<em>Little Women</em>’s Real Feminist Problem
The film reveals that there was, and is, something powerful about domestic life, and that women are particularly attracted to it.
Not again, I thought. How did Greta Gerwig get herself mixed up in this? I was at a movie theater, realizing that the trailer unspooling before me was for yet another adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I loved the book as a child, but as an adult I’ve always found it cloying. Movie versions have tended to be even worse. The thought of doing the stations of the cross one more time—the cutting of the hair; the burning of the manuscript; the catching of the scarlet fever—was out of the question.
But could that many be wrong? I bought a ticket to see the movie, settled down for a long winter’s nap—and from the opening scene was. The novel had an ending all of us hated, and she created one that changes everything.
