Little Women is on Fire

Little Women isn't just golden, it’s light gold, bright gold, and not gold at all. The light dances and triumphs in the nuance of the story. It’s orange and yellow and the hottest part of a flame, blue. The grace bestowed on every character freely extends to the audience as well. The story is life-affirming. Little Women reminds you what it is to live, why you love, and employs one to live and love better and more. I must address that I will not be discussing each actor or actress’ performance in the 2019 film, because they are all stellar, perfect. I will focus on the characters they so brilliantly portray. Through Alcott’s usage of fire imagery, she illuminates themes of anger and love in Little Women, themes Gerwig thoughtfully infuses into her film in scenes accompanied by burning confessions and the striking of matches.Without the technology of electricity, the frequent use of fire is out of practicality for lighting, heating, and cooking in the nineteenth-century setting of the story. But in a literary sense, this fire is childhood, love, anger, ambition, comfort, desire, independence — this fire is fuel of life.

To begin, we must understand Marmee to be the source of light for her daughters; she is their source of life and home, the hearth of comfort, the stoker of their dreams. The March family rule is a love founded in grace and space. Marmee mothers the girls through loving cultivation and encouragement of their individuality. In her introduction, she answers the door to Jo and Laurie, aiding Meg in walking after she sprained her ankle. Immediately, she is a multiplicity of things. She is the face of the home, a baker late at night, the scolder of Amy and Beth for sneaking out of bed, the nurse to Meg’s injury, and in telling Laurie to call her Marmee, a mother figure of his own. Gerwig makes room and reverence for a Marmee of the human sort, no saint without regret or frustration. In the first Christmas scene, Marmee walks to the house wearing a tear-stained face; she is deeply affected by the sorrows of the world, yet she wipes her face and smiles, for she wants to relish in the enjoyment of her family. “She fights tears and sadness, about what, we don’t entirely know. We just know that what she does as a mother isn’t free. Like so many mothers, she creates magic where there is none, and enables her girls to be brave. ” This is the Christmas scene that opens the novel, the girls wishing not to be poor. To which the most positive sister replies,“We’ve got father and mother and each other,” said Beth, “the four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened the cheerful words.” This familial love shines on each of the girls like a fireplace glowing. This is the glow of being “rich in home-love”, the childhood of magic Marmee has helped to create, and creations all of their own. The day Marmee returns from nursing Father the girls were bursting with excitement to see their mother again. An excitement mirrored in Alcott’s fire imagery for,“The fires seemed to burn with unusual cheeriness, and something better than sunshine brightened the quiet rooms.” Gerwig reflects this firelight shine in hues of gold encasing the memories from childhood as Jo remembers with nostalgia in adulthood, even in a meta way, welding light to express sentiment.

Jo’s personality is passionate, witty, and quick; fire is emblematic for her character as a whole as she is most associated and often described as “fiery” as a result of her predisposition towards anger: “Jo had the least self-control, and had hard times trying to curb the fiery spirit which was continually getting her in trouble;her anger never lasted long, and having humbly confessed her fault she sincerely repented and tried to do better...poor Jo tried desperately to be

good, but her bosom enemy was always ready to flame up and defeat her; and it took years of patient effort to subdue.”

Her years of patient effort are counseled by Marmee, who shared in her affinity for sharp words and anger, which she has wrestled into a manageable level after years of effort. “I’ve been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo”. Marmee chooses to fold her lips to barricade any unkind words from escaping in times of stress. We see this in practice in a scene where Marmee is reading a letter from Aunt March alone after receiving money for a train journey to aid in nursing her wounded husband, accompanied by Aunt March’s various snide remarks,“Mrs March put the note in the fire, the money in her purse, and went on with her preparation with her lips folded tightly in a way which Jo would have understood if she had been there.” This emphasizes her internal flamed feeling put to the test and her shared nature with Jo. Yet Marmee’s patience is seasoned, so she continues in work, burns the letter, and takes the money, knowing sometimes feelings must be bent in desperation to the will of money. This moment is reminiscent of Jo enduring Mr Dashwood's belittlement, even accepting the painful edits in the start of film in order to receive the cash. She grins, she bears it. Marmee teaches not to suppress valuable emotion but not to let it burn others in the wake of processing emotion. Marmee understands that “Some natures are too lofty to curve, too noble to bend,” assuring her daughter that her ardor should not be stamped out, but it is a thing to be celebrebrated when used for good. For Marmee is not stifling, but sincere in guiding her daughters to happy, useful lives.

In addition to Jo’s anger described as “her fury,” her fire, her energy, and her adventurous spirit is marked by fire imagery. At the Gardiner dance in chapter three of the novel, Jo tells Laurie she’s not supposed to dance because she scorched her dress so “Meg told her to keep still.” Jo is not one to sit still. She sits too close to the fire; she likes a little danger, a bit of mischief. With all her time spent reading, it urges her to live, to have adventures of her own,“I don’t like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I’m going to find some.” This is a side of Jo best showcased in her friendship with Laurie, for he wants adventures, and he finds them most thrilling with Jo. They inspire fun in one another. In the hallway or in Gerwig’s lantern-lit porch, they dance as embers do—wildly and grandly, for the fun of it. Not for the decorum of the party, but because that is their way, setting the tone of their friendship that is combusting with youthful abandon. Jo desires to leave the comfort of home to find her own way reflects her dissatisfaction, her hunger for more than the world has to offer; she’s restlessness. This is a girl who works, tells Laurie “I’m a businessman—girl, I mean.” She longs to be purposeful and productive in the world.

Additionally, Jo encourages diligence in Laurie. He is not wrought with traditionally male ambition; he is hardworking for others, bettering himself, learning, obedient, growing and maturing, but never losing his boyish charm. He wishes to graduate “in a blaze of fire” as an offering to Jo via ambition, a confession of his love through achieving well as she wants him to, “this suited the lady better than twilight conferences...for with Jo, brain developed earlier than heart.” Over and over, Alcott describes Laurie as “good-natured,” in his ability to cheer up the March sisters, “good-natured” is practically his epithet. He is sometimes quick tempered, but fire symbolism showcases Laurie's love and generosity. In the way candles atop birthday cakes and fireworks that light the sky aid celebration, Laurie is a celebratory character, ready to encourage or tease, wanting to incite happiness. The Christmas Beth lives and Mr. March returns home, Laurie's excitement is uncontrollable, “Laurie would have had bonfires, skyrockets, trumphial aracles, if he had his own way.” His enthusiasm is infectious; he learns this willful, jovial practice of optimism from witnessing the March family support each other, prodigious in his compliments.

But Jo is not the only woman of ambition; the March parents have instilled an ambitious fire in each of their girls. Ambition! Meg, the eldest, loves as fiercely as Marmee does, soothes her sisters, listens with compassion, and is generous with them even in their faults. She utters the famous, “But, dear me, let us be elegant or die” line, a battle cry, expressed in jest, capturing the fun and stakes of glamor in girlhood. In becoming a wife, she strives to be a good wife, accomplished in domestic life. Ah, dear reader, we cannot discuss Meg without speaking of the jam scene. Meg desperately tries to make homemade jam, “fired with housewifely wish to see her storeroom stocked with homemade preserves” which, of course, has a frustrating and disastrous end in which she yells at John when he brings a guest to dinner that night .

Amy’s fiery ambition is innate, driving her artistic dreams as she claims she “wants to be great or nothing.” Amy desires many things from life, and she intends to will them into existence. She wants to be out in the world and feels belittled and hindered by her youth. Amy’s most infamous deed is setting aflame Jo’s manuscript after Jo taunted her and she was not invited to the theater with Laurie, Jo, Meg, and John Brooke. In her childish logic, she burns the object most precious to Jo and then hilariously admits to it almost immediately upon Jo asking if anyone took it:

“ I burnt it up.”

“What! My little book I was so fond of, and worked over, and meant to finish before I got home! Have you really burnt it? Said Jo turning very pale, while her eyes kindled and her hands clothed Amy nervously.

“Yes! I did! I told you I’d make you pay for being so cross yesterday, and I have so—”

“Amy got no further, for Jo’s hot temper mastered her, and she shook Amy till her teeth chattered.”

In the film Gerwig colors Amy with a gracious light, highlighting her hilarious lines, endearing the audience to a character readers have spent over a century despising. It’s fun to despise fictional characters, this we know, but Amy is too funny and readily adorable for the audience to actually exert time bad-mouthing her. Gerwig accomplishes much in rewiring how we view the snarky, youngest March sister.

Beth is an artist, a musician. Music is played for music’s sake, beauty for the joy of having beauty in the house, earnest and not self-seeking. She is able to be content with her range of creativity and her circle of loved ones. Gerwig brings this passion to the audience’s attention, characterizing Beth first by her music, her opening scene sat at the piano. Later when invited to play Mr Lawrence’s piano, Gerwig writes in the stage notes, “At first she is tentative, trying to play quietly, but soon she plays with abandon. She is on fire,” indicating music as Beth’s great joy and release. Like Marmee is the figure of home comfort, Beth’s presence is like firelight. To Jo, she is home, her best comfort,“Over Jo, Beth had more influence than any one in the family.” She uses her sweetness to bolster her sisters, purposeful in the authenticity of her sweetness. On the day of her death the light changes,“for the first time in many months the fire was out,” in which Gerwig palettes the scene in stark light, blues, and dark shades, emphasizing the home comfort of their dear sister is gone. Her sunshiny, gold presence, her crackling, ever-presence love, was extinguished, leaving Jo lonely, losing her pillar of support, her dearest companion and confidante. Gerwig leaves the sound out in the scene in which Beth’s death is revealed, indicating that the music leaves with Beth and only returns when Jo’s Professor Bhaer is invited to play Beth’s piano.

Gerwig positions the Professor so advantageously, introducing him early in her adaptation, challenging Jo and the audience not to like him right away. He shares Jo’s habitat of standing by the fire and catching his coat tail on fire, uniting them, sharing this quirk, sparking chemistry between them. Alcott associates him with fire as well, “He was neither rich nor great, young nor handsome...yet he was as attractive as a genial fire, and people seemed to gather about him as naturally as about a warm hearth,” exemplifying his warm and kind nature. Even in criticizing Jo’s work, he is said to have spoken warmly, in response, “ Jo sat still, looking as if the fire had come to her, for her cheek burned,” leaving her a state of embarrassment and anger. Gerwig has her lash out, lead with anger, calling Friedrich a “pompous blowhard,” and Jo storms out of the room declaring no desire of friendship between them. Yet Alcott delves deeper in the shame of Jo’s lacking integrity as a writer of these stories. She rereads them and confesses to Friedrich that they are trash, burning her work, “Jo turned hot at the bare idea, stuffed the whole bundle into her store nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze.” In contrast, Gerwig has Jo burn her work as she wakes in the middle of the night after Beth dies. “She feeds a published story into the fire. Then she burns more stories, printed, unpublished, half-finished, she burns them all. It is a potlatch, a total burning down of everything she has made up until this point.” Both are valid in the characterization of Jo, but Gerwig alters this in order to make her meaningful plot deviation; Jo actually writing Little Women. Striking match after match, burning candle after candle to aid her vision while writing, burning ambition, Jo is angry at Beth’s death and uses it to write; it brings purpose, fervor. She wants to honor Beth, setting her story titled “For Beth” before her as she writes, candles lit even in the day, aesthetic, yes, but she is her own flame, lighting her own fire, never seems to be blown out but burns till the wax is gone, igniting words. Even after death, Beth encourages a moral betterment in Jo, in which Jo wishes to write as Beth would have wanted. As a phoenix she rises from the ashes of her burned works, setting to work to write anew.

The film gives a new ending, one Alcott experienced herself —publication. She writes the thing. But further, she publishes the thing. Her words now earn, creating a space for women to own their stories, fiscally and personally. This is Jo’s actual love story: of stories, a maker of them, a writer, the birth of financial independence. Gerwig ends on the sacred moment of Jo holding her book in her hands, proving ambition turned tactile:

Jo turns it over in her hands, touching it like the holy object it is, her inchoate desire made manifest.

Jo looks up ...and sees the future -

Gerwig tells the March family’s story with reverence, an homage to the Alcotts. But it is a reverence that can be touched; it’s so lovely, so inherent and already a little messy, because it’s human, history; it’s real. It is holy, but it should also be held close. They are flames that flicker, burn, and light; the imaginations of girlhood and women are meant to be kindled and revered as Gerwig and Alcott handle them. They are precious— gold.