When a fellow bookish friend of mine messaged me on Instagram and asked if I would be interested in seeing an advanced screening of Little Women in mid December there was practically a cloud of dust left in my wake as I rushed out the door to the theatre. To be honest I wasn’t really sure that we needed another Little Women adaptation (after all, how could you do any better than Winona Ryder? And wasn’t the 2018 PBS version with Scoop Troop extraordinaire Maya Hawke superb enough?), but I’m not monster either! I wasn’t going to miss seeing it just because I didn’t think it was necessary.
I am happy to say I was wrong.
We needed this Little Women adaptation.
After thinking about it for weeks, I realized that the reason that this movie was such a revelation to me starts and ends with the true MVPs of the story: each individual March sister. Throughout this adaptation I was able to connect to the generally overlooked and definitely underrated sisters in a way I hadn’t before. This is not a story about Jo, this is a story about family, about legacy, and about female agency. After being an evangelist for Jo March my whole life I, like many of us, have some apologizing to do. Here I attempt to make amends with characters I have misunderstood and mistreated for the past decade of my life.
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I loved this post, and I loved this version of Little Woman. It made me research the life of Louisa Alcott, who was an amazing woman.
I agree with the writer of this post. It seems that our perceptions of women - our very own sisters, are too narrow. Sometimes we don’t see the beauty in a diverse presentation of personality and therefore we fail to honor and respect it. As this author has stated, sometimes with a closer look what has been hidden, becomes apparent.