Why Jo and Laurie Don´t End Up Together (Part 1)
and how readers and film-makers like to ignore it
When I first posted this article (which was part of the bigger research I was doing on Laurie) I had no idea it would skyrocket the way it has and it would become my most shared article to the present.
I love Laurie. There are lots of people who say that I hate Laurie (because I don´t want him and Jo together, TeamBhaer in the building).
To tell you the truth I kinda hate all the films Lauries, I don´t like Laurie in the adaptations.
He is too perfect. In the movie Laurie is a manic pixie dream boy, he is a female-Fantasy. The book Laurie is the opposite.
Book Laurie is messy. He wants Jo to be his mother (not his wife), he is catfishing Meg (and misogynistic Jo is totally fine with that), he starts out as very lonely, then he becomes Mr Popular, he struggles with his American-Italian heritage and he is highly sensitive.
I like this Laurie because of the reliability. Most of us had similar emotional turbulence when we were teens, and I sure did and said things that I regretted afterwards. It is this messy Laurie who gets a wake-up call from Amy and decides it´s time to grow up. It is the messy Laurie who realizes that he wasn´t really in love with Jo, he just wanted to be in love so he wouldn´t need to grow and it is that knowledge of him why Jo knew it wouldn´t work (and she never loved him anyway).
Do we ever get an adaptation with the messy Laurie? I don´t know, but it´s like what one of my listeners said. The filmmakers erase Jo´s and Laurie´s relationship flaws and give them Amy and Laurie and Jo and Fritz, which make the viewers recent these couples, which is not the case in the novel.
The Book Laurie
In the book before Laurie moves to Concord, he has been tossed around in Europe from one boarding school to another and then he moves to live with his grandfather and they have to build their relationship from the scratch. Older Mr Lawrence had rejected the marriage of Laurie´s parents so since the beginning Laurie feels unwanted and this is why he becomes so attached to the Marches. He even calls Marmee his mother and that is why he is clinging on to Jo so much. Because of Jo´s idealization towards the masculine Laurie thought he could do anything and she would always forgive him. Hannah describes Laurie as a weathercock. He is a character with constant mood changes. He can be sensitive but he also has a high temper. Which has never been shown in the films. He can be very inconsiderate towards other people´s feelings (same way as Jo) like during the time when he was catfishing Meg (never adapted). Times, when Laurie is sweet and caring, are the times when he puts other people before him. Like during Beth´s illness and when he went to cheer up Amy when she was staying at aunt March.
There are times when Laurie is vain like a peacock. He likes nice clothes and keeping up a good appearance which is something that Jo at times makes fun of. He can be funny but also very immature. He wants to break free from his grandfather´s obey dance but he is afraid to do that. Laurie is an orphan. Their relationship with his grandfather is complicated. For older Mr Lawrence Laurie resembles both of the children he lost and this is why he doesn´t want to hear the music because of the painful memories and I suppose self-blame. It is only with his encounters with Beth these wounds start to heal. Laurie doesn´t like school. He wants to go to Italy and be a composer and to re-connect with his roots.
Laurie the composer
Only adaptations where Laurie actually plays the piano come from the ’70s (also in the pbs series from 2017 Laurie plays music). What it comes to the movies it is Mr Bhaer who is actually much more musical and Fritz does sing and plays music in the books. But it is strange that there are only a couple of adaptations where Laurie actually plays the piano and after all Laurie is a composer. So far the earlier film versions have had their focus on romanticizing Jo and Laurie instead of giving him a full personality. They follow the Hollywood narrative that the only reason why Laurie exists is to be pretty and to be in love with Jo and he doesn´t have any other aspirations or inspirations outside that.
Laurie the prankster
At the beginning of Good Wives when John and Meg move to their new home Laurie comes bringing gifts; a knife cleaner that spoils all the knives, soap that takes the skin off one´s hands, a sweeper that leaves all the dirt and a bunch of other similar items. Each week when Laurie is on holiday from college he brings them random useless things. It can be a funny joke for the first couple of times but Laurie does it for months. It´s the behaviour you could expect from a teenager but not from a 21-year-old. John and Meg are poor. Laurie is rich. He could give them something useful. None of Laurie´s pranks is shown in the movies. A big part of why Jo wanted to be more boyish and her being dismissive over feminine was about showing off. Laurie´s pranks were his way of showing off and getting attention.
Call to conform
It is when Laurie goes to college the gender expectations of the time start to have a bigger impact on Jo´s and Laurie´s behaviour. Laurie is not very interested in his studies. He goes to college simply to please his grandfather. Laurie is more of a party boy in college. That is not necessarily a character flaw. Quite many young people go to college to do just that still today. In college Laurie smokes, drinks, plays pool, flirts with girls, gets into fights (never shown in any adaptations) and Jo criticizes him for doing these things. Jo doesn´t want to do any of these things but she wishes she could have the liberty to do whatever she wants without being judged by society. Jo was very aware of the unfairness of the situation. In the books, Jo never likes Laurie romantically and his romantic interest only makes Jo feel uncomfortable. Not only does their dynamics change because Jo doesn´t want to fit into the traditional female role of the time but because Laurie fits into the traditional 19th-century male role almost too well. Their relationship in their youth worked when there was more space for gender fluidly but it starts to fall apart when they are called to conform more. When Laurie develops a crush on Jo he breaks that brotherly bond and that shatters Jo´s ideas of masculinity the way she has come to know it. It has never been shown in movies. The closest example of this the way it is described in the books is the song Astonishing from Little Women musical.
Here are some thoughts from my pal Jimena from @the-other-art-blog
I love reading her thoughts since she read the novel after seeing the 2019 film and had noticed the lack of Laurie´s development.
Laurie as the OG ally, are you shitting me?!!?
Greta and Timothée went on and on about this in the press tour. Let me tell you, it’s such a misinterpretation and basically bad reading. It is so plainly written that Laurie thinks like every other boy of that time. So, if Greta thought of Laurie as an ally after reading the book, she just did the selective reading.
He is friends with the girls, that doesn’t mean he has progressive values. When I saw the movie I was like what a great guy, he’s so perfect!. On the contrary, not only is he not an ally, he is quite misogynistic! He’s super flawed! Laurie has other friends besides Jo, he actually is very popular and even brings his friends from college to town. He’s spoiled and privileged and acts as such. He mocks at girls with Jo. He loves flirting with every girl that comes across, but then he also thinks of them as fast and rejects them.
Between ourselves, Jo, some of the girls I know really do go on at such a rate I’m ashamed of them. They don’t mean any harm, I’m sure, but if they knew how we fellows talked about them afterwards, they’d mend their ways, I fancy.’
So he wants to flirt with all the pretty girls, but then he wants a saint as wife?? I say fuck him! When Jo rejects him, he becomes a man-whore. And when Amy scolds him, he is so annoyed that he leaves. He’s kind of a jerk to Amy the first time he’s with her at Nice. He expects all women to be kind to him and pet him because Jo broke his heart. He also refuses to give Amy credit for her advice, until it’s too obvious he has fallen for her.
So, no. He’s not perfect, but he has the potential to be a great man. He has everything in his favour, money, talent, beauty and health. Amy knows it and that’s why she pushes him so much in Valrosa.
Laurie never plays or talks about music
My sister was so confused when Laurie said he was writing an opera because he never express his love for music in the whole freaking movie! I knew it because I read a few spoilers. Greta moved the girls’ castles in the air and mixed it with the Christmas scene, hence Laurie couldn’t be there. Let’s be honest, the main characters in this movie (and in the book, to me) are Jo, Amy and Laurie. That scene would have been perfect to highlight why they are connected to one another.
The three of them had ambitions larger than society’s expectations. They wanted to be famous artists. It would have also served as a connecting point between Amy and Laurie, because, unlike Jo, they did give up their castles or rather transformed them into something else and, dare I say, better suited for them. It also shows a contrast between households. While Orchard house is a space where the girls can express freely their artistic personalities, Mr Laurence doesn’t approve of Laurie’s musical side and prevents him from playing the piano.
But it would also serve to contrast him with the girls. Laurie barely tries and quickly realizes he doesn’t have what it takes. It contrasts how privileged Laurie is, that he can go on effortlessly about life because he is a wealthy man. Meanwhile, Jo and Amy have to work hard and make sacrifices to pursue their crafts.
And what a beautiful scene would have been when Amy and Laurie become each other muses.
Laurie has no arc, he’s just the love interest!
What the hell! Together with Amy, Laurie gets the best character arc in the book. But in this movie, you barely get a grasp of his personality. If Greta would have shown him as an amateur composer, she would have been able to show his growth. There’s a beautiful moment in the book where Laurie realizes he’s just prolonging his suffering instead of feeling actual pain towards Jo’s rejection. He puts Jo’s letter in a drawer with the ring she gave him and moves on. Not only that, he realizes that Amy is right and he ought to do something productive in life. He craves hard and earnest work. Even Mr March is proud of him when they get back to Concord.
He also has deep identity problems and issues with his grandfather. Plus he goes from a selfish, privileged, childish young boy, to a mature, hard-working and altruistic man.
The problem was that Greta altered so much the 1869 timeline, that she couldn’t do all of that. As a consequence, Laurie ends up characterized as a trophy husband at the service of Jo and Amy.
So there it is. If you haven’t read the book, please do. Laurie is so much more than what the movie tells us. He’s also struggled a lot to overcome his flaws, so when he finally decides to be a better person, you’re so proud of him.
One more thing, Laurie’s physical appearance
Don’t get me wrong. I love Timmy. I seriously can’t help but smile every time I saw a photo of him. He looks as if he was moulded by a Greek sculptor, which plays really well in the movie because of course, Amy would fall for such a beauty.
However, Louisa does describe Laurie as having darker skin. Greta whitewashed the character, as every director before her. It’s hard because I love Timmy and his chemistry with Saoirse and Florence is on point, but he’s still the whitest man ever. Having someone a little less pale would have been incredibly interesting. The book doesn’t say much about Laurie’s mother nor why Mr Laurence hated her so much, but I think there were four main reasons:
She’s Italian, and they had always had a bad stereotype among other Western Europeans and Americans.
She probably had dark skin and passed it to Laurie
She was a musician. Artists, as acclaimed and famous as they could be, were still seen as employees at the service of wealthy patrons. Even more, a working woman might not have been Mr Laurence first choice for a daughter in law. Most probably she wasn’t that rich and that’s why she was able to pursue a career.
She could have been Catholic.
It gives Laurie another dimension. Even in the north, people were quite racist. Laurie was wealthy and handsome, so that saved him. But it would mean so much that the Marches accepted this boy as part of their family. Even more, that Amy would have married him”.