If all goes as planned, on Christmas Day my mother and I will show up at the movie theatre with my six-year-old and eight-year-old daughters to see Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women.
It will be exactly twenty-five years (to the day) since I watched the 1994 film with my mom when it opened in theatres. This upcoming cinematic rite of passage has made me reflect on what the story of Little Women has meant to me–and I realized I might not be here without the March family.
I don’t recall what I wore on December the 25th, 1994. Was it cold enough in Florida for scarves and coats that winter? But I vividly remember waiting with my mom in a serpentine line outside the movie theatre on Christmas Day with my nine-year-old heart beating wildly in anticipation to see Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy come alive for us on the big screen.
Margo Meets the March Family
A few weeks prior, my mother, Margo, gave me a battered and well-loved copy of the novel along with a story of her first encounter with Alcott’s most famous book. Her school librarian had described the plot and eight-year-old Margo borrowed a copy and started a lifelong love affair with reading. And what a gateway book! Who wouldn’t fall in love with the March family?
As a bookish “dreamer” born to outgoing parents who loved sports and social events, Jo’s unconventional awkwardness and experience as an outsider gave little Margo a comrade in arms. And Jo’s future with Professor Bhaer gave my mother the hope that she might be loved by a good man for exactly who she was, quirks and all. It was a dream that happily came true when she married her high school sweetheart, my father, or as she likes to refer to him as “my Professor” as he also taught at a university and embodies all the absent-mindedness of endearing Friedrich Bhaer.
In our home, the characters of Little Women were like people we knew in real life. They were friends. The 1994 film? It was sacred to us.
Winona Ryder was Jo. Sure, she was much too pretty to be the awkward heroine but she played Jo so well that we forgave Winona for her extraordinary good looks. Trini Alvarado’s Meg was perfection. Claire Danes’s death scene as Beth made us weep every time. And Kirsten Dunst’s Amy! How brilliantly she made the silly, self-centered baby of the family so annoying and still lovable. The casting of “old Amy” was questionable at best, but discussing it’s failure ad nauseum was a beloved and obligatory viewing ritual. Christian Bale made us truly wrestle with the question of whether he and Jo could ever make it together.
And Susan Sarandon made all the sentimental lectures of Alcott’s Marmee into something palatable, wise, patient, strong, dependable. Marmee was the anchor of the whole shebang.
Quotes from the film were part of daily parlance in our family (partly due to the fact that we owned all of 10 movies and rewatched each on the regular). If we were gobbling down dessert, my older brother was sure to say “Sally Moffat! You won’t be able to draw your laces!” Or walking past the bathroom where I was applying mascara, he would remark pompously like John Brooke, “Over the mysteries of female life there is drawn a veil…best left undisturbed.”
Cancer and Other Battles
Little Women was there for us even in the darkest of times. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was living almost 1,000 miles away from my childhood home and was a new mom myself. During most of my mother’s treatment, talking on the phone was the best I could do to support her. I sent a copy of Little Women on audiobook for her to listen to when she was in bed recovering.
When my mother found herself grieving at losing her hair from the chemo, she called to say “I feel silly getting so emotional about this! I’m not usually vain!” “Mom,” I told her, “you’re like Jo after she sells her chestnut locks to buy the train ticket!” “MY HAIR!” we wailed in unison over the phone and laughed and cried, miles apart but brought together once again by our friends the Marches.
We were “Jo’s,” my mother and I, that’s what we told each other. We were intellectually-inclined assertive women in a world that wasn’t quite ready for us. To my surprise, I even ended up a writer like ink-fingered Jo–although in full disclosure I have long had to wrestle with some Amy-ish tendencies (please be assured that I’m much reformed and am no longer trying to re-shape my dear little nose with a clothespin).
Little Women was part of us, but it wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I started to understand why the story meant so much to my mother. I realized that for Margo, Little Women wasn’t really about needing Jo March. For my mom, Little Women was about needing a Marmee.
Margo, Marmee, and Motherhood
The day my husband and I found out we were pregnant, we called our parents to let them know the good news. My mom’s first response was “I’m going to be called Marmee! Tell Carole she’ll have to pick something else!” Thankfully, my sweet mother-in-law had no designs on “Marmee” as her grandmotherly term of endearment and a potentially dramatic family conflict was avoided. An email from my mother came in later that day–from a new email address: “Marmee.”
The internal journey of motherhood helps you see your own mother in a new light, as a person, not a being who exists only in relation to you. In trying to answer the question, “who am I?” in light of the fact that a child was growing inside me, I inevitably turned to the question, “who was she? Who was she before there was a me?”
I thought about the bookish eight-year-old Margo, insecure, quirky. My mom was quite the Jo. She had a responsible, maternal Meg of an older sister and a lighthearted baby sister (named Amy, in fact) as well as something the March sisters never had, save in their neighbor Laurie: a brother.
The four siblings grew up with camping trips, board games, and at first, life matched the picture perfect family of the Father Knows Best TV show that my mother loved watching. But pain and addiction crept in. Like so many other men of his generation, my grandfather’s experiences in WWII were followed by alcohol addiction that was not overcome until his children were grown. In addition to the pain of her husband’s alcoholism, my grandmother was fighting her own demons with a mental health condition that was misdiagnosed repeatedly. Medication she should never have been prescribed stole away the mother her children remembered.
While I know my grandparents deeply loved their family, their home was no longer the safe harbor my mom and her siblings recalled from their early years. My mother stopped watching sunny episodes of Father Knows Best. She and her sisters banded together to survive the dark reality–it’s no wonder she found in the March women an alternative home.
My mother was hesitant to have a family after the childhood traumas she suffered but when she finally embraced the idea, she went in guns blazing. Her kids would feel safe. Her home would be peaceful. She would provide all the things she had lost.
Margo and her Professor (who grew up in a broken home, abandoned by his father) succeeded at creating the home they never had. Although my brother and I knew our parents weren’t perfect, we knew they were doing a damn good job. But looking back at my childhood as a parent myself, I know our home life was nothing short of miraculous. Instead of perpetuating trauma, my parents’ experiences motivated them to do the hard work of breaking cycles of abandonment, marital strife, and addiction.
Margo’s dad, my grandfather eventually achieved sobriety and my grandmother finally received the mental health treatment she needed later in life. Because of this, my memories of my grandparents are all happy ones: making blueberry pancakes together, Christmas morning with a gaggle of cousins and my grandfather’s breakfast casserole, feeding seagulls outside their Florida home. Something was found that had been lost. Something broken, if not fixed, was at least forgiven.
Finding Marmee
My grandparents did not live to meet my first child, but, like them, I have three daughters and a son. My parents succeeded at giving my kids, their four grandchildren, the gift of an untraumatized mother. I guess it’s time to forgive them for not giving me the baby sisters I persistently requested.
I owe a debt to Little Women for inspiring an awkward eight-year-old little girl finding solace in the school library that a happy home was possible. But it was my parents who made that home a reality. Despite how meticulously they smoothed the path for me, I don’t think I can ever live up to my parents, pouring their hearts and souls into building a home that wouldn’t let their children down. Anything I get right for my kids is thanks to them. My failures will be mine alone.
On Christmas Day we will stand in line to see a new Little Women film made for the next generation. Our 34-year-old, 6-year-old, 8-year-old, and 67-year-old hearts will beat wildly to meet our friends Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy on the big screen. But my daughters and I will never have to long for a Marmee. We already have one of our very own.
You can find more of my writing on literary classics in The Literary Medicine Cabinet: A Guide to Self-Care through Good Books.
Update: We loved the new film! Here’s my review of it for America Magazine.
You’ve written about a difficult and painful past with such charity AND justice and wisdom. Kudos and God bless.
Lovely. Thank you for sharing this.
This is beautiful. <3
“My parents succeeded at giving my kids, their four grandchildren, the gift of an untraumatized mother.”
Your story sounds much like my own. My 13 y.o. did a family tree project recently and observed that there was a lot of divorce in my family. My mother’s father was an alcoholic and my father’s father abandoned his family in a foreign country (which just happens to be the U.S.). I marvel that my parents were able to raise me in such a loving and secure home. They are truly amazing to me.
“My parents succeeded at giving my kids, their four grandchildren, the gift of an untraumatized mother.”
Your story sounds much like my own. My 13 y.o. did a family tree project recently and observed that there was a lot of divorce in my family. My mother’s father was an alcoholic and my father’s father abandoned his family in a foreign country (which just happens to be the U.S.). I marvel that my parents were able to raise me in such a loving and secure home. They are truly amazing to me.
My sister and I love Little Women as well and can’t wait for the new movie! What a beautiful correlation to your own mother and what a wonderful Marmee she was for you. Have a blessed Advent and Christmas!
Oh that is making me cry. What a lovely reflection and’s tribute to your mom. I recently learned the concept of either breaking unhealthy family cycles or repeating them (I really did have to have it spelled out) and the heroism and grace that goes with it is breathtaking.
I love your blog. This post…hands down one of my favorite!
Haley, this essay moved me to tears. You always write well but this is particularly beautiful.
Reading this was such a treat. Thank you for sharing your mother’s story and your own. Please give your mother and father my love. -Emily Butcher (Woodall)
Such a beautiful post!
Tears flowing! Beautifully written.
What a beautiful reflection and tribute to your parents! This brought me to tears. Thank you for sharing this, what a reminder to be grateful to the Lord for his wonderful gifts (oftentimes the blessings we only see in retrospect or as we look for them). I really appreciate your writing.
Oh Haley, this was so gracefully and wonderfully written. Thank God for wonderful parents and for the love of a good home, and thank you so much for sharing. <3
So much love for this, and for you! You’ve convinced me to brave the crowds at the theater with my 9 year old girl.
Beautiful Haley. Thanks for the intimate glimpse inside your life.
Very encouraging to think my kids *might* someday feel thankful for the family we’re cultivating in spite of the crud I grew up in. Doesn’t have to repeat itself.
Little Women was always my favorite for so many reasons. Needing a marmie probably at the top of the list. I named our Josie after Josephine March.
Hope all’s well with you and the family. Seasons greetings too. ❤️🎄
Haley, I have read your blog for about a year now but have never commented. This entry was so well-written and spoke so much to me. (I especially loved your brother’s quotes from the movie as I, too, can recite every line!) I read Little Women for the first time in first or second grade, right around when the movie came out. That opening musical sequence still makes my heart soar and triggers the most intense nostalgia. Both the book and the film were SO formative to me as a child that, like you, I honestly wonder (fairly frequently) where and who I’d be without them. I recently finished the 19-hour-long audiobook over a couple months in the scope of doing chores during my toddler’s nap time. It was such a pleasure! All this to say, thank you for writing about Little Women; your take on it here is so moving.
I also have to thank you for something else. When I first discovered your blog around this time last year, I was a new mom of a six-month-old. I was finally finding my groove after the newborn months, but I was processing coming out of a really hard adjustment to new motherhood and seemed to be approaching the whole task of motherhood with a view that seemed somewhat prescriptive and pessimistic. Reading your old entries and reflections about life with a bunch of toddlers and babies, and your joyful embrace of it all, even in the hard times with no sleep and chaos, was SO formative (that word again!) to me. I began to embrace the difficult moments and find joy and deep purpose in it all. And now as we expect another little girl this spring, I know I will be re-reading some of your old entries. Thank you for all you do!
On July 6, 2019, I became a first time Marmee as well. A lot of times I refer to myself as Grand-Marmee. The 1994 movie Little Women became a staple of quotes ever since my girls, husband, and I watched it one Christmas day. It is one of the best parts of our lives. As a widow soon after that special time in our lives, I saw myself as Marmee, raising her girls alone without a father in the house. Times have changed for the better now, but we will always remember the closeness we had back then. Thank you Louisa May Alcott for sharing your story us. “You don’t need scores of suitors. You only need one….if he’s the right one.” “I have nothing to give but my heart so full and these empty hands….They’re not empty now.”
I remember vividly seeing the 1994 movie of Little Women with my own dear mother whose now been gone ten years. We both loved the book which she gifted me with on my 10th Christmas. Such lovely memories that I relive any time I pick up my copy of the book. At 73 years of age I still relish the books of my youth. One I recently revisited that I believe you and your girls would love is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild.
What a beautiful, beautiful post. Your parents are so amazing, and I fell in love with your ‘Marmee’ xx
Just love that you are going to see Little Women on the same day as your Mum took you! and your Mum is going with you and your girls, how precious!
Absolutely beautiful. Your writing is a gift, and it makes evident how much of a gift your mom is, too.
I still watch Little Women every time I’m sick! Such a comfort.
Thank you also for the words on breaking the cycle of childhood trauma. It’s hard but can be overcome. I’ve had to make some extremely difficult choices in my own life and do a lot of work on myself to be able to create a healthy family for the next generations. It’s very much a hidden hardship. If my kids grow up like you and don’t know what that feels like, we’ve won.
I must have been under 10 years old when I first read Little Women. I remember how large the book was in my small hands. It was a copy from the library, and suddenly it went missing. I am the 5th child and we were all bookish so sharing books was normal, but not one someone is currently reading. Yet noone would admit any knowledge of its location. So the late fines start and I’m worried about how much of my allowance it will take to replace the book when suddenly it appears under my bed. Not the cleanest place, but there it is half under the bed, half out. I had searched the entire room several times, practiced interrogation techniques on my siblings. I suspected a brother borrowed it long enough to read the whole thing, but didnt want to be seen with a book about “Women.” The lovely librarian when I returned it asked me if I enjoyed it, and I sobbed my little tale, and how I didnt even get to finish it. She forgave my fine and renewed it for me.
Haley!! I keep coming back here to check if you’ve posted a review of the movie! I have many thoughts, but no one does literary and artistic analysis like you do!
I did one for America Mag! You can find it here 🙂 https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2019/12/31/greta-gerwig-shows-us-little-women-never
“Isn’t butter divinity?” I found your blog by Googling “leaving academia to be a stay-at-home mom”. I’m preparing to walk away from a tenured job to do just that! I’m so glad I found your beautiful and important writing.