Marie Hause, Carla Godwin, and Ilia Grubbs discuss Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Topics include the economics of marriage, the film’s narrative technique and the expectations for female characters, and ambition in relation to self-sacrifice.
Listen here.
Knowing
- Background on the novel and this film adaptation
- Our previous experiences with the story
Reading
- Amy and the economics of marriage
- References to Constance Grady, “The power of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is that it doesn’t pretend its marriages are romantic” and Sarah Skwire, “In Little Women, Jo March listens to markets, not just moralists”
- The narrative technique, connections between Jo and Louisa May Alcott, and the pressures surrounding the portrayal of female characters
- Ambition and self-sacrifice
- Religion in the novel as opposed to the film
Passing On
- L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
- John Matteson, “One way the new Little Women film is radical” and Devon Proudfoot and Aaron Kay, “A scientific reason for Greta Gerwig’s Oscar snub”
- Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew
Image: May Alcott Nieriker, Orchard House
