Little Women Podcast: What Makes Jo March Tick

Hello,

This episode was originally recorded for the Little Woman podcast and I hope you enjoy it.

Hello,

My name is Emily.

This is my channel,

Emily and I mostly talk about books on here.

I do a few video essays.

And Nina,

How about you talk about yourself?

I do gender studies on Little Woman and you might know my channel Small Umbrella in the Rain,

Which is where I share my research and I've been focusing lately on Laurie and Frick Bear.

Alright,

Nina and I found each other.

I had actually found her blog post about Professor Bear when I was preparing to make my long and very critical review of the new 2019 Little Woman adaptation.

And she reached out to me and I realized I had never worked before and we decided to do this collaboration because we love talking about Little Women and having long discussions about the adaptations on the book.

And today we're talking about Professor Bear and Joe.

And I actually found Emily,

The customer from my friends on Louisa May Alcott group in Facebook,

Told me that I should watch her video.

Oh,

Yeah?

Yeah.

Thank you,

Kimberly,

For all of this.

I'm so flattered that people took initiative to show her video.

I was so psyched when you reached out because I was like,

I remember thinking,

Oh,

Would this person agree with my views?

Because I loved your post on Professor Bear,

Preparing all of the Fritz's and the actors.

And you were like,

Oh,

I wonder how the 2019 film is going to treat them.

And then I came to the post and I was like,

Well,

You know.

So I was so happy when you reached out to me.

Professor Bear,

He is kind of a topic of contention in the Little Women fan base.

He kind of has been seen by a lot of people as someone who was shoehorned in at the last minute because Louisa May Alcott,

She was forced by her publisher to marry Joe off to somebody because that's what she needed to get her book published.

She wrote this random guy and then married Joe off and then that was that.

This is all propaganda mostly shared by Joe and Laurie Shippers.

Yes,

That is also a thing because people were so upset that Joe didn't marry Laurie.

So I think that's part of where the resentment for Professor Bear comes from.

And also,

I think Professor Bear is not a conventionally romantic hero,

Right?

He's this older guy who's an intellectual and he's not into genre fiction at all.

He doesn't really operate in these big romantic gestures in the way that Laurie does.

And so I think a lot of people who really attached to him so far just really resented that.

If you talk to the Bear fans,

Pretty much a different story.

Yeah,

He is.

When you sent me those blog posts about him,

I'm like,

Yeah,

I feel so validated right now.

Joe was never the type of person who would react well to romantic gestures.

She hated it.

She did.

She was really shocked when she realized in the first part of Little Woman that there's a rumor going on that Megan,

Laurie are an item.

She was shocked by the whole idea that there's something romantic going on.

And she's really shocked by the idea that Laurie has feelings for her,

Romantic feelings.

She's really resented that whole concept of being in love,

But she's like 15.

She grows out of it.

Yeah,

She's a late bloomer,

Joe.

She doesn't quite awaken at the same time as anyone else.

She also sees the ridiculousness in some parts of Laurie's behavior because she knows that she's not really part of that idea that he has.

As we discussed before,

Laurie doesn't really validate Joe's feelings like that,

Right?

Because he keeps saying,

Oh,

Well,

Joe,

Someone will eventually,

You can get yourself to love somebody.

You're like,

Well,

I'll get you someday.

He says that a lot in the book.

She's not really someone who enjoys that sort of romantic chase.

She's just a practical girl and that stuff just belongs in books.

She does have this romantic side of her,

But she's very practical about it.

In the first part of Little Woman,

She's reading a book,

The book from Susan Warner,

Wife I Caught.

Yeah,

That's the name of the book.

That's one of the things that made me convinced that Louisa planned from the beginning that Joe ends up with Fritz and she crafted Fredrick's character specifically for Joe.

In that book,

The whole storyline,

It's very similar to Joe and Fredrick in Little Woman.

I was so fascinated when I read White Word because it felt like I was reading Joe and Fredrick's story in another dimension.

It's really uncanny.

It's a very,

Very Christian book.

Many Christian morales,

But the dynamic between the leading lady and the romantic interest,

They are very much the same.

What's the name of that book?

White White Word by Susan Warner.

It's an American book from 1850.

It was one of the first American feminist books and I find it so fascinating.

Joe is reading that book in Little Woman in chapter 11,

I think,

And she's reading that in a tree and she's crying because it's so moving and Joe actually reads romance novels.

Yeah,

So she's not averse to romance.

She just wants it in a certain way.

She wants an equal romance.

She wants someone who respects her.

The White White Word is interesting because it's about these two people trying to find a balance in that relationship.

Yeah,

And it's a value that Louisa May Alcohope really espouses in all of her books.

We get hints early on that Joe,

You know,

She likes a certain idea of romance,

Just not how Laurie exhibits it.

So why do you think that,

I think you probably know more about this,

So why do you think Louisa May Alcohope would later write that Joe should have been a literary spinster or say something like that?

She wrote it to her friend Elizabeth Powell,

Who was 16 years at the time.

Elizabeth was Louisa's friend.

I think she was a teacher in a school where Louisa was studying with her sister.

Louisa was much older than she was and based on what I know,

Elizabeth was very against marrying and she was 16,

Well it makes sense that you don't want to marry someone when you're 16,

Even in the 19th century.

And I think Louisa specifically crafted that letter for Elizabeth.

Daniel Sheerley was an Alcott schooler,

He has done some extensive research about this.

It's really worth reading.

Elizabeth did get married a decade later.

She was like 26 when she married and it seems that her relationship was quite happy and she had two sons and she became a dean of a school.

I think Louisa used Elizabeth as an inspiration for Joe's character in the first part of Little Women and in the sequels because this actually sounds a lot like Joe and Fridig's relationship as well.

But it was Elizabeth who wrote this letter that she gave Joe a funny match,

But then she also writes in that letter that she's really frustrated about the little girls who want her to marry Joe to Laurie because that was a never-lose-indention.

People have taken that out of context.

When Louisa herself was 15,

She actually wrote love letters to her friend Emerson who was 30 years older than she was.

He was her first love maybe,

Her first crush.

And she was very different to Joe in that sense because she was very romantic and very sentimental.

But then I have also done research on Louisa's love for Henry David Tarrow who I believe was one of the main models for Fridig and it's really uncanny how Henry comes out in literal disguises in all of Louisa's novels.

I think she wrote Joe to be an idealised version of herself because when I read Little Women last time,

Joe is not really as angry as she is in the movies,

Especially in the recent movies like the 2019 film.

Or in the 2017 series when she snaps out time to time.

But the book Joe,

She's not that angry.

People always say that Louisa had anger issues and such.

I think in the 19th century context,

Whenever a woman would get angry,

Would have been labelled something terrible.

It has a lot to do with the way we read history and the way we approach Louisa's character.

Joe is definitely a combination of the woman who Louisa admired.

Yeah,

It's funny with the anger issues because I think it's more about how she talks back at people.

I think with the whole incident with Amy and falling in a pond,

I think she was just like,

Oh,

In my anger I almost left my sister behind and I almost let her die.

I think it's that sort of thing where she's kind of governed by her feelings rather than her head and I think that's more what they're getting at.

Because I think Marnie,

She's kind of a parallel to Marnie in a way.

Because Marnie dealt with a lot of issues when she was younger.

She was always trying to hold back on her emotions because that's how Joe's father became a good foil to her.

Joe's father was able to kind of calm her down.

And then it became harder again when they were poor because it's so hard for her to see her daughters be financially struggle and have to work.

Characters don't take part in shaping these characters.

These girls,

These other people were necessary for them to grow.

Yeah,

That's very true and it applies to Joan and Meg,

It applies to Amy and Laurie and especially to Fitz.

When Louisa was asked by her publisher to write a book to girls about good marriage matches,

Louisa's publisher actually wondered that Louisa would have married Joe to Laurie because Laurie was such a popular character.

But then Louisa was always very adamant not doing that.

In the 19th century,

German immigrants,

They were really discriminated in the US.

So she's also including the social aspect to the book,

Which I didn't realize until I started to do this research.

She was really blown away by the German connections in Little Woman.

Pretty sure that Louisa was a hardcore German profile.

Yeah,

And what I love about the 1984 adaptation is when she's like,

Oh,

Well,

We're a family of transcendentalists.

And then Friedrich's like,

Yeah,

Well,

That's all German philosophy and this is what we were getting at.

I love that scene so much.

Yeah,

I also I was so angry because in Frederick's version,

It did include this intellectual terse that Joe has.

Also in the 1949 film,

In a way,

You know,

She wants to study German.

And it's not as good as in the 1994 film,

But you can see that she has this intellectual curiosity towards professor.

I kind of see it like he sort of opens for horizons,

Making up for music.

Yeah.

And they go to the opera and everything.

And I like that in the film,

Friedrich is actually singing and he's singing a song from,

It's a song from Goethe,

I think.

That's a direct link to Louisa and her love for Goethe and all these philosopher who,

Philosophers who she wasn't known with.

I really like that.

I love it when a film understands scripts like that.

People think that,

And I think you pointed out in your blog post or maybe some or maybe another blog post or another article,

But you know,

Frederick Baer,

He was not a conventional choice at all.

Even the choice of marrying someone like that was not,

Was considered pretty out there because he was a German immigrant,

Like I said,

And he had come from this position of respect to this kind of position of poverty.

And for her to marry this guy who's not as well established in that country is probably discriminated against.

And to make that choice,

That was not conventional.

That's not someone just knuckling down to society's demands.

That's just a choice that wouldn't be expected of you at the time.

And it's also very fitting of Jo because she's an unconventional woman,

So she married an unconventional man.

Yeah.

One of the Little Woman fans who I interviewed for my articles,

She pointed out that this,

Um,

Unconventionality of Frederick,

That Jo is really attracted to because Jo always feels very unconventional herself.

And that is why she doesn't fit the circles in Concord.

Jo being this female writer in a time when there weren't that many female writers,

She finds this charismatic,

Eccentric professor.

He doesn't really fit in,

But he doesn't struggle with it the same way as Jo is struggling.

She respects hard work.

That's why she can't really respect Laurie at that point or nor be with him because Laurie doesn't work.

And Laurie can't relate to how Jo works hard.

He kind of resents Jo's writing in the book as well.

And you can see bits of that in the 1994 film.

Yeah.

Like in the one sentence,

But still,

At least it's included.

In the book,

You can really see that he's distracting her when she's writing.

And then when Laurie's proposing to Jo,

He's like,

Jo is like,

You are not going to like my writing.

Yeah,

You never have to write again.

You won't have to write again in your life.

Yeah,

Money resolves everything.

But Jo wants to write.

Friedrich wants her to write.

I don't understand these people who say that Friedrich somehow prevents Jo from writing.

He wants Jo to write.

He wants Jo to be the best writer in the world.

And he gives her Shakespeare's books so Jo can study characters.

He just doesn't like sensational stars because he thinks that Jo has much more potential.

And when people say,

Oh no,

He made it so that she wouldn't write.

And I'm like,

No.

In all the movies,

They don't include that chapter in the beginning of La Lune Part 2.

And Jo is actually starting to write those sensational stories.

From the beginning,

She knows that it's really bad writing.

She does it for the money and she tries to justify it for herself.

But she doesn't feel content by that.

Yeah,

No.

I think,

Yeah,

Because people criticize Friedrich for being elitist and criticizing her for writing genre fiction when she really needed to do it for the money.

And I'm just like,

Well,

The whole point.

Louise even phrases it such that it's not good for Jo to write like that.

It puts her in a bad state of mind when she is churning out sensationalist stories just for the money because it's not authentic to her.

Friedrich,

You know,

He doesn't really directly make her do anything.

He left it up to her.

He never made it.

Yeah.

Alcott Schooler Edna Cheney wrote it very well,

I think,

When she said that when Louisa was younger,

In her 20s,

She wrote those potboiler stories.

But Louisa didn't have anyone to guide her.

And you can see that in Little Woman that she wants that there is someone who actually looks at her work,

Takes it more seriously and gives her some advice on what to do.

And she did it in secret.

Later in life,

Louisa didn't want to have anything to do with those stories.

Now,

I have read some of them and I like some of them.

Some of those stories are not that great.

So she was practicing her writing.

That's okay.

But then she's also aware that she's not doing the best of work.

And then she's really ashamed to show them to anyone.

She didn't want to be limited to them.

Yeah.

It's really impressive when you read the thread,

It's giving Jody's advice as to how she can improve.

And then she actually writes different genres.

She tries poetry and she turns books and all of that.

Then she has a creative break.

I'm an illustrator.

That's when I take creative breaks.

You need that in order to improve yourself.

Amy does that as well in the book.

She tries sculpting and watercolors and oils.

Like wood burning.

Yeah.

She does it all.

That's the way it goes when you're an artist.

You try different things until you find your own thing.

Louisa,

She really understood the creative process.

Nothing comes to you overnight.

I think a lot of trails of artistry now in our modern culture are just like,

Oh,

Well,

This just came to the artist's head and it was fully formed and it was great.

And it's not true to the creative process at all.

At times,

These ideas,

They have to develop over a long period of time.

She was not young when she wrote this book.

Yeah,

She was 33,

I think.

She had been writing quite some time then.

She wrote from experience.

The show in part two of Little Woman is Louisa writing and wanting that feedback.

And there's that scene in the book when she's starting to write those stories.

She's asking advice from all her family members.

She wants that feedback.

But they think she takes all the advice and then the story becomes horrible because she listens to everything what they are saying.

And she just changes and changes so it fits to all of them.

But with Frida,

He basically tells Joe to listen to herself,

Study different characters and read Shakespeare and get that.

He does a version of what Joe's dad does.

Joe's dad is like,

Hey,

Do you think it's true to you?

Don't let these people change up your novel or cut it up or anything.

Don't just do it for the money.

And at first Joe was like,

Oh no,

I got to have money.

But then the novel flops,

I think.

And then Friedrich is the one to kind of expand on what Joe's father was saying and being like,

We should be creating meaningful,

Authentic work,

Not just stuff that brings in money.

I was reading Jeanie's book about Louisa.

There was this diary marking of Louisa where she had written that Emerson had given her similar advice that she should write something that pleases herself and not things that please the crowds.

So I think that's something that might have come from there.

Then she had also advice from Henry David Thoreau and her publisher and other people who cared about her works.

That's something that you can reflect on Little Women and Joseph Friedrich's relationship because I'm not a writer,

But I would imagine that writers would like to have romantic relationship with people who actually encouraged them to write.

Yeah,

You need someone to feed that work.

And Friedrich is very cultured.

He knows a lot about literature.

He is very earnest with her and holds her to high standards.

I think that's another really important aspect of being a partner is that you hold your partner to higher standards.

Thank you so much for listening.

Feel free to share these podcast episodes to people who you think might enjoy them.

If you wish to follow Small Umbrella in the Rain in the social media,

You can find us from Instagram,

Facebook under the name Small Umbrella in the Rain.

Emily's YouTube name is Emily.

You can go and check out her channel.

And if you wish to follow me on social media,

My artist account is called Fairy Chamber.

Thank you and take care.