‘Little Women’ offers a twist
Greta Gerwig honors Alcott’s wishes.
Spoiler alert! The following contains details about the new twist ending of Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.”
“Little Women” is not only one of the best films of the year – it’s also one of the most inventive book-to-screen adaptations ever.
The new movie (now in theaters nationwide) is written and directed by Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), who had the somewhat unenviable task of adapting Louisa May Alcott’s timeless 1868 novel, which has been retold on stage and screen countless times through the decades (most memorably in 1994, in a film version starring Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst).
But Gerwig’s “Little Women” isn’t so much a remake as it is a bold reimagining, made most apparent by its nonlinear structure – jumping back and forth between childhood and adulthood – and refreshingly modern ending. Like the book, the film focuses on the Civil War-era coming of age of the four March sisters – the fiery Jo (Saoirse Ronan), misunderstood Amy (Florence Pugh), gentle Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and sensible Meg (Emma Watson) – as they pursue their respective passions and romantic prospects.
Defiantly single yet admittedly lonely in the film’s final third, Jo wonders whether she was right in turning down the proposal of her childhood friend Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), who goes on to marry her shrewd younger sister Amy. So when the charming Professor Bhaer (Louis Garrel) tells Jo he’s moving away and hints at wanting to settle down with her, Jo somewhat reluctantly races to the train station to stop him from leaving.
Both book and movie end with Jo accepting Bhaer’s proposal in a romantic, rain-soaked scene. But Gerwig’s “Little Women” does so with a meta twist: Just as Jo arrives at the station to confess her feelings to Bhaer, the film cuts to Jo sitting in a publisher’s office, where the uptight Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) has just finished reading a draft of what will become “Little Women.”
“So who does she marry?” Dashwood asks, referring to Laurie and Bhaer.
“Neither of them,” Jo responds, explaining that her character was adamantly against marriage the whole book. “It isn’t the right ending.”
“Who cares! Girls want to see women married, not consistent,” Dashwood fires back. “If you end your delightful book with your heroine a spinster, no one will buy it. It won’t be worth printing.”
“I suppose marriage has always been an economic proposition, even in fiction,” Jo concedes, agreeing to make her protagonist marry Bhaer – but only in exchange for full ownership of the novel’s copyright.
The new ending is Gerwig’s tribute to Alcott, who drew heavily from her own poor Massachusetts upbringing for the novel. Unlike Jo, Alcott never married or had biological children (although she cared for her young niece, nicknamed “Lulu,” until the author’s death in 1888 at age 55).
After the publication of the first volume of “Little Women,” which covered the March sisters’ childhood, Alcott expressed frustration that so many young fans wanted to see Jo wed.
“Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life,” Alcott wrote in her journal. “I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.”
Alcott insisted that Jo remain a “literary spinster” like herself, but feeling pressure from readers and her publisher, ultimately chose to pair her heroine off with Bhaer, who is described as a much older, “not handsome” man in the novel.
“I didn’t dare to refuse (fans’ demands) and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her,” Alcott later wrote a friend.
By making Jo a stand-in for Alcott, Gerwig reflects the compromises made by many female writers of the time, who often were forced to use male pseudonyms or remain anonymous in order to attract readers. She also, in a sense, is able to course-correct on behalf of Alcott, giving Jo the type of agency her creator always wanted for her.
“I just knew I could not do the ending just as the book (did) – especially because Louisa didn’t really want to end it that way,” Gerwig told Film Comment magazine. “If we can’t give her an ending she would like, 150 years later, then what have we done? We’ve made no progress.”