A love letter to Louisa May Alcott
by Emily Dzioba
Dear Louisa,
Is it okay if I call you that? It feels like we’ve known each other forever. You were ahead of your time in so many ways. An abolitionist, a feminist. A dedicated nurse. A loving sister. Perhaps a sapphic. I would love to talk to you. You know, you also died on the day before my birthday, in 1888? Not that I was alive yet. It’s a synchronicity I just discovered, and I thought it was nice.
I love your Little Women dearly and deeply. I remember reading the Great Illustrated Classics edition of it several times in my childhood- definitely not fully understanding the story, but loving it enough to return to it time and time again. I don’t have too many clear memories from my childhood, but I do remember that my aunts and mom speaking of reading and loving that story. My family has had many generations of sisters.
Your story has outlived you and your life and your family and your intentions. So many adaptations! So many retellings! When the most recent movie was announced with Saoirse Ronan (a talent I would describe affectionately as, my girl) starring, I was so excited. I somehow had missed out on previous film adaptations of the book entirely? But having seen this Greta Gerwig film, I’m totally fine with it. I think it may be one of the most quality book-to-film adaptations I’ve seen. Perks of Being A Wallflower is up there though, thank goodness it’s finally on Netflix. (I’m going to assume you know who and what all of these things are in the afterlife.)
In the Gerwig adaptation, there was so much care in the telling of your story. So much obvious love. When I finally got to the theatre to experience it, I was moved.
One of the other things I most appreciated about the Gerwig film was how visually rich it was. How warm. How it invited the viewer into this cozy world that can only be described as… truly realized. That is quite an accomplishment for a film; to really make your audience forget about their own world for two hours? Impressive.
I believed, viscerally, this world was real, that it was existing in a bubble of time and space somewhere. It was just like that which you had created in the novel, coming back to me as an adult, in high definition. I desperately wanted to slip into step with the Marches in the Concord Gerwig and you created, just for a day, to forget what my own life felt like for a while. I want to sit around the table and eat bread with everyone and then go walking in the woods. To talk to Jo about her writing and the Shakespeare she had seen. Honestly, to wear one of the outfits. I want to court a German intellectual hottie in New York! I want to sit on the hill in the fall and watch the leaves change! I want to play theatre in the attic! Take me to Paris with Meryl Streep and let me fall in love with a different-but-rich hottie while I paint all day!
And yet… we are never fully there. We can never truly access it. We are perpetually Laurie; on the periphery, a voyeur, looking from the outside in, wanting to access the tight, loving, warm dynamic of the sisters. Never getting it. Only existing adjacent. It’s heartbreaking, just a little bit, to realize this. But then it pulls you back in even more to appreciate it. What a feedback loop to create.
Jo March, as discussed in the episode of my podcast where we talk about your story, is a universally adored character. She has stood the test of time as one of the strongest female protagonists of the American novel genre. Fiercely and unapologetically herself-- I suspect, a lot like you. Everyone loves Jo, even with all her faults. She is smart and leads with her heart. She is accomplished. She reaches her goals and fights for her writing to be taken seriously. Everyone wants to be Jo! I wanted to be that sharp. And yet, she is not the only March you made us love.
There is Meg, the oldest, striving for a life filled with love and a husband and children and a home. Wanting a taste of some of the finer things, but ultimately content with her life and its simplicity. I loved Meg as a child. Her life seemed so perfect with John, even with their poverty. They had all they could ever want. They were happy. I wanted to be that content.
Beth, sharing the middle sister slot, is love personified. She is quiet devotion. She is care. She is thoughtful. She is selfless. She’s almost… too perfect. I wept over her death many times. Especially the way they framed it in the film! Oh gosh. How could someone so good be taken? I wanted to be that good.
I loved Jo, but she always seemed out of my reach. She spoke to me, but I can’t to this day place why I couldn’t fully access her. I knew I wasn’t Beth. And I knew I wanted more than Meg had in her life. Of course, this being *the most tantamount* issue of my identity, I reckoned with this, until I saw the Greta Gerwig film. And I realized, I may have pieces of your Jo, your Meg, your Beth.
But I am an Amy.
Amy March is one of the most historically despised of the four sisters. This excellent article explains all of the ways that Gerwig treated her right in her film. Also, I love Florence Pugh so much, so I’m only just a little biased.
Nonetheless, throughout time, Amy has been disliked, called vain, selfish, and spoiled. I am the oldest sister, not the youngest, so I definitely have feelings about what baby sisters can get away with! Somehow, I don’t remember Amy striking me as overly selfish, and I would not describe myself as a selfish person, either. Maybe because I understand that she is a child and wanting for attention in a household where she is not always taken seriously?
Whatever the reasons are, Amy was not well-liked as a character… until the Gerwig film.
Likeability is a peril. Being palatable to people who don’t appreciate you is a shame that many people understand and endure. This often compromises one’s sense of self. You lead an inauthentic life if you allow yourself to be packaged.
Amy understands this. She understands how to exist in a box because she has been put into one by Jo and her family- even if gently. Amy knows she doesn’t need to be liked by every single person. Amy understands that she can craft herself into the notion of an "ideal woman" within this box people have decided to put her into, and make her way in the world and find some of the limited success available to her. Aunt March helps her realize this; and by doing so, Amy winds up providing some financial security for her family in the end.
Somehow, Amy’s internal character is never compromised because of this. She is still expressive, still smart, still fun. She’s just grown wise. She uses people’s expectations of her to her benefit.
I love Amy. She is confident in who she is. She is acutely aware of her place in the world, and makes moves to build herself up and excel. She is feminine, and she derives strength from her femininity. She is an artist. She is resourceful. She is realistic. She has the capacity for love and emotion, but maturity to understand how that coexists within her world. She is motivated by her insecurities and is determined to be better.
I see so much of that in myself. I’m not trying to overhype myself on this post, I’m just being self-aware…much like Amy.
And yet, despite these remarkable characteristics, that one memorable scene of hers, burning Jo’s manuscript, sealed her fate as an irredeemable antagonistic force for many. Even watching the movie with my mom, she said she’d never be able to get over that kind of spitefulness. Not justifying it at all… but Amy was a child when that happened. Children are impulsive. Children don’t always know how to process their emotions. Children are still learning how to be people.
What’s funny to me is that Jo is also hot-tempered… yet people don’t seem to dislike Jo for that. In fact, I could argue that it is more acceptable to us as readers because she is framed as a tomboy, while Amy is much more traditionally feminine. I will get more into this idea later. (I am not throwing Jo under the bus! I love her! I wish I could be that tenacious!)
Owning up to my own faults here, and in true Amy fashion, I am capable of deep anger. I hold grudges. I deal in absolutes. It’s my worst fault, not always wanting to see or acknowledge the grey. One of my favorite lines in the Little Women film is, “I’m angry nearly every day of my life.” Laura Dern saying that? God, I felt seen. Do I spend all day fuming? Of course not. I actually consider myself to be a loving, positive person. But somewhere deep inside me, something said, “Yes. I know that.”
Anger is often called a secondary emotion. In this reflection on psychologist Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman’s research, we read of this concept in “The Anger Iceberg”. To use a metaphor, anger is the tip of an iceberg, hanging out above the surface. The emotions lying beneath are often some sort of hurt, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, frustration, disappointment-- all of which prompt us to react in anger. Anger is a defense mechanism of the physical body. The spike of chemistry we experience during anger prompts us to action. Experiencing anger is a way for our body to protect the more fleshy, vulnerable emotions, which are often harder to express. As Kyle Benson writes, “Learning to recognize anger as not only a basic, valid emotion, but also as a protector of our raw feelings, can be incredibly powerful. It can lead to healing conversations that allow couples, as well as children and parents, to understand each other better.”
(Daniel Goleman also shares my actual birth date. The synchronicities continue.)
Amy only burned Jo’s manuscript because an argument with Jo was a catalyst action, right? She isn’t a sociopath and didn’t just do it to do it. Amy felt frustrated about being excluded and rejected. Amy wanted to make Jo as upset as she was. She didn’t want to be vulnerable with her sister and be honest about the rejection, because she was probably fearful Jo would dismiss her and trivialize her pain. The pages burned as a way for Amy to process all of this. And... she was 12. She was a girl in Civil War-era Massachusetts. There was no therapy. There was no, “Yes, it’s okay for you to be upset!” It was, you need to be ladylike.
Of course, looking at both myself and Amy, this way of coping with your anger is not totally healthy. That’s why Benson’s point is key- acknowledge the anger, and then make space to discuss the root of it.
Seeing Amy get so angry was cathartic. Was that true for you, Louisa?
Let's talk about the socialization of gender. I feel like that is important to understand Amy a little bit more. Here is an excerpt from that link, outlining some good for us to move forward with:
"Gender socialization is the process by which individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their sex phenotype.
Gender stereotypes can be a result of gender socialization: girls and boys are expected to act in certain ways that are socialized from birth. Children and adults who do not conform to gender stereotypes are often ostracized by peers for being different.
While individuals are typically socialized into viewing gender as a masculine-feminine binary, there are individuals whose gender identity does not align with their assigned gender, which indicates that the gender binary is not universally applicable."
Let’s unpack a bit, shall we?
A binary dictates that something is defined by what things are, and what they are not. I ask us to think of conventional gender roles cis women are expected to adhere to, and what they are supposed to reject. In general, excessive emotion is something to be punished. Passion is often dismissed as bossiness, or unworthy (depending on the interest). Communicating your needs and boundaries in relationships makes you seem needy. Questions are seen as challenging authority. It is unacceptable for us to show genuine reactive emotion- if you do, you are shunned as crazy. Hysterical. Unfit for your job. I don’t need to lay out any more examples of this. I’m tired of being reduced.
Women are never allowed to be visibly angry or upset. To do so is to be unladylike. It’s accessing an ugly emotion, and to do so makes us undesirable. And women must always be desirable. (I love the Cool Girl monologue from Gone Girl, always.)
Amy gets angry. Amy is emotive. Amy didn’t care. And Louisa, you must not have cared either.
Yet, expressing emotions is frequently perceived as feminine- and subsequently negative. Toxic masculinity asserts that boys shouldn’t cry; they need to be strong, macho, take the pain and the sadness and hide it. But anger becomes one of the few normalized emotions for men to express, somehow, while it is totally unacceptable for women. I would argue this is the by-product of men being encouraged to repress their true, more vulnerable feelings, and express them in a “tolerable and masculine” way.
Jo is a “tomboy”. Were we more primed to accept her emotions because of that?
The socialized cisgender binary dictates that we must put ourselves into boxes to be acceptable. Palatable. To cater to white and/or patriarchal and/or cisnormative values. Within this, usually, women must do everything to make men feel comfortable, including repressing their undesirable emotions of anger, sadness, contempt, even sensuality in many situations.
As I’ve said, Amy knows how to use this to work in her favor. By doing so, I would argue she subverts aspects of her socialization. All of your women (and men!) do in some way or another.
I heard the phrase “feminine rage” about a year ago. Feminine rage is a concept I am fascinated by. To access rage and anger as a woman is to come in contact with something I would describe as... primal. Pushing back against all of these harmful social constructs that have come to be normal. I am speaking of what it means to let your anger, as a woman, finally have no bounds. Many horror movies, actually, have explored this concept in a way that is meaningful to me and my point; Midsommar is my go-to example (coincidentally, another Florence Pugh role). There is also a difference between toxic anger, which leads to violence, and righteous anger, which leads to change. Is there a grey area in the middle? Absolutely. I mean, like, Midsommar has this angry woman play right into insanity and fall into a cult! I’m not condoning her actions!
Similarly, make no mistake: I am not advocating for us to give in to anger blindly. What I am advocating for is the space to express it, and grow from it.
Another quote from “The Anger Iceberg” article, from Susan David, Ph.D’s writings: “‘Our raw feelings can be the messengers we need to teach us things about ourselves and can prompt insights into important life directions.’ Her point is that anger can be symptomatic of other unexpressed emotions.” I love this. Anger forces us to probe ourselves and be self-aware, if we are to grow and be healthy.
There is an excellent thought piece from Psychology Today, which discusses the power of anger in women. The ending stood out to me most: “When outrage is not suppressed or turned inward but, rather, sublimated, we all fare better. Sublimation is an adaptive defense mechanism where the energy of a biological impulse — in this case, anger — is diverted from its immediate goal to one of a more acceptable social or moral use.”
When I was angry after breakups or fights with my parents, or from being overstimulated by anxiety to eventual anger, I started doing more physical activity: gardening, karate, running. Pushing the fuelling emotions out of my body through sweat and labor was healing. I could physically process that anger and rage and not need to yell or slam a door or go all Carrie Underwood or burn my sister’s manuscript. On a micro-level, I was making change. Bettering my body and my surroundings. Anger motivated me to do better.
With that one instance of anger in Amy, you made her real. She was hated for it, but perhaps that is because we didn’t want to admit to ourselves that we were capable of such action. I will push back tooth and nail with anyone who watches that scene of her burning Jo’s script and condemns her, and challenge them to think of a time where they would not react in such a way.
Also… Amy does not remain steeped in her anger at Jo. She realizes the consequences of her anger. She is sorry. She apologizes. She gives Jo the space to decide to forgive her or not. She becomes better because of her anger. Their relationship eventually heals. We never hear of her reacting this way again. We learn a valuable lesson from this scene, both in her character and how we should move forward ourselves.
Seeing Amy get so angry and then repair the relationship with her sister was cathartic. Was that true for you, Louisa?
I love Amy for her humor. For her spunky joy. For her pursuit of artistry and her ambitions. For admitting there is no shame in having those ambitions. For her relentless hope that things could be, despite giving herself over to reality. For her imperfections.
But above all, I love her because she is real. Thank you for writing Amy; and thank you for writing her in a way where my 21st-century contemporaries and I can see ourselves in her still. Thank you for writing the story of the Marches, giving us the gift of warmth when our own lives feel lacking.
All my love, Emily
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