Two Women Discuss Little Women, Part One

I was talking to my friend Kathy today. It started when we discussed the piece I had written previously on friendship. Last night, I took flak from some other friends about it. Some thought I wrote it to seek closure on the issue, some that I was still plagued by what had happened, and I was faulted by one who said I had "not even said goodbye" but just walked away from the person. I pointed out when someone has just finished ripping you to shreds, "goodbye" isn't high on your priorities. Kathy immediately got at what I had been trying to do, however, which was write a piece comparable in style and quality to those that I had read in the book on friendship. Nothing more. A writing exercise. As I told the other friends: for the most part, when our friendships end, it is usually due to far more mundane reasons: marriage, children, geography, moving, interests. I wanted to see if I could write objectively about the subject.

It pleased me that Kathy zoomed right in and comprehended my mission, but she and I are in sync on so many things. While we were talking we shifted in topic to old movies, Leslie Howard as womanizer, and Little Women, the movie and book...oh yes, and monks. With her permission:


Cube: Little Women is on today at 4 on TCM. The June Allyson as Jo version.
Kathy: I liked that one, but I like the earlier one better, with Katharine Hepburn as Jo.
Cube: The Winona Ryder version got on my nerves. Oddly enough from me, I thought it took too much of a feminist slant which skewed the story line.
Kathy: That's what I heard...that it was "preachy." There is feminism in the book, but it has to be played authentically. I used to read and reread that book, and all of Alcott's* other books that followed* (Louise May Alcott, author).
Cube: I agree with you, and I did exactly the same thing. I still have my childhood copies of Little Women, Little Men, Roses in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, all of which I inherited.
Kathy: I think mine are at my parent's house. I wonder if they donated them?
Cube: All little girls wanted to be Jo. I wanted to be Amy.
Kathy: You're kidding. I hated Amy. Until she matured.
Cube: Bingo. It was her maturity and change that appealed to me.
Kathy: Yeah. I could see that.
Cube: Beth was too sweetly drippy, and Meg was boring.
Kathy: Really boring and too pliant, especially when she did the marriage thing. Blech.
Cube: I liked Jo until she hooked up with that old professor. He was a turn off to me. I thought she was trading her independence to lean on a man's shoulder.
Kathy: He never seemed real to me. Just another way to preach. I guess Alcott couldn't sell a woman character without a man.
Cube: Amy was a selfish brat early on in the book. What intrigued me was how through distance and grief her life completely altered. In retrospect, this was an odd observation for me to be making as a child.
Kathy: The change seemed too sudden, and her falling in love with Laurie seemed too sudden, but the book needed to move on.
Cube: Well, the whole thing seemed rushed at the end. What did you think of Marmee? She was too much for me. She never snapped at the girls. Total sacrifice.
Kathy: She seemed a little too saintly. I think Alcott was about creating the perfect family to balance her more bohemian, bluestocking family. Did any man ever read this book?