Picture this: the year is 2019 and it’s December. You’re a sophomore in high school and you just heard about the new film, Little Women. The movie grabs your attention because it stars one of your favorite actresses, Emma Watson, who you’ve loved ever since you fell in love with the Harry Potter series. Even though you’re a massive reader, you’ve never heard of the book the film is based on. So, you decide to read it before you watch the movie. Within the folds of the pages, you discover yourself. Through the words, actions, and experiences of the March sisters, you began to see womanhood in a new light. Little Women quite literally changes your life.
That was what happened to me, the first time I had read the incredible 1868 classic written by Louisa May Alcott. If you’ve never read this novel, which was originally written into two volumes, I cannot even begin to explain what you are missing out on. Like I said above, this novel literally changed my perspective of womanhood and that is due to the beautiful, raw, and honest portrayal of life. The novel follows four sisters during the latter half of the American Civil War. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March, all experience life and womanhood in different manners, showing the complexities of the female psyche and challenging the previous stereotypes placed upon women.
It absolutely shocks me that Alcott had written a novel, based loosely on her own life and experiences, that perfectly encapsulates how unique and complex women are — who to this day are shoved into boxes that society has deemed to be “what makes a woman.” That is truly insane. This book was written in 1868 and over a hundred years later, people are still not getting it. Even with multiple adaptations of the novel, including multiple films, TV shows, and even a Broadway play, it seems like the message of the novel has completely gone over many people’s heads.
Many people, even scholars, will tell you that this book is about love. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but while they mean romantic love, I refer to the sacred love that can only be shared between women, and even more so, between sisters. Despite the fact that each of the sisters, who are still alive by the end (rest in peace Beth), are in romantic relationships, the story isn’t truly centered around their romantic endeavors. In fact, a reason why I love the 2019 adaptation so much is because it adds an edge to the story by playing into the idea that the book only ends with Jo getting married because Alcott was told that a female character must either be dead or married by the end of a novel, which was commonplace at the time. As someone who grew up with two sisters, I knew immediately when reading Little Women for the first time that this was a novel about what it means to be a sister and what it means to be a woman.
You have Meg, the eldest sister who gets married and has children young, following the societal expectations for women at the time. You have Jo, an aspiring writer who doesn’t quite like the idea of marriage and would rather make a name for herself. You have Amy, who has lived her entire life in Jo’s shadow and simply wants to be loved and wanted for who she is. And lastly you have Beth, who is soft spoken, kind, and shy, finding comfort in playing the piano and being on the sideline. Each of the sisters are so uniquely different and they even have multiple discussions about how different their dreams are.
In fact, one of my favorite parts of the novel is when one of Jo’s stories has been published and the other girls don’t know it when it is being read to them. When they find out that the story was written by Jo, they all exclaim with so much happiness and pride for their sister. This part always makes me tear up because I can relate to the feeling of being so incredibly proud of your sibling. Watching them achieve their dreams means that the world is seeing them as you see them.
There’s a line in the 2019 adaptation that isn’t in the original novel, that to me encapsulates everything that the novel stands for. That line is, “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.”
That line will stick with me for the rest of my life. I truly believe that it should be required for everyone to read Little Women at least once in their lives– alongside a test to prove that they actually read it and to see if they understood it– because it truly is the best female story to ever exist.