to get totally irritated at the scene in Little Women where Wynona Ryder plays Jo where she cuts off her hair and they're all shocked and say "Jo, your one beauty!"

[LittleBellatrixLeBoot]

Being as how Winona Ryder would have looked beatiful with a Sinead O'Connor hairdo?

Should I just accept that Hollywood can't deal with casting less than stunningly beautiful women in parts which explicitly call for plain ones?

(Correction - it was transcendentalism, not existentialism...)

The older films of Little Women aren't much better - we've got a black & white version somewhere on tape!

I was puzzled by the book when I read that Amy went shopping on Christmas Day and it took me a fair while to twig it was an American book . I was quite young when I read it though! Preferred the 'Katy did' books though.

Jo was meant to be boyish rather than plain,I think...

I much preferred the June Allyson/ Janet Leigh/ Elizabeth Taylor film version.

Love the scene in Friends where Joey is reading Little Women and gets all upset when Beth gets ill...

"Joey, do you want to put the book in the freezer?"

Priceless!

I always understood that Beth died of Consumption, now known as tuberculosis, the great killer in Victorian times. There was also a young woman who died of it in Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery. Although only in her early 20s, Beth is described as having "gray hair" - was the author preparing us for her early death? Amy and Laurie had a v quiet wedding abroad because of this bereavement.

Can understand the irritation of casting beautiful women in roles of plain characters. Angela Down played Jo in a tv version and I thought she was very good. Any one see Jane Eyre on tv the other evening? Jane was far too tall and beautiful, Mr Rochester too fair and pasty. There should be a contrast between the plain and little Jane Eyre, and the tall, proud, busty brunette Blanche Ingram but of course there hardly ever is.

Beth contracts scarlet fever, seems to recover, but progresses to rheumatic fever and ultimately succumbs to congestive heart failure.

No, no, she dies of consumption like Ruby Gillis in the Anne books. With no poetic words just a loving glance on her mother's breast (possibly not very comfy) where she drew her first breath she drew her last... I remember it as if it were yesterday.

No, is definitely a complication of rheumatic fever!

But she becomes all pale and transparent and can hardly gather the shells off the beach, come on, you must remember. And she knits things like mittens for passing school children and drops them out the window and I think she must have had a pretty good aim and a very strong arm because somewhere else a rather large garden is described. Surely not compatible with rheumatic fever (that is Phoebe in Jo to the Rescue)

Ruby Gillis was very specifically described as having consumption, but with Beth it's much more of a slipping away, and rheumatic fever is a possible complication of scarlet fever, followed by heart problems.

I'm sure !

You're being unreasonable for watching any film w/klepto Winona in it.

I thinkt he pale, weak etc, is more symptomatic of the heart problems following rheumatic fever.

Beth was weak.

Oh very well.

mutter mutter

Are you sure you are not thinking of Cousin Helen in What Katy Did?

Wikipedia - Scarlet fever in literature

Cousin Helen - she must have had something like MS - she had 'attacks' didn't she?

Actually forget that about Cousin helen, she had an accident didn't she?

Nah, Katy had the accident, Helen had always been ill.

Ruby Gillis didn't cough blood either. She died in her sleep after an extra long visit from Anne.

Helen wasn't always ill, because she was engaged, but then she broke off the engagement after becoming ill, and her fiance married someone else, had a little girl called Helen, and lives next door or at least very close.

Ruby did cough a lot though.

Louisa May Alcott hated children and little girls in particular. She was a drunken spinster who wrote that book for money and admitted it.

She also wrote it to please her father though - she made Jo all the things he wanted in Louisa.

Yeah, she was pretty fucked up, tortoise.

It's probably the result of smacking when she was a child .

rofl