Did Laurie really love Amy?

[sandes]

(Little Women)

In honour of me watching it on E4
This is a debate I've had with people multiple times. I'd like to see the views of MN

Don't tell Joey 🤫

I always saw him marrying Amy as a bit of f*ck you to Jo for rejecting him. I think as people said he wanted to officially be a "March" and Amy was willing to marry him because of his wealth. She was pretty, willing and a March so she was the next best choice.

A little bit I think Amy did it as a f*ck you to Jo too because, she had always been the youngest and envied the freedoms Jo had being older and envied her talents.

This is not me seeing the best in these fictional characters I admit! Interesting to read others take on it.

@JM10 I'm pretty sure in the UK published version, Good Wives is the second book so if you only ever read the UK Little Women, you may not find out about Beth. I remember reading both as a girl and when Little Women was on TV being shocked that Beth died in Little Women, 10 year old (ish) me was outraged that they didn't follow the books properly. It's only as an adult and in recent years I found out Little Women and Good Wives were published as one book in the US.

No idea how I made half of that in italics

In the UK the book is often published split in half as Little Women & Good Wives. I was talking about the film (the new one) with a friend and she mentioned ‘all the added in stuff ie Jo’s love interest, Laurie and Amy etc.’ We had a really long conversation where I was utterly perplexed before I understood that she had read Little Women when she was younger, but not Good Wives. So to her it ended with the dad returning and them all sitting down to Christmas dinner.

@JM10 it’s a reference to Friends.

I see someone beat me to it 😂 but yes, it is quite easy to read only Little Women and completely miss all the madness and mayhem of Good Wives!

Really @DinosaurOfFire ? I thought it was a nod to an episode of friends!

😆

Thank you for this! I had always wondered about this as I read it as a child then sane as you watched the film (the Winona Ryder one) as an adult and was like "What!?!"

Then later I must have picked up a copy that combined both and read it again wondered why I'd never read the whole thing as a child I think I assumed I gave up or forgot what happened or something. This explains it 😊

@Kanaloa agree with you on both points. John Brooke is awful. I remember being glad when, on reading either Little Men or Jo’s Boys I realised he’d died off stage and Meg was a widow. Best thing he ever did.

😂

Definitely the best thing he ever did, just quietly disappeared. He was somehow very stupid and also incredibly patronising.

Yep, Little Women, Good Wives, Jo's Boys is how I read through them (in the individual 1950s hardbacks my mum dug out for me in the mid 90s!). I never understood why Friends messed around with the storyline (!) Until I googled it a couple of years ago. I feel like there may be a 4th book I haven't read, but equally I could have made that up.

@Kanaloa the end with Christmas dinner is exactly how I remember it, and how I still read it, having them combined seems so strange to me now as an adult.

@Punkypinky It's the Winona Ryder one I watched as a kid too, my first foray into "the film isn't as good as the book and they didn't follow the story anyway" arguments!

Read and re-read the book many times over the years and always thought Laurie loved Jo, and liked Amy very much. Jo was sensible enough to turn him down.

Little Men! That's the 4th one. I am not actually sure if I've read that one.

Ah, both the friends reference (I love Joey reading Little Women) and the fact the it is sometime spilt in to skittle Women and Good Wives make sense. In fact, I have Little Women and Good Wives rather than both printed in one book.

My heart broke a little when I first read that Laurie didn't end up with Jo. I still find it hard to understand that he ended up with Amy, but he was longing to be part of the family after his stark upbringing and his only chance was Amy, who wanted status and money. I still choose to believe that Jo was his true love

I think he did, I think he fell in love with her in France when he saw her outside of just being a part of her family.

The sad thing, and this is the part I don’t think they get right in adaptations, is that Jo DOES love Laurie, she just knows that they aren’t right for each other as a couple. Jo, who always looks after others, needs someone who will look after her, which she finds in the professor. Really, Laurie, who never had a mother, loves Jo as a sort of replacement. In Little Men, when she is Mother Bhaer to all those boys, Laurie does tell them all that he was the first of the boys she raised.

Yes! I absolutely LOATHE John. He's arrogant, misogynistic and smug beyond belief. I detest him. Meg could have done a damn sight better for herself.

He treats her as though she's still a small child, but without the kindness. Very conditional love. She had to be utterly submissive and adoring. He gets new things, she does not. He can bring his friends round without warning - and she's in trouble for being overwhelmed on a bad day.

I also take issue with naming his son after himself, but that's a minor issue...

But you have to see it in the context of the time. And he didn't get new things, he needed a coat but Meg spent the money on a silk dress. And he didn't have a massive go at her, just cancelled his coat order. And Meg said he could bring anyone home to dinner any time so he did.

I agree that Jo was an infatuation for Laurie. I don't think they were ever particularly well-suited - Jo was much more intellectual than Laurie. I think Amy provided the more "traditional" version of a wife that he probably would have been more comfortable with. Laurie could have a bit of a temper and Amy was better at handling tempestuous people (like Aunt March) than Jo.

I imagine he and Amy to have had a loving and companionable relationship, although without the obsessiveness of his early feelings for Jo, but I agree that almost certainly there were elements of financial security for her and a desire to belong to the March family for him.

I am one of the few people I know that actually liked Amy though - maybe because I first read the book as a rather petulant and self-centred 11 or 12 year old myself!

I think Laurie only loved Laurie and was horrifically self-centred. His critique of Meg when she dresses up for the dance hurt her feelings and damaged her confidence. He was a snob, and grew from being an included pal to adopting a superior older-brother attitude to the girls. Hi showed great resolve and truthfulness in turning him down. Amy represented being accepted by the Marches, and it was a marriage of convenience for them both.

Yes He and Jo were soul mates when young He thought he could never love anyone else But he truly learned to love Amy - who grew and matured And Jo found her love too

I also take issue with naming his son after himself, but that's a minor issue...

But that was common practice in the past, as anyone who has done any family history will know - eldest son named after his father, eldest daughter after her mother - as Meg and John's daughter was named after Meg.

And boring.
deeply, deeply boring