Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’s Internet Archive
Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Little Women
Dir: Gillian Armstrong
It’s such a relief to see a film which challenges the recent anti-women tendency of some of the stuff coming out of Hollywood – a tribute, however feeble, to feminine independence.
The American Civil War forms the background to Louisa May Alcott’s novel based on her own family life, and the film brings the novel vividly to life. The four March girls run their own club in a barn, act out dramas and produce a magazine.
They grudgingly agree to let their neighbour into the club on the grounds that he ‘isn’t a boy – he’s Laurie’. Jo, the writer, in horror at the idea of the ‘matrimonial fate’ of big sister Meg, tries to persuade her not to marry Laurie’s steady, boring tutor.
Beth dies after catching scarlet fever from visiting a poor German family, having never felt there was much of a role for her outside the immediate family. She has badly missed Jo, who went to New York and tried to make it as a novelist, writing Gothic novels full of romance and gore.
A German academic friend gives Jo his honest opinion of her stories and says she should write from ‘real life’, which she duly does. (I couldn’t help having a sneaking suspicion that her Gothic novels might have been more exciting.)
Amy has always sworn she will marry for wealth rather than love. She ends up marrying Laurie, who was turned down by Jo. ‘Why must we marry at all?’ Jo asked. I quite expected the audience to clap at this point.
There’s a wonderful scene in New York with liberal-minded young men discussing votes for women and blacks. They are so busy arguing that Jo is unable to get a word in edgeways until her German friend interrupts on her behalf. She makes the point that black men only have got the vote and that all women and blacks should have the vote, not because they are oppressed but because as human beings they should have equal rights with other human beings. (There are no actual black people in the film, by the way.)
Meg refuses to wear the lace pressed on her by other young women going to a ball because all lace is produced by child slavery. The parents are transcendentalists, enlightened people who believe they should strive to achieve perfection in their lives. Jo feels she is flawed and will never manage it but, as her friend kindly points out, ‘We are all flawed’.
High drama and universal dilemmas are solved by individuals taking responsibility for their lives, so the conflict of big business and wealth versus love and moral integrity is resolved through honesty and facing up to things rather than attacking the society which causes the conflict in the first place.
It’s a sentimental film, nostalgic, funny and thoroughly enjoyable.
Socialist Review Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 15 December 2019