Your turn! Little Women part 1 discussion

Merry Christmases, Nostalgia, Grief and Growing Up

Hello friends!

So, this week (Feb 15- 23) we’re reading the first few chapters of part two — but I’ll send out a second email with some “things to look for” in this part of the book. For now, let’s take some time reflecting on Part One!

Very blurry screen shot of Little Women (1994) scene when Father arrives home

Remember, the goal here is to share your thoughts!

• What did you think of Part One? Share about any character, scene, or conversation that stood out to you in this read through.

• There is a very neat story arc between the opening Christmas when Father is away and the girls begin self-reflecting on their various burdens, to the ending Christmas when Father returns and shares with them the growth he has observed. Which character’s growth stood out to you the most this time around?

• If we are looking for a neat and tidy literary structure, Chapter 22 with Father’s return should really be the end. However, Alcott gives us Chapter 23 “Aunt March settles the question”. What do you think? Caving to readers and their desire to know “who ends up with who?” Or is there something more going on in this chapter that links with broader themes in the book?

From Sony Little Women (2019)

Grief, Nostalgia, Change, and Growing Up

There is a quote Jo reads on the beach to Beth, in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women. It is from George Eliot. In the movie, Jo shortens the original quote from Mill on the Floss, but I’ll quote the full below:

"Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,–if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn's hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?

I bring up Gerwig’s Little Women, because although I love multiple adaptations for different reasons (I grew up with 1994, and it will always be the best Christmas movie) — Gerwig’s adaptation does the best job of hitting on the sense of sadness, longing, and nostalgia that change and growing up brings. Rather than filling her movie with images of Christmas and cozy hearth fires, many scenes are set in the flaming New England autumn, the scent of crisp leaves and change and loss in the air.

Gerwig does a good job of trying to highlight the growth of each of the girls, but she centers Jo (as the book does), and Jo, more than anyone, expresses the grief and discomfort of growing up.

When we first meet Jo as a 15 year old, she claims, “I hate to think I’ve got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China-aster!”

When she hears that Meg might be in love with John Brooke and her parent’s don’t hate the idea she says:

“I knew there was mischief brewing. I felt it, and now it’s worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family… she’ll go fall in love, and there’s an end to peace and fun, and cozy times together. I see it all! They’ll go lovering around the house, and we shall have to dodge. Meg will be absorbed and no good to me anymore. Brooke will scratch up a fortune somehow, carry her off, and make a hole in the family, and I shall break my heart, and everything will be abominably uncomfortable…. I wish wearing flatirons on our heads would keep us from growing up…”

Not long after this speech, Teddy tempts her to go off with him on adventures, perhaps heading to Washington, but then she stops herself. “Hold your tongue!” cried Jo, covering her ears. “Prunes and prism are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to it. I came here to moralize, not hear things that make me skip to think of.”

She comments here (and other places) that if she were a boy, she’d be able to extend the freedom of childhood and youth for longer - but instead, growing up into a “young lady” means the end of her childhood “romps”.

Gerwig’s movie adaptation may be confusing for those who have never read the book — she starts the movie in present day (Part Two) when the girls are older and making their own way in the world, but flips back in time to scenes from Part One of the book, showing the girls’ childhood adventures at home. She shoots these scenes in an orange-gold light, overlaying them with a warm nostalgia.

There’s a question that hovers around Jo, that hovers around our own heads as we read - is there a way out? Is childhood a door that must be slammed shut? Do we really have to grow up and never return? Do we have to shut our eyes and ignore things that make us “skip to think of” in order to be responsible? Do we have to say goodbye to everyone we love, and the comfort of family at home forever? Of course, the childhood of Little Women, while full of warmth and joy, is not completely golden. There are vicious sibling fights. There is jealousy. Shyness. Pride. Maybe a question is can you go back to the care-free games of childhood Christmas theatricals, without losing the character growth that the challenges of those days brought?

James K Smith, in his book How to Inhabit Time says:

“The most significant problem with nostalgia is not that it remembers but what it forgets. “So much of the trouble of this world is caused by memories,” wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard, “for we only remember half.” The “past” that is pined for is always selected, edited, preserved in amber, and thus decontextualized, even if this past is invoked as marching orders for restoration and recovery.”

He points out that change and growth are inevitable - not only for us as individuals, but for everyone else as well:

“This is why you can’t go home again: because the you that arrives is not the you that left, and the home you left is not the home to which you return.”

“Home” is a huge theme in Little Women. As the girls grow up, is this true? Can they never go home again? Jo seems to see it, and dread it.

But that is why I am grateful for the Eliot quote that Gerwig included in her rendition of Little Women. What if we reject nostalgia but remember that love comes not only because of what it knows now, what it has known? What if our history with people and places, our experiences and joys, are still bundled inside of us? What if we recognize we wouldn’t love where we are today at all, except for the gift of first experiencing it as children? What if we grieve the loss that change brings, but remember all is not lost. What if, like remember my grandmother once said, we are still “sixteen inside”?

What if that wonder is still inside of us, and we don’t have to let it go?

PS: I mean, there is still Part Two of Little Women and then even two more books where we see a “grown up Jo” - and I think it’s pretty delightful to see the sort of “romping” adult she turns out to be, and how her compassion for other children springs from her own memories of childhood which she kept so close.