They sometimes sang together,

Quote from Megan Amkleit.

Another parallel between Bär and Goethe is their philosophy,

Especially regarding the purposes of art and religion.

Bär is very interested in Joe's writing,

Encourages her to read Shakespeare and helps explain his work to her.

Classic writers such as Shakespeare were very important to Goethe,

Who read Shakespeare and often wrote about and criticized him in letters to fill her.

As Joe reads Shakespeare,

She not only begins to notice true,

Honest character more,

But she also recognizes just how good Bär truly is.

She discovers a live hero who interests her in spite of many human imperfections.

Mr.

Bär,

In one of their conversations,

Had advised her to study simple,

True and lovely characters whenever she would find them,

As good training for a writer.

Joe took him at his word,

For she coolly turned round and studied him and finds him to be good and benevolent.

In this way Bär's love of the simple,

Honest and pure,

Mirrors Goethe's who remained ever in touch with the reality of things as revealed to the sense,

But never blind to an ideal interpretations.

This is all in the text of Little Woman.

Riddick encourages Joe to become a genuine writer.

I have never understood people who say that Riddick prevents Joe from writing,

When in the book he does the exact opposite.

But the people who spread the type of false information are usually Joe and Laurie fans.

Another quote from Megan,

Bär is trying to help Joe to become a genuine writer,

Instead of one who caters to the whims of the crowd.

This is something that Goethe would have done.

He disliked superficiality in people and in art and was through life frequently offended by the shallow pretensions,

The false aims.

He insists that poem must be suggested by real life and having her own firm foundation.

This is particularly important information.

When Louisa was in her twenties,

She wrote sensational stories to a New York magazine.

Weekly Volcano in Little Woman is a character of this magazine.

These stories are not Louisa's best stories and in Little Woman she describes how Joe has mental health problems because she feels powerless in the hands of the editor,

Who wants her to write stories that have shock value and when Joe looks for material,

She begins to have anxiety attacks.

This is all in the text.

It has never been adapted and that must affect to any anti-friddick statements people might have,

Because in the novel,

Riddick comes to Joe's help when he sees how much she is struggling.

When Louisa wrote these sensational stories,

She was not very experienced with the darker side of life and struggled with a lot of these themes that she was requested to write about.

It makes sense that she looked up to her literal hero,

Goethe,

And take his advice that a good story should have a real life foundation.

And this is how Joe in Little Woman moves on from writing trash to write successful realism thanks to Riddick,

And Louisa did the same thanks to Goethe.

There are times when Goethe's and Riddick's values separate.

One of these are their views on religion.

Goethe's views on religion are often described as vague,

Whereas Riddick in Little Woman is very religious.

Louisa was a very spiritual person herself and her religious views were rather eclectic,

But the base of her beliefs were in her Protestant upbringing.

In Little Woman,

Joan of Riddick attended a symposium where Joe listens one of the young philosophers speaking about atheist worldview,

And this makes Joe quite upset.

It dawned upon her gradually that the world was being picked to pieces and put together on new,

And according to the talkers,

On infinitely better principles than before,

That religion was,

In a fair way,

To be reasoned into nothingness,

And intellect was to be only God.

Joe knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort,

But a curious excitement,

Half pleasurable,

Half painful,

Came over her as she listened with the sense of being turned a drift into a time and space,

Like a young balloon out on a holiday.

He bore it as long as he could,

But when he was appealed to for an opinion,

He blazed up with honest indignation and defended religion with all the eloquence of truth,

An eloquence which made his broken English musical and his plain face beautiful.

He had a hard fight,

For the wise man argued well,

But he didn't know when he was beaten,

And stood to his colors like a man.

Somehow,

As he talked,

The word got right again.

The old beliefs that had lasted so long seemed better than the new.

God was not a blind force,

And immortality was not a pretty fable,

But a blessed fact,

So felt as if she had solid ground under her feet again.

And when Mr.

Bear paused,

Out-talked,

But not one who had convinced,

Joe wanted to clap her hands and thank him.

She did neither,

But she remembered this scene,

And gave the professor her hardiest respect,

For she knew it cost him an effort to speak out then and there,

Because his conscience would not let him to be silent.

She began to see that character is a better possession than money,

Rank,

Intellect,

Or beauty,

And to fear that if greatness is what a wise man has defined it to be,

Truth,

Reverence,

And goodwill,

Then her friend Friedrich Bear was not only good,

But great.

In this case,

Friedrich is in fact much more closer to the American philosophers,

Like Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau,

Who Lewis had often heard giving speeches about religion.

Despite the fact that the Transcendentalists adored German culture and writings,

They were highly suspicious of German philosophers,

Because they did not always share their religious views.

I know quite a few Little Women fans who absolutely love the symposium scene.

It is their favorite Joe and Friedrich moment.

She says that he was not only good,

But great.

Friedrich is no longer a crush for Joe.

It becomes something a lot more serious.

Joe remembered his passionate speech for the rest of her life.

She even wants to clap when he stops talking.

Friedrich managed to move something inside her.

I have mentioned this in my articles before.

One of the reasons why I always adored Joe and Friedrich's love story and storyline is because it is one of the most realistic descriptions in literature how it actually feels like to fall in love to another person.

And Louisa wrote from her experience.

Joe was attracted to Friedrich from the moment she met him.

There is a build-up in the novel how her crush and her curiosity towards him deepens.

He was poor,

Yet always appeared to be giving something away,

A stranger.

Yet everyone was his friend,

No longer young,

But as happy-hearted as a boy,

Plain and odd.

Yet his face looked beautiful to many,

And his oddities were freely forgiven for his sake.

Joe often watched him,

Trying to discover the charm,

And at last decided that it was benevolence which broke the miracle.

If he had any sorrow,

It sat with its head under its wing,

And he turned only his sunny side to the world.

This is what is said about Goethe's personality.

Goethe was always an optimist,

Despite of the many setbacks he had during his life.

He often wanted to uplift others and bring as much success to others as to himself.

Goethe believed that creativity was a gift,

But only way to true success was through hard work and resilience.

Goethe was emotional and vulnerable,

And yet he could be the light of the party.

Sometimes he was generous to a fault,

But always honest and loyal to those he cared about the most.

I personally really liked the idea that Luise gave Joe a husband and a partner that was inspired by Goethe.

It makes a lot of sense that Fredrik,

Who helps Joe to reach the next stages of her writing career,

Was based on Luise's favorite writer,

And that there are elements in Fredrik's personality he can trace to Goethe.