Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
A familiar, even lyrical refrain to those who grew up with the story of four girls overcoming their personal failings to flourish as dutiful young women. With the release of the lush, colourful, and accomplished film adaptation in 2019, a new generation of readers discovered Little Women. And what a book to discover as a child! I still remember the horrid fluorescent lighting under which I selected an abridged copy from my fourth grade classroom’s bookshelves, a memory followed by one of the dim lamp in my own room flickering in and out as I stayed up late devouring the full version.
Several years have passed since then, and I don’t know how much of an impression the book made on me. I tucked the story into a corner of my mind, memorable for the books it inspired me to read thereafter (Jane Eyre was a later feature of that year) but without changing me unto itself. I watched the newest adaptation in theatres three years ago now, but that was because I loved the trailer rather than from lingering affection for the book. I thought it was a great film, but it ended up having a variant of the book’s effect on me: good enough, I suppose, but not formative like other works were.
Last night, on a whim, I insisted on rewatching that adaptation. I surprised even myself by coming to the verge of tears several times during the sitting, clutching a pillow to my chest and stifling my gasps. Right after, I spent hours engaged in rereading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women—a book that informs my present literature tastes. A belief in kindness, complex female characters, defined moral views: all contained in a volume I never thought much of before, but aspects I search for in the books I read today.
What happened in that lost time to make me close to indifferent on the book then and a devotee now? I cannot pinpoint a moment, nor a string of events that led me to a different opinion, and this might be representative of the way we all view ourselves changing. We know we are different people now than we were half a dozen years ago, but are not definite in what, exactly, made it so. The limitations of human memory do not allow us all the evidence. Like conspiracy theorists coming up with an elaborate list of justifications, we tease our faults out of hiding (vanity, temper, timidity, materialism) to build storylines around them (ones of perpetual growth). This is how we identify personality shifts and decide on the course of developing relationships. And in doing so we trap ourselves in memory palaces, forever questioning the veracity of our own constructions.
The same is true of our little women. Who can say whether hurting Jo or desiring the attentions of her wealthy aunt made Amy change for the better? Presumably she would prefer to believe it is the former, but that doesn’t make it true. We change regardless of our best intentions, whether it’s for better (Jo’s magnanimity in Amy receiving the Europe trip) or worse (Meg breaking down in her kitchen over a jelly mishap). The people we become are up for debate, locked into a course only so much as we choose to be.
Beth traps herself in her own tragedy. Her kind nature is why the reader loves her, and why her death is the most devastating part of the book. But her nature is also what leads her to the situation that cements her fate. Every time I watch the story unfold, I want to scream, no, don’t do it, be selfish for once in your life! No matter how well I know the ending, I always hope against its happening. Lost time enters now. Lost years where I change. I read the book and I don’t want Beth to die, even though I know she will. For some reason I cry this time. Now I have seen the same happen in my life. Alcott writes:
There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.
It is not a scenario I was familiar with when I was nine.
When I first read the book I thought I was Jo. Everyone wants to be Jo: bold and brash, talented and loving, certain of her own fate. Well, I always resented my own identification with her. I didn’t want to be angry and vindictive and so much like a boy—I wanted to be the delightfully timid Beth, beloved and never faltering. Now I read Little Women and realize (much to my relief) that a love for writing and bad temperament do not make me Jo, but that my disposition lends itself to Meg. Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy, a product of lost years I cannot judge in relation to a book I didn’t revisit, or a reflection of personal change?
Come to think of it, what does any of this actually mean? What does a two hundred year old children’s book on how to be a good woman (when the word woman meant wife more than individual) have to tell us today? And what on earth do I mean when I talk about searching for lost time? (Well, I can answer that last question. It means I am desperate to get my hands on some Proust.)
I mean that all we are is change. The person you are today is not going to be the same as the person you are tomorrow—regardless of how much you may feel stagnant and unmoved. I mean that while we may not see the changes as they occur, over time they accumulate and you are staring in the mirror wondering whether the diary you had two years ago could’ve come from the same hand tracing hearts in the fog. Even in Little Women, we watch Meg and Jo and Beth and Amy closely enough not to notice when they shed their childlike fancies and become the little women their father implores them to be. Rather than suggesting that this is ridiculous writing, we extol the virtues of self-improvement.
The time that moulded us into the people we are is not lost, even if we can’t remember it. It is there in the choices we make differently. When I am blazing through the pages of Little Women today, far more satisfied with myself than I was years ago, I have not betrayed my nine-year-old self by becoming someone different. I have done her justice by refusing to stay the same.
Coming here inspired after having read your latest piece and feeling incredibly joyous about finding your writing because it is simply put: outstanding and I can't wait to explore all of it. Little Women is an important creation to me and seeing that your first published article here speaks of it is like a dream come true. Restraining myself from writing a comment that is too long because I do not want to bother you, I will only say that how I love your unique way of connecting the world of literature and film with the world we live in, showcasing that time pocket where they've always existed together perfectly. Art is as much about comfort as it is about learning and I adore the way you paint that sentiment in your writing.