I love you "boring" female characters. I love you ingenues. I love you female characters who aren't "modern" enough. I love you female characters who aren't "badass" enough. iI love you female characters who aren't "empowering" enough. I love you quiet female characters. I love you unappreciated female characters. I love you polite female characters. I love you female characters who "can't appeal to modern audiences." I love you frightened female characters. I love you female characters labeled as not complex just for being nice. I love you female characters who get criticism just for not being their tomboy or femme fatale counterpart. I love you silk hiding steel trope.

The March Sisters 📚

Little Women illustration based on the book!

THE MARCH SISTERS as ORIGINAL ALBUMS OWNED BY TAYLOR SWIFT (inspired by x & x)

Little Women (1994) dir. Gillian Armstrong

I could never love anyone as I love my sisters.

—Jo March, Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 1994)

Laurie studies her face, and we know that he sees her and loves her

Laurie catches her face with his hands, and kisses her

LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

Florence Pugh and Timothée Chalamet <3

The most relatable Little Women moments

Meg:

* Margaret and John have two kids named… Margaret and John. Iconic. No notes.

* Sprained her ankle wearing impractical shoes cause they just looked too good not to

* Had a emotional meltdown while attempting to make jam from scratch

Jo:

* Literally leaves the state instead of talking about her feelings

* Feminist™️

* Threatened to murder a man for hurting her sister (Amy’s teacher)

Beth:

* Never leaves the house

* Her only friends are her cats

* Obsessed with fictional characters dolls

Amy:

* “I want to be great or nothing”

* Constantly misuses and mispronounces words and doesn’t give a fuck when people try to correct her

* Wrote a whole ass will at age 12

Laurie:

* Pitifully watches the March family from his window wishing he could join them

* Falls in love with someone only after she says “I despise you”

* Writes an opera with himself as the main character

Look, I know that we all love Jo and Amy, and Beth is an absolute angel, but I think the Little Women fandom is really sleeping on how relatable Meg is for being the only one of the March sisters to respond to having a bad day by sitting down in the middle of the floor and bursting into tears.

Little Women 🩷

Things I think about with frequency

Amy March

How we deserved to see Amy and Laurie's wedding, and them falling in love, and just more of them

How Amy March is hated by many because LMA based the characters off her own sisters, and Amy was obviously written with some bias (as were all the sisters), which shines through and makes us feel similarly about Amy that "Jo" felt about her younger sister.

That line where Amy says "I've been second to Jo my whole life" hits A LOT harder when you realize that Louisa's (Jo) middle name is May, and her younger sister, who she based Amy off, is named May, after LMA's middle name.

I think that people see Amy as this vapid little bitch because she always knew she wanted to be a wife, and she knew she wanted to be rich. But what people fail to consider is that a lot of the time the youngest is the one that sees all the flaws in their family’s lives and feels responsible for taking care of them, even if its not expressly stated. Jo was a wild card. She was free to do as she wanted and nothing could stop her and God love Marmee for never trying. Meg was docile and almost polar opposite of Jo, and as the eldest sister she felt the same burden but lessened because yes she had typical Eldest Sister Syndrome where she had the need to take care of the family, but she also was the first, and therefore had no pre-set markers and expectations that she needed to meet or surpass. She wanted to marry and all that, but it didn't super matter about finances to her. Beth was unable to do "better" than her sisters "mistakes" flat out. And its not through any fault of her own, its just the way it was.

Speaking from experience, its always been clear to me that as the youngest of 3, I would have to do better. My half brother got a girl pregnant on his gap year when he was 18, so I was never allowed to take one, even though it would have probably helped in the long run. My half sister has always been mean to my parents, and won't let my dad see his only biological grandkid, which rips my dad apart, so of course I feel the pressure to have a child to give my dad a bio grandkid to dote on like he does with his non-bio grandkids, even though he's never outwardly expressed to anyone ever that he feels any disconnect from my niece because they aren't related, or that he wants me to have kids for any reason other than he wants them.

Anyways, my point is that Amy felt that pressure from a young age, hence always saying this or that about marrying rich. Add onto that when Aunt March tells her she's her family’s only hope of not being in the lower class/lower middle class for the rest of their lives. And just because that's the only time we see it, but that doesn't mean that there weren't other similar conversations had. Do you really think Aunt March never made her snide comments about the family and their status in front of Amy?

Amy's entire character revolves around this point, she's focused on being a proper lady, being delicate and pretty, in hopes of one day being able to bag someone rich, for her family.

Obviously, she falls into infatuation with Laurie when she meets him at the ripe age of 12??? She idolizes Jo, and Laurie is basically just the boy version (with some exceptions). He's also rich, young, handsome, and charming, and adores the family for who they are, including all their flaws. He's exactly what Amy had been saying she would marry, with the added bonus of him loving Jo the way she is, the exact opposite of Amy, proving that there are rich lovely men out there who will love you even if you aren't perfect, even if you falter. He's proof she can have the life she knows she needs to have for her family, and also still enjoy it and not be stressed all the time about being perfect.

Of course Laurie loves Jo first, for very similar reasons that Amy is infatuated with him. At 15, his whole life has been spent at dinner parties with girls the exact opposite of Jo, all proper and lovely and so so similar to one another, being told he'll marry one of them, everyone expecting him to be polished and well spoken and everything that no 15 year old boy wants to be. So then in comes this whirlwind girl who is completely different, a breath of fresh air that never wants to marry and can't ballroom dance for shit and laughs too loud, and shows him that life can be the Something Different he so desperately craves.

And of course, he ends up with Amy. He was Jo's best friend, so for 6 years all he knew of her was the way she was presented through Jo's eyes. A bratty little girl, who was the same as the other vapid girls he knew, that wasn't worth a thought. And he never paid her any mind because he spent 6 years thinking Jo loved him back, so why would he think of other girls? Then, at 21, he is essentially dumped by the love of his life, and travels abroad to find who he is without her. He meets Amy again, the girl who was always happy to see him. Of course he's going to spend time with her, she's familiar enough to feel like home, but different enough from Jo that it doesn't hurt. And there's the added validation of her liking him, which sometimes you need after your heart has been ripped apart. Plus, she's the only one he really knows in Paris. So they spend time together, and in that time he learns that she's not at all the way he's seen her over the last 6 years. Where he always saw someone not very bright, with a dim personality, that didn't stand up for anything or really rock the boat unless seriously provoked, who would do anything for him, he now finds a strong, funny, kind, beautiful girl, who is very intelligent and has a deep understanding of how cruel the world is (maybe ((definitely)) moreso than her sister) and knows how to manipulate said world in such a way that she can come out close to on top, who cares about her family enough to put everything else aside in order to become the person they need her to be in order to support them, who would still do anything for him but will absolutely call him on his shit and put him in his place when necessary. And how could he not love that?

She's not all that much like Jo, sure, but she is so much more. And she deserves so much more than people calling her his second choice.

Also I think that its criminal that most people don't see that obviously Jo loved her family but she loved herself more. Her sense of duty was to herself, and finding the place that would make her happy. She was also kind of a brat? Things didn't go her way? Editor is a dick? Boy critisizes her writing? Tantrum.

Whereas Amy loved her family more than herself. She was willing to put aside her dreams in order to support her family, and growing up was very rarely bitter about it. She decided, on her own, that her family was her number one priority, and that regardless of the fact that she could be happier doing other things, she wanted to do what she could to provide for her family. She knew how the world treated women, and she learned how to take that, and general criticism, on the chin.

Personally, I think that Amy is a way better character, and I'll die on this hill

Amy March

Amy and Laurie were good but Jo losing her Teddy is one of the most heartbreaking things to ever happen in literature. Because it isn't just that she didn't love him and he wanted to marry her. It's that they loved each other too much and not in the same way, and grief of losing him was just a culmination of losing everything else, and growing up into something that is unfamiliar and being alone.

And it's just tough to think that one day somebody you thought would be around forever might still be around but it isn't for you. And that sometimes it is ultimately the love that you have for each other that breaks you apart. And that your sister won't always be sleeping across the hall from you. And there will eventually be a last day where all of your friends gather together as kids. And sometimes something that you dreamed about your whole childhood isn't something that ends up being for you. And sometimes no matter what we do to stop it, things and people and places will leave our lives anyway, and the trick is learning how to be okay with that, eventually.

(based off a conversation that @es-3 and i had the other day that i did NOT cry after)

So I’m not sure if it was Greta Gerwig herself or a movie reviewer but I once read a criticism of the men in Little Women, saying that the March women’s husbands are all varying degrees of useless or disrespectful. Saying that John belittles Meg and her housework and that Friedrich has no respect for Jo’s work. And I have to say… what??

Meg and John are a great example of a healthy couple. Yes, he laughs when her jelly doesn’t turn out, but is he belittling her? No! He just finds it amusing because it is, at least to an observer. And he gets miffed that the house isn’t in order, but in fairness, she did say he could bring a friend whenever and dinner would be ready. They go through rough patches, but they always talk it out and keep on pulling as a team.

And the big one that everyone is mad about, Friedrich criticizing Jo’s writing. I think these people didn’t read the book because Fritz never reads Jo’s sensational stories. He finds a story in a newspaper — specifically stated to not be one of hers — and broadly criticizes that kind of story. This isn’t directed at Jo, it’s directed at writers of these stories in general (again, Friedrich doesn’t know Jo is one of them). But Jo takes his words to heart because he’s spoken to her conscience, and then she makes the decision to burn them all up and quit writing that genre of story. She listens to him because she knows him to have a strong moral compass, which is a big part of why she likes him so much. He helps her grow and become a better person and writer without having to give her direct advice!! And that’s beautiful!! And I’m sick of people who wanted Jo to stay single taking their disappointment and turning it into “all the husbands in Little Women were bad husbands and the second half is a commentary on how terrible it is to be married.” No. Stop it. Read the book. Cut it out with the cynicism.

LITTLE WOMEN (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig.

Meg March mood board 🤍🎭