A Personal Essay on Greta Gerwig’s Little Women — from a Guy
I’m a Laurie. And when I was fourteen, I met my March family. I remember walking into a house full of four girls — they laughed and talked over each other — bringing a sense of vibrancy and color to life. I have a very distinct memory of leaving that place — after a week of games, eager discussions and arguments, and late nights of laughter — deeply changed. Somehow there was so much more to life after that week. I suddenly felt so insignificant as a man, but in a good way.
As Laurie walks into the March’s home for the first time, he enters hesitantly — but is immediately offered food, “Just call me Marmee,” Mrs. March says warmly, inviting him immediately into the intimacy of their home as the March girls talk over each other and laugh. He watches them as they reflect the very distinctive joyous beauty of communal life — feminine communal life. We see Laurie and we know he’s not the same person because he’s seen something he’s never seen before. Laurie has to be a part of it because life is suddenly not about him. There’s something that the girls have that he doesn’t. I’m not saying men don’t have joy and love — they do — they bring things to the table which we’ve been celebrating for generations. Little Women is a special rare moment where the focus is actually on women and the kind of life, purpose, and vibrancy they bring.
In life, there are ideas, there are feelings, and then there are emotions. I believe emotions are deep reactions to realities and experiences that touch our core — that affect and interact with the very way we conceive of ourselves, our futures, and our purpose. I bring this up because Little Women made me emotional in a way few films have. As I watched Laurie meet the March girls, I felt emotional — because Laurie, like me, like many men — realize that women bring life to the world — in the most powerful way possible. Laurie dances with Jo and he feels alive.
In today’s culture, talking about masculinity and femininity is tricky — tends to spark a lot of emotion. We tend to just throw up our hands and say as long as men aren’t dominant and women don’t succumb to traditional conceptions of femininity we’ll be alright. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women could have told the modern story with lots of negative comments about men and marriage (see Booksmart for such a route) or rewritten the girls’ stories in a way that allowed them to easily overcome the traditional obstacles and achieve their dreams . Our recent stories about women, examples include Rey in the new Star Wars trilogy or Diana in Wonder Woman, tend to construe the world in the way we wish it were rather than the way it is. This leaves me uninterested and unmoved — because the characters don’t feel real. What’s lost is women who are human; powerful, imaginative, creative yet who face hard choices in an unaccommodating world.
I’ve had the privilege of knowing many women. But my experience with women includes their interpersonal, biographical struggles with the self and with big questions about where one should go and be. So often the real obstacle, just as much as the patriarchal constraints of the world, is the self — the inherent, mysterious constraints we seek to overcome to find purpose.What the writers of Rey and Diana forget is that we are made for community. We are social beings and therefore meaning is always at least partially wrapped up not just in answering the question who am I but answering the question whose am I? Jo is right. She’s not solely created for marriage — but she is lonely. There are trade-offs and there is mystery — I think of Marmee’s conversation with Jo who confesses her passion and anger. Marmee responds, “You remind me of myself…I’m angry nearly everyday of my life.”
In Little Women each sister is given space to explore the world and in a sense the whole beautiful-tragic spectrum of life is encapsulated. Amy marries for money, Jo pursues her dreams of being an artist but still struggles with loneliness — a tension she will carry her whole life, Meg marries and experiences all the joys and constraints of traditional femininity, and Beth — Beth dies. And it’s sad. And we cry because in life people die. There’s no easy answers — just truth in Little Women. And truth makes us emotional. Not abstract ideational truth, but embodied truth — narrative that explores the mystery, constraints, and possibilities of finding life in the world we live in.
But what makes Little Women so compelling is it’s not just a comment on the competing choices women are faced with — it’s a normative depiction of something intangible that women have; life. Little Women is a testament to the life they bring to the world; their creative energy and capacity, and the love (and I don’t primarily mean romantic) they infuse into the world. There’s a scene in Little Women where the March girls, after a brief visit to the men on the hill, leave to go home — Greta Gerwig captures the lifeless atmosphere that is left without the women, the men just stand around awkwardly wondering what to do with themselves or what even is the point without the March family — they then get back to work. This is exactly Greta Gerwig’s point; her little women bring something unique to the world — they create, dream, imagine, and laugh. They give away their food, and they fight with intensity. The only way I can describe it is to say Greta Gerwig captures something intangible — which can be summed up in the word joy.
In Little Women, and in life, men don’t have the same kind of joy — this may be provocative to some. In Little Women there are these three men that live up on the hill with everything they could ever want materially, yet they have nothing. Life is stale and unmeaningful. Then there are these five women who live at the bottom of the hill and in many respects they have little yet Greta Gerwig as well as every person who dropped a tear in Little Women knows they have everything. As Laurie stands in his well-heated house he looks out to the March family’s ill-warmed house and sees a light in the window; it’s the March family that has the light of life and we instinctively know Laurie wishes he was there with them at that moment. This contrast is so striking it struck me to my core and made me reflect deeply on what it is about women than men are so drawn to, something deeper than physical attraction.
There are things you can put into words and then there are realities that are deeper than words — and Little Women — with all of its vibrancy and tragedy made me emotional because it made me realize and remember the indescribable life the women I know — from sisters to friends — bring to this world.
