Summary Little Women Q and A Alcott's Quotes on Loneliness and Wanting To Get Married
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Little Women
How did I get started in Louisa May Alcott's research? Is Beth really just part of the sick girl trope or is there more in her? and why is Friedrich from Germany? Why did the film-makers erase Laurie's backstory? What is Amy's relationship with Catholicism? was Louisa May Alcott religious? Did she ...
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Little Women Q and A Alcott's Quotes on Loneliness and
Wanting To Get Married
Niina Niskanen / Little Women Podcast
Summary:
How did I get started in Louisa May Alcott's research? Is Beth really just part of the
sick girl trope or is there more in her? and why is Friedrich from Germany? Why did
the film-makers erase Laurie's backstory? What is Amy's relationship with
Catholicism? was Louisa May Alcott religious? Did she want to get married? are Fritz
and Laurie really based on men in her life? I've got so many questions from you guys
that I will answer them in this excellent Little Women Q&A.
Merry meet Little Women fans across the world. Today's comment-shout comes from
Jo and she left this comment on my "Evolution of Laurie" essay.
"Hello, Niina. I love this post and I appreciate you so much for taking the time to
write and publish it so that we could read such an in-depth and true analysis for free.
Thank you so much. I completely agree with all the points you made. I read the first
two books only last year in the summer, but I picked up on everything that Louisa
May Alcott wanted to tell us, such as why the canon relationships are better suited
than the romanticized adaptation ones are. I have never actually seen any of the
adaptations before reading the novel, so that might have helped".
Thank you, Jo. This comment warms my heart. A while ago I asked my readers,
viewers, and listeners questions my q and an in Tumblr and Instagram, and I got
some good questions about Little Women and my research.
This is the Little Women Podcast, your questions are answered.
Sorry if I'm being too intrusive, but I'm really curious to hear what was your first
touch on Little Women. I'm from Finland too, and I never, in my 24 years on this
planet, heard about the books before the film adaptation by Gerwig. How much time
or years have you spent reading the books, et cetera? I love your analysis.
Thank you and you are not being intrusive. As a child, I loved reading girl books. Not
a politically correct term now, but you know, books with strong female heroes. I read
Anna Green Gables books. I didn't have that many Alcott books. I had eight cousins
and I had the first part of Little Women.
So in the US Little Women has part two and part one combined and printed together,
but in Europe and South America, it was pretty common that they were published as
two separate books. When I speak about part two, I often call it Good Wives, and
,that is the old European name of Part two. Part one covers a year of the girls' lives
when Jo is 15 and the Civil War has just started.
Part two, that's when the war ends, and it covers about 20 years. And I didn't read
part two until I was 16 or 17, and I loved part two. It was my favourite book for
years. When people say to me, you know a lot about romances in Little Women,
that's because there was a time when I was very invested in thinking about the
individual growth of the characters and the love stories.
To me, it was a lot about relating myself to Amy and Jo because Amy is 16 at the
beginning of Good Wives and Jo is 19, and I was about the same age, so I could
relate myself to their struggles, but also the quest for identity. I was so glad when
Friedrich´s character came up because I was so incredibly frustrated with Laurie and
the way he treated Jo. I am part of the 40% of Little Women fans who have never
thought that Laurie and Jo were a good match. As a child, I was part of an even
smaller community of Laurie and Beth shippers. I would have been okay back then,
Laurie ending up with Beth or Amy. I don't think like that anymore.
Yes, Laurie behaved like a f**** boy. He didn't want to work and he didn't want to
study, but I think Beth would have gotten through him so that he would have taken
his life more seriously, the same way Amy got through him. But for them to be a
good couple, that would have required Beth to be more social and want to live a
more luxurious lifestyle, or it would have required Laurie to give up his lifestyle and
live more modestly.
So it would have required an entirely different book and it doesn't fit the character's
personalities. That was the 12-year-old me, no judging. I usually like it when the
characters are not too polished. When I read Good Wives, Amy's and Laurie's
romance made so much sense to me. It needed Laurie to be this character who was
somewhat lost in life and didn't know how to be a productive person and then Amy
was the awakening force for him. I lived briefly in Germany when I was 17. I didn't
know a lot about Louisa May Alcott´s life then. It was always very interesting to me
how there were so many German references in Little Women and back then I thought
it was cool that Jo was studying German in the book and I was studying German.
But now in retrospect, I think Jo had very different motives than I had. I studied
German because I liked languages, and Jo studied German because she had a crush
on this German guy. Louisa wrote that Jo had a high respect for intellect and Jo is
also well-read and curious about the world. Emily said in one of our discussions,
Friedrich holds Jo to high standards and to me it was always so important that not
, only did Jo bring this another intellectual aspect to his life, but that she brought
colour and energy, what he needed. Friedrich was not very happy in New York. And I
love the scene where the narrator says that he has "heimwech" homesickness, but
it's not just that he misses Germany, but because he's an immigrant, he doesn't
have a stable home and Jo feels the same. She loves her family, but the narrator
says that it does not fulfil the longing that she has. So they find a home from each
other and especially later when I have been studying more about the last years of
Louisa´s life, it's quite heartbreaking because she was incredibly lonely. So it makes
a lot of sense why she wants her heroes to have the things that she could not have. I
published my first Little Women essay a couple of years ago, and it was called
"Friedrich Bhaer and why my inner Jo loves him, Tender Masculinity in Little Women"
and it went somewhat semi-viral for a moment. It was on the top of Google if you
searched for Little Women.
I read Little Women in English for the first time and I was really surprised because I
read the original version where Laurie was less romanticized. He was so incredibly
immature and some of the things that had bothered me about his and Jo´s
relationship for years began to surface. I wanted to understand more about Louisa
May Alcott´s views on femininity and masculinity and also, the way the
Transcendentalists viewed them.
I also paid a lot more attention to social themes. I thought it was super interesting
how Friedrich´s German accent was written into the English version. There is some
of that in the Finnish version as well, but it is a lot more subtle and the narrator also
mentions how it is difficult for him to find a job because he's German.
When I started to do my research on Friedrich, I found out that during this period,
Germans were widely discriminated against in America. It was very interesting for
me that Louisa May Alcott decided to give Jo a German love interest and some of you
know I made an entire episode called "Louisa May Alcott´s love for Germany" and it
turned out that Louisa was a massive Germanophile, which explains a lot. When I
study Louisa May Alcott, I always ask myself, what is the author's intention? I've got
really good feedback on the articles about Louisa´s connection to Germany. It is not
just Friedrich´s character, it was an overwhelmingly big part of Louisa´s lifestyle,
identity and philosophical ideas.
After I read the English version for the first time. I bought some Alcott biographies
and I became hooked on Alcott's research. At some point, I came across Susan
Bailey's blog. She runs a blog called "Louisa May Alcott is my passion" and then I
discovered that there were real people who inspired Laurie and Friedrich. To me, that
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