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

[silverbay]

I'm just not convenced by the whole 'Oh, I'll just marry her sister' approach, especially as Amy was so different to Jo.

and I wonder if Jo 'settled' on Professor Bhaer ?

I couldn't abide Amy, especially when she suddenly developed a personality overseas with laurie.

Completely agree that Jo and the prof were happy and that laurie only settled for amy.

much later in the books... i was madly in love with Dan. I still cry over Dan and the american indians. still.

I can't watch the films, they just aren't done the way I remember it through reading it. My most favourite books of a certain age, they really were.

I was most disappointed that Jo and Laurie never got together, didn't much care for Beth and thought Meg was a bit of wuss. Amy, don't get me started, spoilt nasty and unpleasant little girl who got some comeuppance, but not enough. I truly loved Jo, she was cool and couldn't give a stuff. In this generation Jo and Laurie would have been the Liz and Rich of their time. They were too fiery and passionate for childrens books, but I think of them as the Heathcliff and Cathy with their passion...........

Oh the book, I so hope dd is a fan, have got them on my kindle as I loved them so much, I thought I loved Wuthering Heights but nothing compares to my love of the Alcott Novels.

I will search it out MI.

Heathcliff? Bleugh.

Dan. Jo's Boys and little men are the best sequels ever.

And she makes out that Jo is fine with it.
not quite, Jo was a bit mopey till the Prof showed up again. Although I think her affection for Laurie was never really anything more than sisterly.

But I think Jo and Laurie could have made each other happy (which I assume Liz and Rich didn't, given the old divorces plural). The problem was that she was 'headstrong' (read: had opinions) and was not so adept at 'managing him' (read: had opinions).

These books are buggers to read aloud though...I had to rehearse Beths expiration to manage to just about choke it out; I thought I was safe with Little Men, forgotten about poor old John Brooke.

Laurie was a bit weak, foppish and arrogant when he proposed. She might have been good for him but he wouldn't have been good for her.

And yes, to the poster who wrote about Dan.

They couldn't have been together: they just couldn't. Sometimes it's not right to be with your soulmate: sometimes you're just too close, and know each other too well

I will never get over it. NEVER.

Now Dan and Bess really couldn't have made each other happy, sadly.

What happened to Dan? He was in prison but I forget what else - did he die?

I like to think Amy would really have turned Laurie down, stayed in Paris and become a sort of early Coco Chanel (minus the Nazi bit) and designed fantastic arty clothes. I can believe Jo enjoying the writing and enjoying being a mum/schoolteacher to a houseful of boys, but I just don't really find Amy convincing as a mum and wife, even though probably it's quite realistic for the time.

Do you remember when Mrs March called Jo in from the garden "Jo! I want you!" and Laurie overhead, and he longed to call out the same only with such a different meaning and his heart broke

Sometimes it's not right to be with your soulmate: sometimes you're just too close, and know each other too well

Next you'll be saying Ron and Hermione shouldn't have ended up together! It's like Hermione ending up with Harry as a consolation prize - wrong on so many levels.

He just sounds like a spoilt two-year-old.

I dunno trib, I think I just felt that they would never be able to alter their relationship into a romantic one because it was so perfectly, utterly fixed in their hearts the way it was ....

I liked the Prof. But I don't think he would ever have meant a fraction of what Laurie did. He was sort of....part of her.

Dear God. 32 years old and I can remember how upset I was

swanthingafteranother
the music in the Winona film when Beth dies is so beautifully sad without being OTT.
If you listen to the director's commentary she mentions that when poor old John Kennedy Jr died, one of the news programmes at the time used the Amy deathbed music to accompany images (sob) of the accident "scene" (well, the sea, I suppose). She found it very appropriate given the Kennedy family's long association with Massachusetts.

The Prof is a minor character who only comes into his own late on - so it's really more like Hermione ending up with Neville. Or Snape. And either of those would be much nicer than Ron.

Just sayin'.

Dan falls in love with Bess, but he knows he can't ever marry her so he goes away one last time to live with the Indians. He dies defending them.

Damn this thread! I'm now going to have to go and re-read the whole series and all of my copies have pages falling out and tear-stained patches.

THere's another Alcott, and I can't find which one, which has a group of independent young women making a living in an unspokenly lesbian way, which is quite fab, and I really wish poor old Jo could have ended up walking out into that one.

LOL at Hermione and Snape. Rickers not faring quite so well as in Sense and Sensibility.

I think Laurie was young and used to getting his own way (apart from, presumably, the matter of his parents dying when he was young) and he needed the jolt from her refusing him when he was sure she would say yes. But the whole bit where he comes back and goes 'oh yeah, I realised that actually I don't love you as a wife, I love you as a sister, and I love your sister as a wife, what a result' is just highly implausible.

Dan and Nan. That could have worked.

So what is a pickled lime? Has anyone actually seen one?

Poor Dan.

Does anyone know, would it have been unusual to write about someone defending the Indians? I have no idea about the history, just drawing on all that not-at-all-concealed racism and fear about Indians in the Little House books (vaguely the same time??? ).

I never knew Alcott wrote more stuff, off to Amazon for that!

Motherinferior, I think that's An Old-Fashioned Girl?

I think Laurie should have moved to London and lived a Dissolute Life being a patron of the arts and shagging loads of lovely chaps. Mrs March should have moved there with him as a veneer of respectability and been slowly corrupted a la Henry James. Mr March would have conveniently struck gold and stayed in California sending back nuggets occasionally.

John Brooke should have fallen through the ice leaving Meg a very young widow before his appalling personality had time to rub off on her. She then should have married Prof Bhaer, obvious match.

Amy should have married Garibaldi's son (if any?) and designed coins for the new Italy.

Jo should have married Mac from Eight Cousins, I think they would have been a hot couple. (Why did Mac's eyes 'give out' from too much reading?)

Right thanks to you lot I have downloaded the complete set for my Kindle (my beloved books are at my Mum's I think...)

So instead of preparing for my Viva in 4 weeks I will be knee-deep in March joy. If I fail, it's YOUR FAULT mmmkay?