Greta Gerwig makes no secret of her love for “Little Women.”
The acclaimed filmmaker behind 2017’s “Lady Bird” (and now the newest in a line of adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel) was recently speaking in front of a British audience, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Gerwig joked that while there are many great British novels, Americans “have just two: ‘Little Women’ and ‘Moby Dick.’”
She added, “And I wasn’t interested in making ‘Moby Dick.’”
Gerwig’s adaptation of “Little Women” — of which she is both director and screenwriter — debuts in theaters Dec. 25, but it has been generating buzz for months. Early reviews have hailed it as a “new classic,” while others are calling it “cinema’s greatest ‘Little Women.’”
This is high praise, considering that Gerwig’s film is the seventh cinematic adaptation of “Little Women” since 1917. This doesn’t include television and stage adaptations — of which there are several. Two of these adaptations were released as recently as 2018.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that “Little Women” has retained its popularity, even 150 years after the novel was first published. The book was a hit from the beginning, a bestseller that spawned multiple sequels and turned Alcott into a celebrity nearly overnight.
Alcott was “an industry unto herself within American publishing,” according to Mark Gallagher, a doctoral candidate at UCLA who will be co-chairing a panel for the Louisa May Alcott Society at next year’s American Literature Association Conference.
And according to a recent article from Vulture, in a time before superheroes and Jedi, “Little Women” was “the original super-franchise.”
The story of four sisters growing up in the aftermath of the Civil War has captivated readers and movie audiences alike for well over a century. What is it that has kept “Little Women” alive for so long? And, as Gerwig’s latest iteration joins the “franchise,” will the story continue to hold its power over new generations of audiences?
‘Not a bit sensational, but simple and true’
Alcott did not intend to write “Little Women.” In fact, the only reason she wrote it was due to heavy pressure from a publisher, Thomas Niles, who wanted her to write a “girls’ story.”
“Never liked girls, or knew many, except my sisters,” Alcott wrote in her journal after Niles approached her, according to The New Yorker.
However, the Alcott family was in need of money, and so in 1868, despite her skepticism, she plunged ahead with the novel that would become the first half of what we know now as “Little Women.”
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The book quickly took off far beyond her expectations. Its first run of 2,000 published copies sold out within a matter of weeks, and Alcott became an instant celebrity.
“People begin to come and stare at the Alcotts,” she wrote in her journal, the year she published the sequel to “Little Women” (now included in the original novel as “Part Two”), according to Vanity Fair. “Reporters haunt the place to look at the authoress, who dodges into the woods.”
Alcott grew up as one of four girls, and so both the characters and events of the novel are largely drawn from her childhood experiences. She later wrote of “Little Women,” according to Vanity Fair: “It reads better than I expected. Not a bit sensational, but simple and true.”
“Sensational” stories were all the rage at the time that “Little Women” was written. In fact, Alcott wrote many such stories herself — gothic romances with titles like “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment” and “A Long Fatal Love Chase,” though she published them under a pseudonym.
But “Little Women” was something different.
Stories written for and about girls prior to “Little Women” were often sensationalized or overly sentimental. The story of the March sisters, however, had a sense of realism.
“Beneath the iconic tableau of the March sisters huddled around their Marmee, there is the threat of poverty and the violence of war,” Gallagher said. “These anxieties are pushed to the background. What the girls struggle with the most are themselves.”
The central themes of the book include “the ways that the girls learn from each other to turn their personal vices into virtues,” Gallagher said, “as well as the redeeming love of family and the desire for freedom pitted against one’s duties and responsibilities, particularly those placed on women.
“These are universal themes.”
‘A different model’ for girls
“Little Women” is, in many ways, a coming of age story — the novel begins when the girls are in their adolescence and continues into adulthood, marriage and motherhood. But just as “Little Women” was different from some of the books that came before it, it has remained different from many books that have come after it.
During the 20th century, novels for and about girls changed from the model of “Little Women” and other 19th-century books, according to Julie Pfeiffer, a professor of English at Hollins University and the author of a forthcoming book about adolescent girls’ fiction in the 19th century.
“In the 20th century, we kind of got stuck in this mode of seeing adolescence as a time of alienation, conflict with adults, self-doubt, mental disorders — this kind of sense that being an adolescent girl is horrible,” Pfeiffer said.
But novels like “Little Women” provide a different view of what being a girl could be. Though the March sisters each have their own challenges and struggles throughout the course of the story, the girls are able to lean not only on each other, but their mother and wider community for strength and support.
Part of the message of “Little Women” is that adolescence “is a special time,” said Pfeiffer. “Yes, it’s a time of transition, but it’s a time when the women and girls around you are going to support you in ways that allow you to become the person you want to be.”
The novel has stayed relevant into the 21st century in part because of the way that it promotes this message of support and community.
“We want something different,” Pfeiffer explained of modern readers. “We want to have something to offer adolescent girls that isn’t just ‘adolescence is pain.’”
But of course, this isn’t just a message that’s relevant to girls, and despite its title, “Little Women” is able to tap into that as well, according to Greg Eiselein, a professor of English and a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Kansas State University.
The female characters of “Little Women” struggle with questions like, “What am I going to do with my career? What am I going to do when I grow up? I have these talents and interests — how can I develop them?” said Eiselein, adding, “Those are concerns of boys and young men just as much as girls.”
‘Jo March was my North Star’
“It is doubtful whether any novel has been more important to America’s female writers than Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women,’” The New Yorker wrote in commemoration of the novel’s 150th anniversary in 2018, and there is certainly a large number of writers — women in particular — that have claimed “Little Women” as an influence.
The novel’s influence on female authors can be largely attributed to just one character: the aspiring writer, Jo.
”As a girl who wanted to be a writer, Jo March was my North Star,” said Gerwig at a screening of “Little Women” earlier this year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
But Jo’s influence extends to a wide range of women authors over the decades, from Patti Smith to Hillary Clinton to Simone de Beauvoir.
For example, Barbara Kingsolver, author of “The Poisonwood Bible,” once said, “I, personally, am Jo March,” and “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling has called Jo her “favorite literary heroine,” telling The New York Times that “it is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.”
The ability to relate to the characters is another factor in “Little Women” staying relevant, according to Eiselein.
“The novel invites readers to identify with the characters and to see themselves,” Eiselein said, explaining that it “makes people want to relive the story — reread it, and watch and rewatch movie and play versions.”
Of course, there are three other March sisters, and Jo is not the only character that readers identify with.
“Different March sisters have found their moments in different eras,” said Anne Phillips, an English professor at Kansas State University and president of the Louisa May Alcott Society.
For example, Meg’s life of simple domesticity was seen as something to aspire to in earlier generations of readers, while in the 1980s, some scholars hailed Amy and her determination to go after what she wants as the feminist ideal.
However, Phillips says she believes that a different sister has come to the forefront in the 21st century: Beth.
“Her experiences speak to ideas of social anxiety and mental health care,” Phillips explained, which makes her character relatable to a whole new generation of readers.
Will ‘Little Women’ survive the next 150 years?
Stories like “Little Women” can be points of connection between people, and connection is something that many modern readers are longing for, Pfeiffer suggests.
Modern technology might be a culprit. It is useful in many ways, “but it doesn’t fulfill all of our needs,” Pfeiffer says. “It can lead to a sense of alienation. It can mean that we’re not sitting around the fire with family or friends and talking to each other.”
One of the reasons that “Little Women” remains appealing today is because of that sense of connection and community that the characters have. Of course, it’s not something that comes naturally to the characters — sometimes the March sisters have to work hard to build and maintain those connections with each other.
A well-known scene from “Little Women” follows a fight between Jo and Amy, and Amy proceeds to burn a manuscript of a story that Jo had been writing — a scene that Pfeiffer calls “one of the most painful moments in literary history.”
But the scene also shows how the sisters move past their anger and challenges with each other to maintain their relationship.
The book encourages keeping connections with each other, even when it’s difficult — an important thing for readers and viewers to remember in a society where technology can sometimes be isolating.
“It can be really hard work, but there’s this idea that we figure out how to get along with each other, and that our relationships are more important than the challenges that show up in them,” says Pfeiffer. “That it’s worth investing in each other. And I think that’s a pretty powerful message.”
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