This guest blog post is from my Dear Wife, author Pam Andrews Hanson. In the past she has blogged here and here. Needless to say, this guest blog post contains Little Women spoilers.
The March sisters from Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version of Little women.
Spoiler Alert: Beth dies in Little Women and women still face an uphill battle to make their voices heard.
In light of the Oscar snub of Little Women director Greta Gerwig, it feels anticlimactic to dwell on the death of fictional Beth. However, my well-read husband’s reaction to this March sister’s passing — as in he DID NOT KNOW — speaks volumes, literary and otherwise, about what we talk about when we talk about beloved books from our youth.
Or maybe don’t talk about?
I was dumbfounded when we left the movie theater after viewing this latest version of the Louisa May Alcott classic to learn the death of Beth came as a complete shock to my spouse. After all this this book is part of “literary canon.” In all fairness, I had to confess I forgot the particulars of the affairs of the heart.
But the demise of Beth ranks right up there with monumental moments in great books. Or so I thought. The plot thickened when, after non-stop ribbing from me, Ralph posted on social media asking if he was the only one around who didn’t know Beth died.
This prompted a flurry of comments (with one aside about Beth in the Kiss song) from younger women who hadn’t read the book yet but were planning to and to see the movie. Our voracious reader daughter-in-law could not believe my husband, who goes to great lengths in person and on social media to avoid movie spoilers of any kind, was spouting a spoiler. She said her friends read Little Women but she hadn’t yet.
So down came the spoiler.
Then out come the Oscar nominees. Greta Gerwig (whose Lady Bird I adored) is nominated for a writing award and her movie is tabbed for Best Picture but no directing award for her?
In a sea of testosterone-laden 2019 (a couple of which my husband really liked, a couple he was indifferent to), Ralph’s favorite movies this awards-eligible year were the documentary Apollo 11, the dramedy The Farewell and the sailing documentary Maiden, followed closely by Little Women.
I have stopped giving him grief for not being on top of 150+-year-old popular culture. And we had the continuation of a decades-long lively conversation about favorite books from our younger days.
I loved Little Women, the Nancy Drew series, any biography of ‘famous’ women I could get my hands on (which was a pitiful few), The Witch of Blackbird Pond, on the list goes on and on. I didn’t read the Hardy Boys. Not my cuppa.
My mother-in-law read all the Little House books out loud to my husband and his siblings as they went on long car trips. They felt a particular connection to the stories as Ralph’s grandfather homesteaded out in North Dakota. My husband did confess his favorite of that series was Farmer Boy because it was all about the food. Ralph read endless pages of science fiction and fantasy. I couldn’t get enough of mysteries.
I would have devoured J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan in my youth, (and Ralph and I both did as adults).
Apparently during all these years of marriage and movie going and book reading, we never talked about the March sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
Someone needs to talk to the boys’ club in Hollywood about Greta, Lulu, and Marielle.