By Jeancelyn Almonte ‘24
Little Women is a revolutionary movie for women of all aspirations. Remade in 2019 and directed by Greta Gerwig, Little Women does an extraordinary job of showcasing women’s difficulties in trying to achieve their dreams and their approaches to doing so. The movie is set during the Civil War in Concord, Massachusetts when most women could not make their own money and society was male-dominated.
Little Women revolves around the story of young sisters, Elizabeth, Margaret, Josephine, and Amy. Elizabeth (known as Beth) is the second youngest of the four. She is the musician and the quiet sister of the family. She resembles the tragedy as she gets sick after taking care of her poor neighbors who don’t have access to medication or even food. Years later she did die, but her death was as significant as her sisters’ actions of marrying for love, money, and not marrying at all.
Meg (Margaret) March is the oldest of the four sisters. When we first meet her she is 16 and aspires to be an actress. Despite having big dreams, she also has a very traditional view in which she believes she should marry for love despite being poor which she confines to. This is foreshadowed when we see her go to a debutante ball and being called “Daisy” as she is a daisy to society. Meg tends to butt heads with Josephine, the second oldest, because Jo believes women should be equal, and wants to be great and have an impact on the world.
Jo is a writer and wants to be famous for it. Amongst her sisters, she is considered a tomboy and is much rougher than the rest. She has one main love interest, Laurie, who she rejects because she views it platonically as she believes women are more than the men they are with. Years after she delivers one of the most memorable speeches in the movie.
Jo expresses the main message of the film when she says, “Women have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. They’ve got ambition and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty. I am so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But, I am so lonely.” This is in response to realizing she does love Laurie after seeing how happy her sister Meg is with her husband. Fortunately for Jo, her youngest sister Amy agrees with her.
Amy March is the youngest of the four, and shares similar views as Jo. She is a painter and travels to Paris to paint. Before going to Paris, she fell in love with Laurie but found another man in Paris as Laurie loved Jo. Amy, however, didn’t love him; she stayed with him for the reasons she explained to Laurie, who followed her to Paris. Amy explains in order for her to be wealthy as a woman she needs to marry rich because people at that time did not appreciate women’s artwork as they did men’s. And in order for her to support her family that is her only option as Meg marries poor, Jo doesn’t yet have money, and Beth passes.
Despite the four girls having very different outcomes with their futures they all hold significance for their time and today. For the time Meg and Amy marrying is very traditional despite one being for love and one for the money. Today in movies, that isn’t as common because people want to see girls being independent, but getting married and having a family is still part of some women’s hopes and dreams in life and should still be represented.
Jo, on the other hand, did finally meet her love interest, but it wasn’t her main goal. For the time being, opening a coed school isn’t ideal, but for her it was. She wanted to be great or nothing, and she was great as she opened a school for boys and girls on her own which coincides with expectations today of women being entrepreneurs and independent.
Despite them having their personal happily ever after, they each struggled to get there. This is an exceptional movie if you are into feminist views and how it can vary from woman to woman and time period to time period. Even if that isn’t your forte, but you like love triangles or even just Florence Pugh and Timothee Chalamet. Even if it doesn’t appeal to your personal standards, there is no denying Little Women is an inspiring movie for young women.