Rethinking Jo March

How's the thesis going, you ask?  Very well, thank you.  I have a general outline for my introduction, my two chapters, and my conclusion.  I have written about 1000 words for my formal thesis proposal for the graduate school, which greatly helped me to clarify my thoughts and my topic.

But today, I wanted to talk about Little Women (the 1994 film, not the book).  Last week my friend Kay came to visit for our friend Kelsey's bridal brunch.  So, since the temperature had taken a bone-chilling drop, we decided the best way to spend the evening before the brunch was to curl up with hot chocolate and our favorite winter film.  It can't properly be called a Christmas film, I suppose, but that's rather how we view it.  I've seen this movie more times than I can count; I pretty well have it memorized.  But, as an adult, I find that my views towards the characters have changed since my childhood and teenaged years.



For one, I love Meg much more now.  I always liked her, but now I see that she really has it together.  Secondly, I should've listened to Amy when she said, "We all grow up someday, Meg, we might as well know what we want."  I've always seen myself growing up and I've been hyper-aware of it, but really, I never planned much past "Go to William and Mary."  And then I did.  And I graduated. And now I don't.  And I'm still not quite sure what I want... a family, like Meg?  Artistic success, like Jo?  Money, like Amy?  In a way I feel an awful lot like Beth, unsure of my destiny and happy to stay contentedly at home, though now I'm quite grown up and really ought to know what it is that I want.

Though my problem might be the opposite of Beth's: it's not that I don't want anything, it's that I want so very many destinies, and I can't settle on which one to pursue, so it seems easier to dream of staying at home.  I want to write fiction and poetry, to work for Disney, to work at the Bodleian or the Folger, to learn everything about books and textual materiality, to become a professional bibliophile, to work in a theater, to travel the world, to live in London, to write a dissertation, to never have to write a dissertation but publish extensively on historical topics, to open an etsy shop where I would sell cross-stitch patterns and handsewn dolls, to become a tea connoisseur, to open a tea-house/bookshop, to become a professional historical reenactor... the list goes on.

Then, while I still love Jo March, I see her faults now more clearly than I used to-- and I see how much I am like her in those ways.  I don't mean her 'tomboyishness,' the 'faults' of being stubborn or those cliched Victorian faults about not being pretty enough or what have you.  I mean, she has trouble being truly happy for others, if it means that her life is impacted in a way that she views as negative.  Put perhaps more bluntly, she hates change of all kinds.  I've always identified with Jo.  When she sees Meg kissing John Brooke in the hallway, and sits on the steps moping at Christmas.  When Meg gets married and a chapter of their lives closes forever.  Wondering why she must grow up at all.  I know exactly how she feels; I've always felt time so keenly.  I remember talking to my friend Alina during recess in fourth grade and lamenting that we were almost fifth graders and then practically high schoolers and where did our youth go?  I so dearly miss the past and I rue things that threaten to change the here-and-now-- even if that here-and-now has actually been gone for a long time.  I think it was in Amy Poehler's new book, she writes that human happiness is all determined by how well we handle change, because everything changes and we can never stop that.  But if we roll with it, we're happy.  If we are the kind of people who resist it, we very often find ourselves disappointed.  I very often find myself disappointed.  I sometimes wonder if I learned this dislike of change from Jo, and if I need to learn to accept it, as Jo ultimately must.

Jo managed to learn to leave her past behind because she sought out the fulfillment of a lifelong goal.  She moved to New York City to become a writer (which goal should I pick?  Where should I move?).  And here's a major change in my viewing of the film: her refusal of Laurie didn't seem quite so preposterous on this rewatch as it has in the past.  Her relationship with Frederick also seemed much more believable.  This time I was able to see how much better for her Frederick is than Laurie: Laurie loved her and would have supported her endeavours, but Frederick loves her and not only supports her, but pushes her to become better.  That's a big thing.  We all have these ideas that we should be loved despite our imperfections, and we should be.  But that doesn't mean that our partners should love us, and though seeing how we could improve, offer us no help to become our better selves.  This is different than changing someone-- Frederick does not change Jo, he asks Jo to ask herself if she is living up to herself.  She realizes, with his help, that she can be more and that she has more to give to the world than she previously thought.  She becomes more herself.  That's a good relationship. 

...But there is no changing that Amy and Laurie  is just a plain bad idea.  Ladies, never marry a man who, only months (weeks?) prior to your wedding, has to take a swig from his flask when he thinks about how much your sister hurt him when she rejected his marriage proposal.  And who says that he's always belonged in your family and wants in one way or the other-- and you're the other.  Don't do it.  No matter how much money he has or how much he looks like Christian Bale.


(P.S.-- How come no movie made recently has so beautifully told girls that they are worth it, that they have an intrinsic value that no one can take from them?  That their desires and dreams are achievable.  That their ideas are valuable.  Marmee speaks real words of wisdom.  When I was a child I absorbed it as truth; as an adult, I am grateful to have been taught that lesson as a child, and I hope that girls today find similar messages in their beloved films and books.)