The Beauty of Little Women

As a third-grader, I read obsessively. Much like today, I devoured every book put in front of me and was always striving to push my limits. I still remember how special I felt as a ten-year-old delving into the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time with my dad. But my true breakthrough with lengthy books was when I was eight and tottered out of the adult fiction section of the library with what was probably the largest book I could find grasped in both hands. Little Women, as I so affectionately remember, was my first step into “classic” literature, and away from books like Encyclopedia Brown and Junie B. Jones. I felt an immense amount of pride lugging that oversized book with tiny print around to school, on car rides, and anywhere I could find time to read. Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth became my friends, their characters jumping at me from the page with the fierceness each of them possessed in wholly unique ways. Little Women might have been the first time I truly cried over a book.

Needless to say, the impact of Little Women on me half a lifetime ago was huge, but the day that I bawled over Greta Gerwig’s interpretation of this timeless classic, I was impacted in a whole new way. This story is one that can be told to many, impacting them in new ways across the years and around the globe. In a world where what it means to be a woman is radically changing for the better, this film reminded me why we must strive for not only equality, but also unity.

I was quite literally rendered breathless by this movie. The cinematography was masterful. Coming from a literary background, I’m constantly looking for symbols, connections, and parallels between individual books and characters in any work of art. Gerwig clearly understood how to connect characters and themes across scenes, costuming, and even lighting. The movie was cut excellently. At first, the non-linear timeline was startling and strange, but as I got accustomed to the fact that past, future, and present were all wound together into one story, I started to notice the subtle hints at the mood of the movie. The past was illuminated by golden hues, the present drearily lit in blues and grays, and the future was a lighter gray, suggesting there was still hope to be found.

Colors in the characters costuming stayed consistent, then intermingled to demonstrate the relationships between characters. Meg wore greens and purples, Beth wore purples and pinks. Jo was almost all navy with splashes of red, and Amy wore largely light blue. Laurie, unsurprisingly, mostly wore darker colors with splashes of red and blue. Marmie was often a mixture of all of the girls. This costuming was fitting, as Meg and Beth are most similar, as are Jo and Amy. The March girls always entered with flurries of sound, a tornado of strength and love and warmth, and most of the scenes began silent and ended mid-sound, creating a jarring effect that added immensely to the past/present/future comparisons. I could go on and on about the cinematography, but find myself unequipped with the terminology or familiarity with the movie to do so.

While lacking in racial diversity, this movie had a character for everyone. We’ve all experienced a yearning for more like Jo, we’ve all felt left out like Amy, we’ve all wanted to fit in like Meg, and at some point, we’ve all felt like we go unappreciated like Beth. What brought me to tears about this movie was the personal realization that success looks completely different for everyone. To Jo, success was seeing the world, writing stories, and learning all she could. To Meg, success was finding a man who she loved and starting a family. To Amy, success was being recognized for her art and making it into high society. To Beth, success was taking care of and loving those around her. What Jo and I learned throughout the movie is that no success is greater or lesser than the other.

There’s a movement in our world of women who are crying out to be recognized for their many endless talents, for their worth to be defined by their own standards. It’s a beautiful movement of self-expression, of defying stereotypes, of writing our own stories. Little Women was a testament to how important it is for women to support each other. One struggle of the movie was Jo coming to terms with Meg’s ambitions to be a wife and a mother; mourning her lost potential and their childhood together as they grew older and faced the world. Jo’s dreams for her sisters were much different than their dreams for themselves, yet as the movie progressed she learned to love and accept her sisters and their own goals, rather than lamenting what to her seemed like a great loss.

Throughout the movie, I felt myself come to terms with not only my own dreams but with the dreams of the strong women around me. Little Women challenged me to focus on unity and acceptance as our first step towards equality. Putting down other women is no way to fight oppression. Negatively comparing dreams isn’t going to bring down the patriarchy. What will bring us equality is seeing each other in the ways that women aren’t often seen by the world: as equals and as allies. Sometimes, our dreams look different. And Little Women taught me that that is okay.