Learning Femininity: The Influence of Marmee in Filmic

Adaptations of Little Women

Popular culture scholars continuously remind us that film

and television do not exist in a vacuum; they are informed by

contemporary moralities and political agendas and, most

importantly, present those viewpoints for the audience to

internalize. Films directed at young audiences especially operate

this way. A film like Little Women, which puts what Madelon Bedell

calls “the American female myth” on screen, promotes a certain

ideal of femininity. It is not hard to see the power of the

novel’s adaptations; the book has had generations of little girls

aligning themselves with the sisters, so why would they not find

themselves in the films and model their performances of

femininity on what they see there? This is not a problem in and

of itself. However, when one considers that films are productions

of cultural moments, a troubling realization arises: when a novel

as beloved as Little Women is adapted, it brings a powerful level

of persuasion to audiences. There have been three major American

studio productions of Little Women, and each presents a different

ideal of femininity, all filtered through Marmee and what she

Mathis 2

teaches her daughters through both direct instruction and

example. As the March sisters negotiate femininity in the Civil

War era, the young women watching them—finding guides to life in

their portrayals—are offered various pictures of what ideal

womanhood is, and not all of them are encouraging.

With recent resurgent interest in Little Women and Alcott

studies as a whole, the novel is often studied in light of its

concern with the place of women in Victorian society. This is

certainly a compelling aspect of the book, and it would be

irresponsible to consider its themes without including that.

However, there has been a push by some scholars to see the novel

as a meditation on feminist thought. The problem with that view

is that it is really not the case; the book is sentimental and

only reinforces the idea that girls need to be trained out of

their selfish immaturity and high ambition by their mothers so

that they can become productive members of society through

marriage and motherhood. Alcott may have been forced into writing

the novel this way to get it published, but she still did it.

Marmee is the figure through which the girls learn Victorian

ideas of femininity; Elaine Showalter goes so far as to say that

Mathis 3

“Little Women stands as a code term for female piety and

sentimentality” (42). She is certainly correct; Marmee’s lessons

consistently teach her girls both of these things. Furthermore,

by using Pilgrim’s Progress to show her daughters the importance of

moral virtue and godliness, she teaches them to value their

positions in the home. Little Women gives a picture of a mother

“who inculcates into her daughters the domestic arts, housewifely

duties, self-abnegating attitudes, and submissive behavior

conventionally associated with the female role in nineteenth-

century society” (Hollinger and Winterhalter 174). These

attitudes form the basis of the “cult of true womanhood” later

advanced by Coventry Patmore’s The Angel in the House (1885), which

describes a young girl who is graceful, gentle, unselfish, and

noble. Though it comes nearly twenty years later, what else could

one term Marmee’s ideal?

Marmee implements her culture’s view of perfected womanhood

through various “experiments,” to borrow the term of one of her

most successful attempts. Meg finds herself with three months of

vacation, as the Kings are leaving Concord for the seashore, and

she and her sisters decide to enjoy some time away from their

Mathis 4

work. Marmee goes one step further than just advising them that

they will soon find “that all play, and no work, is as bad as all

work, and no play” (Alcott 93). She is right; the girls soon tire

of doing nothing but amusing themselves with their various

hobbies. Still, because all of Marmee’s lessons are meant to

teach her girls about being women, she adds another component: a

mother’s place in the household. Marmee seems to join in with her

daughters’ indolence at the end of the week; she stops running

her home and gives Hannah a vacation as well. When the girls come

downstairs on Saturday morning, they see that nothing has been

done—there is no fire, no breakfast, and no Marmee. Meg runs to

check on her, and Marmee simply tells her that she is tired and

needs to rest after a hard week; later, she leaves the girls

alone while she goes out, explaining that she needs a day off.

The sisters see this as a chance to play house, not realizing

that this is Marmee’s real lesson. After things go horribly, she

gathers her girls to her and explains her lesson: “the comfort of

all depends on each doing her share faithfully...it is pleasanter

to help one another, to have daily duties which make leisure

sweet when it comes, and to bear or forbear, that home way be

Mathis 5

comfortable and lovely to us all” (Alcott 99). Marmee’s point is

one that is reinforced throughout the novel; her girls should

prepare themselves for their most important role, which is coming

sooner for some than others: being a wife and mother. As Lora

Romero points out, Alcott assigns these lessons a greater level

of difficulty than those learned by the March sisters’ male

soldier counterparts:

Through her representation of the March sisters’ struggle to

‘fight their bosom enemies bravely’ and to ‘conquer

themselves,’ Alcott endeavors to reinvest the home with value,

relocating within its walls the heroism traditionally

identified with the battlefield. Alcott suggests that, in

part because heroics attract the attention of the world, it is

far easier to be a hero than it is to purify one’s own

heart; temporary hardship and even death in the name of a

virtuous cause are more easily endured than a quiet, lifetime

struggle for virtue. (24)

Though the March sisters struggle with what the 1994 film terms

“perfecting oneself,” they fall in line with Marmee’s teachings

by the time they reach adulthood. Even high-spirited, independent

Mathis 6

Jo becomes all that Marmee hopes she can be. In the end, Alcott

upholds what Jane Tompkins calls the culture’s “most cherished

social beliefs—the sanctity of motherhood and the family” (134).

This viewpoint is reinforced in George Cukor’s 1933

adaptation of the novel. The March sisters are representative of

the era in which the film was produced; the audience sees

distinct differences in the physicality of the girls as well as a

construction of Jo that sometimes feels more like Katharine

Hepburn playing dress up than portraying a character, but the

influence of Marmee’s Victorian morality is still in full force.

Cukor’s version of the novel is a woman’s film, a genre that

takes as its subject “a female who is trying to deal with

emotional, social, and psychological problems that are

specifically connected to the fact that she is a woman” (Basinger

20). Marmee’s “little women” are attempting to negotiate their

personal performances of femininity by looking to their mother

for inspiration, and this attempt informs each of their conflicts

throughout the film, creating what David Greven sees as “an

atmosphere of female exclusivity” (52). From the very beginning

of the movie, Marmee is established as the guiding moral force;

Mathis 7

instead of showing the girls bemoaning their lack of a

traditional present-filled Christmas, a scene that has Mrs. March

working in a charitable endeavor, giving clothes to the needy.

This portrayal of Marmee illustrates her devotion to Christian

principles, something that is echoed throughout the film in her

advice to her daughters as well as the unseen help she offers

others—like giving a sick Laurie medicine—that is only known due

to quick mentions by the other characters. In fact, Marmee is a

very small part of the film; she is gone to Washington while the

girls are at home, or the scene shifts to New York, where Marmee

seemingly has never visited Jo. Still, Marmee’s influence is

deeply felt through the moral instructions the girls give each

other.

Meg, as the eldest, is the clearest picture of what Marmee

has taught her girls; she is the closest to “finished” of the

sisters, having only to work through the vestiges of her

immaturity as seen in her love of finery and occasional fits of

pique. Her lines are peppered with variations on what “Marmee

always says” about being a real lady. Meg also finds herself

stepping in for Marmee whenever her sisters are misbehaving. In

Mathis 8

the first scene at Orchard House, Jo and Amy are

characteristically bickering, and Meg offers advice that, as she

is not quite perfected, is full of good intentions but not

tempered with grace as Marmee’s advice is:

MEG. Really, you’re both to blame. You’re old enough now to

leave off boys’ tricks and behave better, Josephine. Now

you’re so tall and turn up your hair; you must remember

you’re almost a young lady...And as for you, Amy, your

absurd words are as bad as Jo’s slang. Your airs are funny

now, but you’ll grow into an affected little goose unless you

take care. (Cukor)

By the end of the film, Meg is a respectable matron and has

taken on the air of quiet piety and gentleness that characterizes

Marmee; she visits Jo and, after unsuccessfully encouraging her

to go on calls, tenderly probes her feelings about Amy and

Laurie’s marriage. In this short exchange, it becomes clear that

Meg has internalized Marmee’s lessons: Christian charity, love

for family, and a peaceful presence that reassures all around

her.

Even Beth, who never marries before her death, learns this

Mathis 9

as well. Beth—portrayed by Jean Parker as a luminous beauty,

rather than the child she is in the novel—uses her short time on

earth internalizing Marmee’s morality. When Aunt March gives each

of the girls a dollar for Christmas, only Meg and Beth initially

consider what Marmee might think of what they intend to purchase

with it, and Beth is the one to suggest the sisters buy Marmee a

present rather than spend the money on themselves. This could be

seen as a simple expression of Beth’s character as given in the

novel, but as important as connections to the source material are

in adaptation studies, it is vital to first consider the versions

of Little Women as films on their own. When Beth’s suggestion

follows a scene in which Marmee gives an old man a warm coat for

his trip to Washington to see his wounded son, it must be

considered in that light. Marmee tells her assistant that the

man’s plight “makes me ashamed to think how little I do” (Cukor).

Beth even follows her mother’s example of quiet giving, sending

Mr. Laurence a pair of handmade slippers as a thank you for

letting her play his piano. For Marmee, generosity is an

important part of being a good woman, as it is a Christian

virtue. Before going to Washington to nurse her wounded husband,

Mathis 10

Marmee reminds her girls to visit the Hummels—a line that could

have just as easily had “in their affliction” tacked onto the

end, echoing the biblical principle Marmee is attempting to

instill in this particular lesson—and only Beth does as she asks.

This devotion to Marmee’s vision of ideal womanhood essentially

kills Beth, as she gives and gives to the Hummels until they pass

on scarlet fever to her. As Marmee is Beth’s most immediate

example of mature womanhood, it is unsurprising that every choice

she makes seems to be predicated on an aspect of Marmee’s

performance of femininity; as Lora Romero points out, the

mother/child relationship was made “sacrosanct” in middle-class

Victorian culture (27).

Mervyn LeRoy’s 1949 contribution changes little in terms of

the script, and though Marmee holds a mildly enlarged place in

the film compared to the previous offering, her presence is just

as keenly felt, primarily through the ways in which LeRoy manages

to infuse his version of Little Women with a distinct post-World

War II sensibility. Instead of being a simple woman’s film,

LeRoy’s picture falls into the subgenre of melodrama. Even though

the 1949 version is often discussed in terms of its preoccupation

Mathis 11

with the March sisters’ romantic lives—the casting of Peter

Lawford as Laurie essentially cements this aspect of the picture—

there are facets of the film that place it more firmly on the

side of melodrama. In Thomas Elsaesser’s “Tales of Sound and

Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama” he lists some

melodramatic characteristics that are clearly at work in LeRoy’s

Little Women: “the nonpsychological conception of the

characters...the claustrophobia of the settings, which are most

frequently domestic...[and] a concentration on the rhythm of

experience rather than its content, a strategy linked to the

‘foreshortening of lived time in favor of intensity’ which is

characteristic of melodrama” (qtd. in Doane 72). This

foreshortening is especially prevalent in the film, as each scene

can be perceived as a time in the girls’ lives in which Marmee’s

lessons may or may not be applied properly. Mary Ann Doane

explores this concept in her seminal study on the woman’s film of

the 1940s. She explains that because melodrama is a genre that

almost exclusively has women as protagonists, “it is not

surprising that the social function most rigorously associated

with femininity—that of motherhood” should be so prominent in

Mathis 12

many of them (73). The melodramas of the 1940s focused on

maternity have one basic tenet in common: a mother’s goal should

be to make her home a haven, a place where her family can find

comfort in sameness. In a time of war, this is not surprising,

and this aspect of the 1949 adaptation of Little Women is a natural

connection to make to the novel, which also focuses on a home in

wartime. However, this is an incredibly conservative concept of

motherhood that can be problematic when considered in light of

the fact that Marmee is passing on these ideas to her daughters.

Robyn McCallum notes that “LeRoy’s version is clearly

informed by the post-World War II antifeminist ideology that

sought to remove women from the workforce and reinstate them at

home” (84). Marmee would probably not consider herself as part of

the discourse of suppressing the liberty that women found in

working outside the home during wartime, but her participation in

it is clear. In her discussions with her daughters, she makes it

clear that she sees one of her responsibilities as a mother to be

showing her girls the value of the home over the world outside.

In a film that opens with credits fashioned like a cross-stitched

Mathis 13

picture—an emblem of the home that calls to mind a mother

contentedly crafting by the fire—and ends with a daughter who has

learned to love home and its comforts over traveling the world,

what else is one intended to understand, other than that ideal

womanhood means keeping a comfortable house and being a beacon of

security to one’s husband and children? This seems to tell young

girls that what they do at home is important and encourages them

to be the best wife they can be; what is really being expressed,

however, is that this position “does not constitute a threat to

the traditional patriarchal order—a symbolic role which

counteracts the effects of the woman’s new and necessary role in

production” (Doane 79) and leaves the cultural dictates

established before the war firmly in place.

In the 1949 version, we again see the influence of Marmee’s

personality and beliefs on her daughters. Much like Katharine

Hepburn brought her typical straightforward New England manner to

Jo, Mary Astor infuses her portrayal of Marmee with what

contemporary film audiences now recognize as her common type;

Marmee is loving and intelligent, a giving, humble woman who is

calm and, above all, supportive of her husband. Mr. March is a

Mathis 14

much stronger presence in this film than in any other of the

adaptations, something that can likely be traced to a need to

give the audience some reassurance—he came back from war, ladies,

so your husbands might, too. In fact, even Laurie gets a beefed

up war backstory; as Elaine Showalter points out, he “is

introduced as having run away from school to join the army, lying

about his age, and being wounded in battle. The script by Sally

Benson and Andrew Solt describes him as looking ‘not unlike our

idea of Edgar Allan Poe,’ as if Jo’s literary ambition had been

displaced onto him” (61). Giving a greater place to men in this

film upsets the previous balance of Marmee worship that her

daughters experience; here, it is Amy, the spoiled, vain flirt,

who seems to have the most invested in what Marmee thinks of her.

Amy does what she wants, but the one person she will not

cross is her mother. The film, like its 1933 precursor, shows

Laurie giving a ball and inviting all four March sisters. Amy is

thrilled at the invitation, seeing it as her chance to

participate in the society that, as the youngest, has been denied

to her through her family’s fairly recent fall. Marmee allows her

Mathis 15

girls to go, even flattering all her daughters about how

beautiful they look—and alluding to the decorativeness considered

as important in filmic representations of women at the time—as

Amy primps in the mirror throughout the scene. One might assume

that Amy plans on dancing at the ball and finding a suitor there,

but as the frame moves and expands to include Amy and Beth, they

are at the top of the hallway stairs, nowhere near the action.

Even Jo, with her burned dress, is closer. When Mr. Laurence asks

why Amy is not dancing, she explains that Marmee feels she is too

young to dance, and then gives a reason rooted in Marmee’s

generous spirit: “I’d rather mingle with my sister than mingle

with a crowd” (LeRoy). This is obviously not true, but Beth

cannot handle the crush of people, and so Amy stays with her. As

Amy matures, Marmee’s lessons have clearly taken root,

particularly the ones involving marriage. Though the comments

shown in the film are directed at Jo, who actually asks her

mother about choosing a husband, Marmee’s advice on matrimony

comes as a result of Amy and Beth’s overhearing a society matron

callously discussing the sisters’ prospects in regards to Laurie.

JO. Marmee, you don’t have any plans for us, do you?

Mathis 16

MARMEE. Plans?

JO. You know, like some mothers have for their daughters?

Like wanting us to marry rich men or something?

MARMEE. Yes, Jo, I have a great many plans. I want you all

to be beautiful, accomplished, and good. I want you to be

admired, loved, and respected. I want you to lead pleasant

and useful lives. And I pray to the Lord to send you as little

sorrow as He sees fit. Of course, I’m ambitious for you. Of

course, I’d like to see you marry rich men, if you loved them.

I’m no different than any mother. (LeRoy)

This is one of the few moments in the film that borrows from

Marmee’s occasional mentions of proto-feminist thought in the

novel; however, it is tempered and filtered through the idea of a

morality that Marmee is proposing more than a political or social

movement that she believes in. Simply put, it is most important

to love one’s husband; security and moral virtue run a close

second. While all her surviving daughters make happy marriages,

Amy is the one that comes the closest to living up to all of

Marmee’s ambitions. As Elizabeth Taylor portrays Amy, one can

hardly argue the beautiful and admired qualification. By the end

Mathis 17

of the film, when Amy has married Laurie, it is clear that she

loves him very much—and by marrying him, she has placed herself

firmly in the social class her family fell from, one that Marmee

clearly sees her daughters as belonging in, should they care to

participate. Still, Amy has also matured by the time she is

married; Laurie’s relationship with her has changed him for the

better, and Marmee seems delighted by the match. In the end, she

is most concerned that her daughters are happy, as long as they

are living productive lives.

In the 1994 version, directed by Gillian Anderson1, this

concern for her daughters’ well-being is more obvious in Marmee;

in truth, everything about Marmee is more obvious, because she is

a much bigger part of the film. She is even given a first name,

Abigail, marking her as more than just Mrs. March. As in the 1933

version, she is the first main character we see, and it is

mentioned that she has been away from her girls because she has

been working at Hope House, distributing food to the poor.

However, that is all this Marmee has in common with the one

1 This version of Little Women is the first major studio adaptation of the novelhelmed by both a woman and a non-American.

Mathis 18

portrayed by Spring Byington. Susan Sarandon infuses her

portrayal with a vitality that has been lacking in previous

versions; it is immediately obvious that Marmee is a doer and as

different from the novel version as is possible without outraging

the purists. In the novel, Marmee sees marriage and children as a

woman’s ultimate end; she lets Jo go to New York so that she can

see there is something better than independence. 1994’s Marmee

says that Jo should “embrace [her] liberty” (Armstrong). Novel

Marmee speaks of the happiness of being loved and chosen by a

good man, whereas Film Marmee wants them to do the choosing. A

main area in which Anderson’s Marmee deviates from the novel is

in the area of religion. Marmee is devoid of overtly Christian

principles; while she speaks of everyone being “God’s children”

and quotes biblical proverbs like “don’t let the sun go down on

your anger” (Armstrong), the Marches are more like the Alcotts in

their devotion to Transcendentalism and its tenets. As film

critic Steve Vineburg notices, “Swicord transfers the qualities

of Alcott’s own family to the Marches, giving them quite a

different worldview. Spiritually and intellectually, they’re

Transcendentalists; politically, they’re progressive liberals—

Mathis 19

pro-suffrage, anti-child labor, abolitionists, and teetotalers”

(26). They are far from perfect, though; in earlier versions,

the girls love work because of Marmee’s instruction that it is an

extension of their Christian duties as women, but 1994’s little

women hate housework and the fact that Meg and Jo have to work

for others to help support the household.

However, the greatest deviation in Marmee’s character comes

from her explicitly feminist principles, something that critics

have paid a great deal of attention to since the film’s release.

It is true that Gillian Anderson focuses more on Marmee’s

feminist moments—the screenplay by Robin Swicord essentially uses

those moments to define Marmee as both a mother and a woman—but

because this is a movie directed at children, those beliefs are

watered down and essentialized in a way that is problematic.

Linda Grasso argues that

in the film and the discourse it has engendered, Alcott,

Little Women, and feminism are stripped of a complex and nuanced

history. This has serious political consequences, for when an

interpretation of feminism that is bereft of history and

political radicalism is disseminated through popular culture

Mathis 20

mediums, it assists the passage of laws and policies that

maintain race and gender hierarchies.” (182)

For Grasso, Anderson’s Little Women glosses over hardship and

struggle and suggests all that is needed for progress is for

mothers to teach their children the idea of gender equality.

However true that may be, the film’s PG rating—given in the early

1990s, it is analogous to a G rating or a level of offensiveness

in line with a Disney Channel sitcom—places it firmly in the

category of children’s entertainment. While adults are bothered

by the essentialness of feminism as depicted in the film,

children come away with the idea that good mothers, as Marmee is

plainly set up to be understood as, do not limit what their

daughters can do merely based on their sex.

Linda Grasso seems to understand this; after her critique of

Marmee’s feminism, she notes that what is really at work here is

a type of “feminist utopia, [where] self-fulfillment replaces

self-sacrifice as the paramount virtue; the value of education

and physical fitness are taken for granted; self-worth based on

intelligence, not physical appearance, is continuously stressed;

and the pursuit of ambition is rewarded” (183). Marmee’s feelings

Mathis 21

on these things are put at the forefront of the film. While Jo,

Beth, and Amy romp in the snow with Laurie, Marmee and Meg meet

up with John Brooke, who comments on how “unusually active” her

daughters are. Meg, presented as a model of propriety, is

mortified at her mother’s answer: “Feminine weaknesses and

fainting spells are the direct result of our confining young

girls to the house, bent over their needlework and restrictive

corsets” (Armstrong). From her face and her mother’s later

comment, part of Meg’s embarrassment comes from the fact that

Marmee has obviously given this speech before and cares little

about the appropriateness of the audience for it. Later, when Jo

refuses Laurie’s marriage proposal and cannot find any happiness

in Concord, Marmee urges her to see her discontent as a sign that

she is meant for something more: “Oh, Jo. Jo, you have so many

extraordinary gifts. How can you expect to live an ordinary life?

You’re ready to go out and find a good use for your talent. Go,

and embrace your liberty, and see what wonderful things come of

it” (Armstrong).

In this film, Marmee is the one to give her girls the

nickname of “little women,” signaling that her interpretation of

Mathis 22

femininity should be at the forefront of their minds; this is

important, as Anderson’s adaptation is the first to show the

March sisters out and about in the world. Previous films have

featured Jo in New York, for example, but in this version, one

gets the sense that Jo has been there for some time before she is

called home. Marmee’s self-sufficiency and feminist thought

affect all of her girls in their dealings with the outside world.

When Beth comes down with scarlet fever, Mr. Laurence brings his

personal physician, Dr. Bangs, to attend to her. However, he can

do nothing, saying, “If I bleed her, it would finish her”

(Armstrong). In the end, Beth is saved not by science—and by

extension, not by men—but by Marmee’s homeopathic remedies,

something that she has learned in her time as a wife and mother.

Meg, after earlier experiencing what it is like to have rich men

interested in her—potentially securing her future, something she

has been worrying about—settles down with poor but virtuous John

Brooke. She has internalized one of Marmee’s last direct lessons

to Meg and Jo: “I would rather Meg marry for love and be a poor

man’s wife than marry for riches and lose her self-respect”

(Armstrong)

Mathis 23

Marmee’s lessons work the greatest changes in her most

willful daughters. Amy loses her vanity, and her nose-perfecting

clothespin, by the time she grows up; though Samantha Mathis

makes a beautiful adult Amy, there is none of the attention to

her physical appearance that characterizes her younger self. More

importantly, Amy, who had the farthest to go in terms of

“perfecting oneself,” becomes a poised, graceful young woman who

has left behind her childish maxims—“One does have a choice to

whom one loves”—and married for love, not money as she had

earlier insisted she would do (Armstrong). Her marriage perhaps

even more of a Marmee-centered triumph than Meg’s and is

presented as a grand romance in which Jo has been supplanted in

Laurie’s heart. When Jo refuses his marriage proposal, Laurie

apparently proceeds to drink his way through Europe; his first

appearance in France is with two women on his arm, both clearly

less than virtuous. Amy is appalled, and Laurie finds that he

cares about her opinion of him. His subsequent redemption is an

attempt to be worthy of her. Later, after Beth’s death, he runs

to comfort Amy, not Jo, as her letter requests. They are married

in secret, only telling the family when they return to Concord.

Mathis 24

Jo, who has from the beginning been the daughter seemingly

closest to Marmee in temperament and ideals, becomes a woman so

like her mother that the changes she undergoes seem small.

However, her transformation holds perhaps the greatest weight in

terms of the film’s overall message. Jo’s problem has always been

that she is too headstrong and impetuous, something that one can

assume Marmee also struggled with. As Jo reaches maturity, these

tendencies are tempered and she emerges as a thoughtful,

considerate young woman with a great mind to challenge even the

most philosophical of men. In her interactions with Professor

Friedrich Bhaer—here more of a handsome, romantic lover than the

paternal figure of the novel—Jo shows her mind to her advantage;

it is clear that Jo’s intelligence is the thing he loves best

about her. Bhaer even goes so far as to show her off to his

students as they have a philosophical and political discussion

about voting rights.

MAYER. It was nothing short of a betrayal of our country’s

ideals!...A constitution that denies the basic rights of

citizenship to women and black people?...

UNNAMED STUDENT. A lady has no need of suffrage if she has a

Mathis 25

husband....

MAYER. But if women are a moral force, shouldn’t they have

the right to govern and preach and testify in court?

Jo disagrees, but will not interrupt the men; Bhaer silently urges her to speak.

JO. I find it poor logic to say that because women are good,

women should vote. Men do not vote because they are good,

they vote because they are male. And women should vote, not

because they are angels and men are animals, but because we are

human beings and citizens of this country.

MAYER (visibly impressed). You should have been a lawyer, Miss

March.

JO. I should have been a great many things, Mr. Mayer.

(Armstrong)

Interestingly, Jo’s views are direct challenges to the prevailing

attitudes of the time —women were seen as “moral forces,” created

by God to help their husbands. Jo clearly disagrees and seems to

have become a budding agitator during her time in New York;

still, these are obviously Marmee’s sentiments filtered through

Jo’s experiences. Later, Marmee is the one who gives Jo the idea

to make Plumfield, her inheritance from Aunt March, into a

Mathis 26

school. Marmee mentions that it would be a challenge for Jo, who

is suddenly the only unmarried sister. In discussing it with

Friedrich to try to get him to stay with her, Jo says that she

wants to open a school that would be “open to anyone who wanted

to learn” (Armstrong). This is Bronson Alcott’s school, another

example of this film’s interest in the intersections of Alcott’s

life and work.

Marmee’s feminist tendencies are not just an influence on

her daughters; they are felt by the audience, as well, as she

gives speeches not found in the text that are clearly intended to

educate contemporary viewers about the plight of women in the

nineteenth century. When Meg returns from Sally Moffat’s coming

out ball and tells Jo of her overhearing someone talk of how she

had “gone after the Laurence heir” (Armstrong), Marmee decides

this is a good time to inform her two eldest daughters about how

Boston society really works.

MEG. Why is it Laurie may do as he likes, and flirt, and

tipple champagne...

MARMEE. And no one thinks the less of him? Well, I suppose

for one practical reason: Laurie is a man. And as such, he

Mathis 27

may vote, and hold property, and pursue any profession he

pleases. And so, he is not so easily demeaned. (Armstrong)

Meg’s time at Sally’s ball—something not seen in the other films—

is Armstrong’s time to add her own commentary about a woman’s

place in society; whether it is 1868 or 1994, there are similar

concerns. Meg is pitied by her rich friends because she does not

have the finery that their own families have provided for them,

finery intended to help them snare wealthy husbands. Belle

Gardiner “helps” Meg by lending her clothes, including the hated

corset; cosmetics; and jewelry. Meg’s borrowed dress is cut down

to the tops of her breasts—clearly meant to draw men’s attention

to her figure, not her mind—and she has makeup on, something she

has been convinced is necessary to be desirable in men’s eyes.

when Laurie sees her, he makes his disappointment clear. He has

taken Marmee’s lessons to heart as well; this is no way to make a

match. After seeing how his criticism wounds Meg, he apologizes

and tries to lighten the mood. Their friendship is restored, but

Meg worries over how she craves that kind of attention.

JO. Why should anyone care what they think?

MEG. I do. It’s nice to be praised and admired. I couldn’t

Mathis 28

help but like it.

MARMEE. Of course not! I only care what you think of

yourself. If you feel your value lies in being merely

decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing

that’s all that you really are. Time erodes all such beauty,

but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your

mind. Your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage. These

are the things I cherish so in you. I so wish I could give my

girls a more just world. I know you’ll make it a better place.

(Armstrong)

Marmee wants her girls to understand that they are more than just

their bodies; they have minds, and they should focus on

developing those. Her unspoken message is that her daughters—both

her actual daughters and her adopted daughters in the audience—

should look for a man who loves them for who they are, not how

well they look on his arm. It is not only her daughters who live

in an unjust world; the young girls watching this in the theater

and, later, on video and DVD, live in that same world, and Marmee

wants them all to know that they can do better than their

ancestors have done.

Mathis 29

In her book, Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s

Writing, Elaine Showalter asserts that reading “Little Women at the

end of the twentieth century is thus to engage with contemporary

ideas about women’s literary identity, critical institutions, and

the American literary canon, as well as with nineteenth-century

ideas of the relationship between patriarchal culture and women’s

culture” (44). Watching Little Women at the beginning of the twenty

-first century is to do the same. While the studio adaptations

are products of the time in which they were produced, they still

reflect the important aspects of the novel, which gives them

obvious value. However, one must be sure to consider these films

in light of the changes they bring to the book and its

characters. Marmee may not be one of the titular “little women,”

but she is a driving force in their lives, and her lessons inform

the type of femininity they subscribe to. In contemplating how

the 1933, 1949, and 1994 studio adaptations are part of American

popular culture, it is vital that scholars understand that they

speak to generations of girls born long after their stars die; in

this age of the internet, DVD players, and Netflix, a fan of the

novel is just as likely to have access to Katharine Hepburn’s Jo

Mathis 30

as she is Winona Ryder’s Jo. It is important to think about how

each film’s cultural moment affects its message. While the 1994

version with Marmee-as-feminist-visionary certainly appeals to

audiences in its concern for the place of women in society, there

are flaws, which countless critics have discussed in detail. As

an adaptation, however, Anderson’s interpretation does one thing

that is impressive: unlike her predecessors, she finds the core

message of the novel—that of learning to be good, productive

women in society—and marries that to a twentieth-century feminist

sensibility in a way that encourages young girls to develop their

minds and moralities instead of playing to men’s interests. In

the end, is that not what Alcott would hope for?

Mathis 31

Works Cited

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. 1868-69. Ed. Anne K. Phillips and

Gregory Eiselein. New York: Norton and Company, 2004. Print.

Armstrong, Gillian. Little Women. Perf. Susan Sarandon, Winona

Ryder, Claire Danes, Trini Alvarado, Samantha Mathis, and

Christian Bale. Columbia Pictures, 1994. DVD.

Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-

1980. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1993.

Cukor, George. Little Women. Perf. Katharine Hepburn, Jean Parker,

Frances Dee, and Spring Byington. RKO, 1933. DVD.

Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s.

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1987. Print.

Grasso, Linda. “Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Magic Inkstand’: Little

Women, Feminism, and the Myth of Regeneration.” Identity, the

Body, and the Menopause. Spec. issue of Frontiers: Journal of Women

Studies 19.1 (1998):177-192. JSTOR. Web. 25 September 2012.

Mathis 32

Greven, David. Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The

Woman’s Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan-St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.

Hollinger, Karen and Teresa Winterhalter. “A Feminist Romance:

Adapting Little Women to the Screen.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s

Literature 18.2 (Autumn 1999): 173-192. JSTOR. Web. 25 September

2012.

LeRoy, Mervyn. Little Women. Perf. Mary Astor, June Allyson, and

Elizabeth Taylor. MGM, 1949. DVD.

McCallum, Robyn. “The Present Reshaping the Past Reshaping the

Present: Film Versions of Little Women.” The Lion and the Unicorn

24.1 (January 2000): 81-96. Project MUSE. Web. 26 September

2012.

Romero, Lora. Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum United

States. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1997. Print.

Showalter, Elaine. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s

Writing. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991. Print.

Mathis 33

Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction

1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.

Vineburg, Steve. “Alcott and Armstrong.” The Threepenny Review 62

(Summer 1995): 26-27. JSTOR. Web. 25 September 2012.