Little Women,
big impact
AN OLD CLASSIC THROUGH A NEW PERSPECTIVE Text by ANTONIA MOU INT. NEW YORK. PUBLISHING OFFICE. 1868. JO MARCH, our heroine, hesitates. In the half-light of a dim hallway, she exhales and prepares, her head bowed like a boxer about to go into the ring. She puts her hand on the doorknob. A pause, and then, she opens it onto a disorderly room. It is full of men.
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N THE MIDST of a tremendously male-dominated awards season and a demand for more female-led movies in Hollywood, “Little Women” takes a 19th century classic about domestic life and incorporates a new modern liveliness. In Greta Gerwig’s new 2019 film adaptation of the classic novel “Little Women” by American
Art by XIAOHAN LI
50 FEBRUARY 2020
Additional reporting by TARA KOTHARI author Louisa May Alcott, the four March sisters — Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Amy (Florence Pugh) — explore the meaning of childhood, womanhood and love in a new light on the big screen. Written and directed by Gerwig, the film artfully portrays the complexities of being a woman in the 1860s while providing commentary about contemporary topics like gender inequality. An adaptation for the books Taking place in Massachusetts during the Civil War, “Little Women” has captivated millions of readers from all around the world. Jo March, a boyish and career-focused character who pushes against the boundaries for women, resonated with many girls who felt the same way. Although the “Little Women” novel became a huge commercial and critical success shortly after its release in 1868, Alcott had initially been reluctant to write a novel about girls and marriage. She admitted to knowing very little about girls outside of her sisters, leading many scholars to consider the novel a semi-autobiography. Following the success of her novel, Alcott published a sequel, which was combined into a two-part book titled “Little Women.” Gerwig’s 2019 spin on “Little Women” adds an additional perspective told through masterful cinematographic detail and a modern feminist lens. Starting at the beginning of the film, there is a clear contrast of colors to represent a storyline that is told over two different time periods. Yellow and orange
hues reminiscent of sunlight evoke warmer scenes from the four sisters’ childhood. Cooler blue tones signal the present, and strike a more somber and serious tone. Gerwig also manages to incorporate subtle yet impactful details throughout the entire movie: each sister is given her own signature costume color and hairstyle, while their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern), wears pieces that combine all of her daughters’ signature colors and hairstyles. Academy Award winning costume designer Jacqueline Duran incorporates each of the sisters’ personalities into their Victorian-style outfits. For example, Jo and her best friend Theodore Laurence (Timothée Chalamet), nicknamed Laurie, periodically wear each other’s vests to emphasize Jo’s more masculine style and Laurie’s more feminine side. Breaking boundaries Each of the March sisters has her own field of interest in the arts. For Jo, it is writing, which is shown when she writes plays and stories during her childhood and sells short stories to publishers with unwavering determination. Jo’s drive to succeed in a traditionally male profession and her unwillingness to get married brings a breath of fresh air into the rigid societal norms of the era, while proclaiming that a woman can build her own career without a man by her side. Despite Jo’s eventual marriage to a professor in the novel, the film depicts the true love story as between Jo and her writing. By the end of the movie, Jo has written the titular “Little Women” novel based on her life and watches the book appear before her eyes at the printing press. Even though Jo
