Little Women / Good Wives - do you think Laurie still loved Jo, or Jo loved Laurie, when they married other people?

Oh Beth's death - how I cried. i first read it on holiday with my family when I was 11 or 12. I stayed in the car to read it whilst they frolicked and I cried till my eyes were stuck together.

Gosh .. just googling idly and came across this about her father:

'Bronson Alcott's belief that children were tabulae rasae blended and clashed with his other belief that lighter coloring (like his) betokened a deeper spirituality and closer connection to divinity (Saxton 205). "'Two devils,' [Bronson] confided in his journal, 'as yet, I am not quite divine enough to vanquish, the mother fiend and her daughter'" (qtd. in Sanderson 43). Since Louisa, like her mother, was born dark-haired and "willful," Bronson viewed her as a challenge, sometimes going so far as to call her the "Possessed One" "pathetic," and "bound in chains . . . which she could not break" (qtd. in Sanderson 43).'

That's pretty awful, isn't it?!

From this site, FWIW: www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/lma.htm

Oh, that is annoying!

I just noticed she was born in Germanstown, so I wonder if that town had lots of families of German origin and that is why she has such a big soft spot for her German characters?

Just remembered something which really, really makes me cross.
The name of Little Women in the French translation is....wait for it...."Les Quatre Filles Du Docteur March" i.e. "Dr. March's Four Daughterrs"

if you don't believe me

Bloody French misogyny!!!!

According to the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the book, Louisa May Alcott wrote to a friend, Alf Whitman, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse & out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect."

The whole set for 77 pence on Kindle!!!!!! I just bought it.

at whoever pasted that line from when Beth dies!

I remember the first time I read that, I was convinced that she was going to be ok, and then she wasn't. I was staying with my grandma and reading her copy, and I remember coming running downstairs and throwing myself at her wailing. I was about 11.

My young self was gutted that Jo didn't marry Laurie. My older self thinks the Prof. was much the better choice :)

I love these books, I haven't read them for years but I think it is time for a re-read.

I thought it was pronounced like the plane.

Wow. That sounds - interesting.

May I recommend this for some interesting points?

It does a bit seeker - isn't there quite a bit of stuff about how Sally and Ned and the rich people have loose morals and Meg gets humiliated for wearing rouge and showing too much cleavage?

Same sort of thing I think.

How does one pronouce Concord, Joanthefennel?
In the film they say "conquered" rather than con-coooord"

Claire Danes was too big faced hale and hearty looking.

Did I mention I've been to LMA's house in Concord?

Is St Dad (I'm enjoying his new name) meant to be a lot older than Marmee? I always assumed he was a sort of grandfatherly figure stuck in his study doing bits of theology and being scholarly, rather than horribly pious. I certainly don't see him having affairs though - was there also a book out about John Brooke's time in the army, with some tagline about returning to 'his little women'? Him, I could believe an affair of.

Oh, god that stuff about the corrupting nature of thrillers- and Jo being made to feel ashamed of the stuff she's been writing to earn money. Strange- doesn't really fit with the morality in the rest of the books, does it? Or does it?

I will never get over Jo not marrying Laurie. Claire Danes made an already wet character sopping

Surely the only involvement St Dad would have had with a slave woman was in liberating her in a self righteous manner St Dad may be a pious old stick but I'm not having him turned into Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park.

I do love it when films keep an old way of speaking. I really liked True Grit for that - the girl in that is more like how I thought of Jo than Winona Ryder, who seemed a bit too happy with herself IMO.

silver - not quite what LMA had in mind, in a good way? Or not? I think I've seen it in the shop, but I haven' read it.

I don't agree with the Winona version naysayers. I think Susan Sarandon for a start is fab!
The only odd thing is the way the dialogue has been completely modernised. There's not a sentence of dialogue that could not be uttered today. Apart, perhaps, from Meg's line to Jo about the dying Beth: " you will find her much altered". The rest of the script has lost all the richness of language and slightly convoluted turn of phrase of the novels.

I suppose that's what sets apart Emma Thompson's screenplay for Sense and Sensibility and why she won an Oscar for it. She manages to keep a sense of the written word and yet make it comprehensible. But you are in no doubt that these people are not speaking the way we do today.

I hate that bit too marsh. When I was little I had a much older cousin who was a nun, and she read a lot of fiction from that era/genre because you could be sure it wouldn't have sex or violence in it. When I said I wanted to be a writer she quoted that bit at me! It really sticks in my mind. Strange.