Was Louisa May Alcott Forced To Marry Jo, The Answer Is Not What You Think
LMA was the master of self-censorship
Interpreting Little Women from our modern-day/fourth way of feminism can be problematic. The controversial concept of feminism is a relatively new term that began to be employed at the end of the 19th century and it is under debate still today about what the term actually includes. To understand Louisa May Alcott´s views on marriage we need to be aware of her transcendentalist and women´s rights movement ideas and laws regarding marriage and property. In Little Women 2019 adaptation Amy says that marriage is an economical proposition and she was right. Back in the 19th century, most marriages were made because of economical reasons, but what we often miss is that it was during Louisa May Alcott´s lifetime out of the women’s rights movement a growing sense of equality, an ideal of companionate marriage grew. Marriage no longer was a choice made by a person´s parents but an individual choice with love and courtship increasing their presence. Alcott rejects a marriage of convenience, calling it along with any other endeavour to love without the true feelings a mere “shadow”.
Here is a quote from Alcott Scholar Daniel Shealy, who has done some extensive research on Louisa´s views about egalitarian marriage.
“In her personal letters, Alcott often made fun of the marriages in part two of Little Women. She wrote to her friend Elizabeth Powell in March 1869 that “‘Jo’ should have remained a literary spinster.” However, despite her preferred ending, Alcott declared: “[P]ublishers won't [sic] let authors finish up as they like but insist on having people married off in a wholesale manner which much afflicts me.” In the same letter, she even claims that she expects “vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head” when she does not marry Jo to Laurie (Selected Letters 124–25). Did Alcott specifically craft her letter to Powell, believing that her friend would appreciate the more independent, self-reliant version of Jo March? Powell, nine years Alcott’s junior, was both a Quaker and, as early as age sixteen, an activist in abolition. Like Alcott, Powell had also taught school in the early 1860s. She then trained with Dr Dio Lewis, the physical culture advocate, who operated a school for girls in Lexington, Massachusetts in the mid-1860s.
In April 1864, she came to Concord to teach gymnastics, which Alcott and her older sister Anna joined (Journals 129). A year later, Powell became the gymnastics instructor at Vassar College, founded in 1861 as the first institution of higher education for women in the United States. In 1869, the year part two of Little Women appeared, Powell, unmarried at the time (she would later marry in 1872 and eventually, in 1890, becoming dean of women at Swarthmore College), was clearly the type of woman whom Alcott admired: a strong, independent activist and champion of woman’s rights and racial justice. Did Alcott think Powell would approve her insistence that Jo March not marry and that the author only acquiesced to her editor’s desires? No known letters among the Niles-Alcott correspondence suggest that the publisher had any say here. The marriage decision was all Alcott’s.”
I went to read more about Elizabeth Powell. Her life was surprisingly similar to the book Jo. She wasn´t a writer but there are parallels. Based on what I've found her marriage with her lawyer husband was a happy one. She was devoted to the educational work and same way as Jo, promoted coeducation (both male and female students). She became a dean of the university, like Jo who becomes the matriarch of the Bhaer academy in Jo´s boys. Like Powell´s Jo and Friedrich had two sons together. This idea that Jo as a character is only based on Louisa, is not entirely true. Meg in Little Women gets often dismissed as being the least ambitious of the sisters. In real life, Anna Alcott started school, which is what Jo does in the book. There were many women who Louisa admired that she has inserted into Jo´s character, and many Alcott scholars believe that Jo and Friedrich Louisa created her own ideal relationship.
If Louisa was known for one thing that was her intense need to protect her reputation. Same way as she detached herself from her sensational stories, she destroyed and censored nearly all her diaries and family letters. We know that Louisa did fell in love and she captured the feeling into the pages of Little Women. The men who Louisa loved there was something unconventional in all of them.
This passage from “under the umbrella chapter” shows how mortally afraid Jo/Louisa was about losing her reputation.
Jo couldn’t even lose her heart in a decorous manner, but sternly tried to quench her feelings, and failing to do so, led a somewhat agitated life. She was mortally afraid of being laughed at for surrendering, after her many and vehement declarations of independence.
Marriage, gender and the first wave of feminism
We are currently living the fourth wave of feminism, which at its best promotes equality no matter gender, race or nationality. The issue/paradox with feminism now is that we have allowed extremists such a platform that their views are leaking over. But it comes from both sides the same women who are preaching man-bashing and exclusion are just as bad as the women who are denouncing any form of feminism to be accepted by the male population.
In Greta Gerwig´s film, there is some active erasure of the male characters. When Jo is talking with Marmee about her anger Marmee tells how she has learned to control it, all by herself. In the book, she mentions that her husband has helped her on the way. In the movie aunt, March is a rich spinster (and much sweeter than in the books, recent adaptations have really toned her down). In the book aunt, March was married to belated uncle March. Jo had very fond memories of an uncle who was a Fritz-like character, he was kind, liked kids and had a big library. In fact, his and aunt March relationship was quite similar to Jo and Fritz. Same way as Jo aunt March has a sharp tongue and a quick temper, she doesn´t get along with Jo, because she sees so much of herself in her. Friedrich´s character is reduced. He was not included in the trailer. In the earlier version of the script, there was more of him + he was German. Louisa May Alcott loved men. I doubt she would have been very happy about erasing male characters. There is a famous quote from her when she was asked to write Little Women and she said that she never liked, cared or understood girls, only her sisters.
This is what it´s said about uncle March:
“I suspect that the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was left to dust and spiders since Uncle March died. Jo remembered the kind old gentleman who used to let her build railroads and bridges with his big dictionaries, tell her stories about the queer pictures in his Latin books, and buy her cards of gingerbread whenever he met her in the street. The dim, dusty room, with the busts staring down from the tall bookcases, the cosy chairs, the globes, and, best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.“
Louisa was part of the movement that later on developed into what we now call the “first wave of feminism”. The egalitarian marriage based on love was a radical act, because it supported the autonomy and mutual growth and development of both parties, whereas a marriage based on economic reasons was the opposite, and prevented women´s autonomy. Most of Louisa´s novels are in fact, semi-biographical, and in her texts, she promotes her form of radical marriage, The plays she wrote in her adolescence period shows that she had similar relationship goals for herself. A quote from Louisa paddling her own canoe and not being afraid of storms is in fact said by Amy in the book. Louisa wrote it soon after her sister Anna got engaged. The family falling apart had a big effect on her. During the next eight years, her views about marriage did become more favourable. Witnessing John’s fulfilment of his roles as husband and father clearly impacted the way she portrays marriages in part two. (Shealy)
Ladislas Wisniewski and the other real-life Laurie´s
In Little Women there are characters with certain real-life counterparts; For example, Marmee was based on Abba Alcott and Meg on Anna Alcott. Both Friedrich and Laurie are mixed characters that are based on several people in Louisa´s life.
Laurie had several real-life counterparts. Louisa´s good friend Alf Whitman acted with her in the Concords Theatrical society. Alf was a good friend to Louisa´s sister May as well. Next-door neighbour Julian Hawthorn is also considered to be one of the real-life Laurie´s (he had a teenage crush on May). Ladislas Wisniewski was a 22-year-old composer who Louisa met in Poland when she was working as a companion to an invalid woman called Anna Weld. Ladislas has been described to be a flirtatious prankster, and he referred to Louisa as his “little mama”. Ladislas had tuberculosis and Louisa nursed him. It would seem that there was something romantic going on, and there was a conflict for the diary markings are violently scratched. Some Alcott scholars have speculated that he flirted with Miss Weld. There is very little known about Ladislas. He did beat tuberculosis and end up marrying and having two children.
What is noticeable is that all the real-life Lauries were much younger than Louisa. Even though the book Laurie is a few months older than Jo, for Jo he always remains as a boy. As an adult, Laurie refers to himself as the first boy Jo ever raised.