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 agree with MI that Jo should have ended up in the group of independent women. Failing that, she should have been with Laurie, even if he should have lead a dissolute life in london.

Ron and Hermione are perfect together, btw, even if Neville rocks (though not as much as Snape)

Thinking about the timelines, I think the books take place over roughly a similar period of history but written at very different times and in very different places.

According to Wiki Mr March gets wounded in 1862; Little House in the Prairie is set in 1870, so in theory Jo is about 10 years older than Laura (maybe less). But Massachusetts is very different from the pioneer territories that Laura lived in (and Alcott probably had no actual experience of?). The Dan stuff would have been c. 20 years later, I guess?

On top of that, Little Women was published in 1868, and Little House on the Prairie in 1935.

Not Heathcliff per se just the passion, I always thought Cathy was a bit of a stupid spoilt cow tbh, but the book - oh that book - its entwined with my life and my enjoyment of my life at the time. Which is weird because I did it for A'Level and thought I would always hate it!

But the Alcott novels, just fabulous, I haven't read them for a long time but I genuinely think they were the first books I picked up and read truly alone that weren't younger girl books iyswim. I remember my Godmother giving me her copy of Good Wives. She didn't have girls and her boys were never interested in it. That book meant a lot to me as she has subsequently passed away but I think of Alcott and think hof her and how bloody wonderufl that woman was and how much I truly loved her. She was the first person I was close to and adored who died and cried for days and days and had a moment at her wake where her sister came and said hello to me and I thought she had come back from the dead to say goodbye to me as they looked so similar....................

So I love those books, they remind me of the most fab woman and that is why the films just don't do it for me.

An Old Fashioned Girl is GREAT. I need to find my copy of that again.

Thanks trib!

PFM - oh, I am jealous, we did Snow Falling on Cedars which is one of the most boring books I have ever ploughed through!

I love books from family members - there is something really lovely about that. My brother's godmother bought us all lots of lovely classic books and I am now buying them again for his little daughter - it's a great legacy to pass on.

There's lots of examples of unconventional behaviour in alcott's books, not just Dan, but all the orphans, Jo's very outrageous behaviour for that era and even back in the first book where they give their Christmas breakfast to the destitute German immigrant family. Agree it's more an east coast view of the time, and definitely influenced by christian values, but still find the stories incredible for the ideas they push through.

I love the first two but never got on with Jo's boys or little men.

Love all the Ingalls Wilder ones.

What Katy did, anyone? - as well as What Katy did / school / next whicheveryone knows, there was a fourth book, 'Clover' (the secret to getting a husband is efficient sweeping) and a fifth 'The high valley', which you can read online somewhere, it's a bit odd but worth a read.

I loved What Katy Did.

Sigh.

Am so going to read them again, will start at nap time tomorrow I think!

I think I will introduce my God Daughters to those books, infact am thinking as an additional christening present to the one I have in mind!

joan I somehow missed your brilliant summary of what should have happened and have just dashed up to Dh to read him the whole thing.

He wasn't quite so amused as me. Strange bloke.

Prof Bhaer was definitely the intellectual match for Jo - although as ever with LM Allcott there had to be a bit of preachiness in there; I remember hating the scene where Bhaer realises Jo has been writing potboiler style thriller stories and makes her feel all unholy and wicked about it. (I think she throws all the stories on the fire in remorse?). Ugh - it still sticks in my throat.

Laurie and Amy were definitely rebound...or rather holiday romance turned rebound. Never bought into it at all.

I must say Clover seemed to do an absolute shitload of housework for someone who'd grown up with servants. Some kind of proto Anthea Turner perhaps??

marshmallow, I think that's what bothers me about the Prof and Jo - he holds the moral superiority in the way that St Dad March does over Susan Sarandon/the fabulous Marmee. These men don't make mistakes or struggle with passion a la Laurie.

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.

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.

On the subject of St. Dad March, has anyone read 'March' by Geraldine Brooks?

It's based on what his experiences might have been in the war, including an involvement with a slave woman, I expect not quite what LMA had in mind.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Claire Danes was too big faced hale and hearty looking.

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

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.