Why I’ll Never Understand How Jo Gave Up Laurie in Little Women: A Retrospective

If there’s anything I would rewrite, it would be their story.

Image Credit: Columbia Pictures and Sony

I’ve been thinking a lot about Little Women lately. It’s a story I always circle back to, like a hangnail I can’t pull without pain, till I find myself irritated beyond belief.

I love a lot about Little Women. I love the time period, I love the close bonds and interactions in the March family, I love the idea of four young girls growing up amid suffering yet triumphing in their own small ways. (Let’s not talk about Beth, though, for real.)

But I have so many problems with the story too. Louisa May Alcott seemed absolutely spiteful towards her characters, I’m not going to lie — a far cry from an author like Jane Austen who wanted to give her characters everything she could not have herself.

“My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.”

— Jane Austen

(Watch Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway as Jane if you’d like to get some of that perspective.)

As a writer myself, I find myself constantly at war with myself: do I give my characters narrative stakes and obstacles to prolong their arcs for growth, or do I acquiesce and act as the…