#joandfriedrich

[joandfriedrich]

Love and Sex In Little Women

It might come as a surprise to some people but there are actually quite a few sex scenes in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. In this episode, we shall dive into 19th-century courtship and how Alcott writes about courtship etiquette. Laurie is based on Alcott's ex and Friedrich to a man she wanted to marry. Little Women, after all, is wish fulfillment.

[joandfriedrich]

Little Women Podcast: Why Friedrich Is Poor

A deep dive into Louisa May Alcott´s views on wealth and the transcendentalist thoughts on money. Self-reliance is such an important aspect of Jo´s and Friedrich´s relationship. Jo admires him and his work morals and Friedrich admires Jo for the same reason. In the novel, Amy wants to marry a rich to save her family (not because she is afraid to work. Neither Jo or Amy can respect Laurie when he is being lazy and unproductive. In Louisa May Alcott's novels, the rich people are usually the unhappiest.

[littlewomenpodcast]

Christina: I always have felt that out of all of them, Jo and Friedrich would be the ones with the best communication skills, because, like you said they never argue or yell at each other, they always just somehow manage to discuss the situation and I think people also just sort of think that ”Oh Jo has a temper” and they think she carries that throughout. That she always has a temper, but like, she knows how to control it by the time when she goes to New York and most of the adaptations will have her play out like ”Oh there is that temper of hers” but no. She learns how to control it thanks to Marmee and even Mr March when he comes back, but it is also not in Friedrich´s nature to be argumentative either. He is not a temperamental type of guy and as we find Jo has tempers when she reacts to something negatively in a very strong way, but we never see her yell at Beth. She never yells at Beth for anything, even when she doesn´t agree because why would she yell at Beth? She is the least offending person ever and I feel, that if I had to compare Friedrich to any of the sisters it would be Beth. You know he is a very quiet, gentle soul. Who, unlike Beth is able to when the moment needs to, rise. He can stand up and say ”No!, I don´t agree with that”. He is more willing to put himself out there if the situation comes to it. He can sit there and be ”I may not agree but that´s fine” and as we see in the novel when they are at the symposium and someone says something regards to religion and that is that moment when he is like ”I need to stand up and say something, but in the nicest way possible” with strong facts to hold him behind and that is when Jo gets that extra boost of respect for Friedrich. So it would be very surprising and almost negative towards Jo´s character to say that this temper that she has been working on, all the sudden comes back and to say that she would yell at someone who is so unoffensive, unlike Laurie who likes yell and says these very negative things towards her where she responds negatively whereas Friedrich approaches her with the very kind and gentle way so there is no reason for her to respond in that way.

Yeah, I don´t really understand why people feel that, that it is so important to have them argue when it is not close to who their characters are and it changes how you almost see their characters because why would Friedrich act that way when he doesn´t and why would Jo yell at him when there is no reason to yell at him.

Niina: I think Amy also had a very calming influence on Laurie. Amy is a very visual person and then we have Laurie who likes these very pretty things. He likes nice clothes and well..in the modern context he would be a metrosexual.

Christina: Right.

Niina: A man who likes to take care of his looks. Which is kinda opposite to my man Fritz. There are times when Jo makes fun of Laurie. There are times when he likes to buy nice clothes, and fancy gloves and Jo laughs about it because why are you spending your money on these irrelevant things. She doesn´t really have much appreciation for Laurie taking care of his looks and one of my friends pointed out that all the three couples have their own special aesthetics so to speak. John and Meg, they have this whole cottagecore aesthetic and Jo and Friedrich. They are not too picky. Jo was that kind of person who didn´t really romanticise life. Even though Jo and Fritz are a very romantic couple like you said but Jo was never a very visual person. In Little Men, it´s almost like she and Fritz have this mutual agreement that Plumfield is going to be this topsy-Turvey upside-down place. If boy’s sticky hands make places dirty, that´s okay and we can have pillow fights once a week. So they can release their energy and then it is completely different in the Lawrence house because Amy and Laurie they like to have these fancy balls and dinner parties and things to be visually pleasing and I always thought that Amy and Laurie were a match made in heaven because him being a  metrosexual, for example, was something that Amy found visually pleasing and of course, Jo found Friedrich very attractive.

[littlewomenpodcast]

Niina: In Little Women when there was the cat-fishing sequence I think there was a moment afterwards, Meg was looking that Laurie wasn´t going to do any kind of jokes with John. She was keeping eye on him more closely. She didn´t want anything bad to happen to John. I think I would do the same if that would happen to me. John is really an underrated character. I always love that scene in Camp Lawrence, when he defends Meg being a governess. He is like..well these American girls need to earn their living too. It is such a nice scene.

Christina: I don´t really think that moment, in particular, has been in any version. I mean we do have certain versions that do have the beach/boating scene and those first hints of ”Oh I don´t have any family to worry about” and Meg is like ”Oh I would miss you if anything would happen”. It´s precious, the fact that he is so patient with her because he knows that he loves her but, he knows that Meg isn´t fully sure but he is not pressuring her the same way that Laurie would have. He is just like ”it´s alright. I´ll wait if you like”. I am always here if you do realize that you do love me and that´s okay you´ll take your time. You do what you have to do”. He is such a sweet character, and the fact that he just wants Meg to be happy even at the sacrifice of getting a new coat for her to get a dress, is just special and it is such a big moment for Meg, to be like ”You know what, I don´t need a dress, I just need you” and it is such a lovely relationship. That really doesn´t get as much love that as the other two comparatively and I think that is a shame.

Niina: Both Friedrich and John are parallel in that sense that at one point they feel that they are not worthy of these women. With John, it is that Meg has all the pressure to marry a rich guy because she is the prettiest of the sisters and especially aunt March wants her to marry some rich man, and then there is that rumour going on that Meg has something going on with Laurie and Marmee is really mad about it which is understandable but I think John also felt that he was too poor for her because Meg came from a poor family too but he didn´t feel that he could give her what she needed. That is also one of the reasons why they waited. Why did he wait for her.

I love that scene in Little Women when Friedrich feels that he is not worthy of Jo but it is also because he thinks that Jo is engaged to Laurie and he can only base his views on Laurie on what Jo has told him. Which is not a lot. Only that he is this rich neighbour and Jo´s best friend and that´s pretty alarming when you are in love with this girl when you hear that. ”Okay, are they engaged?” and he doesn´t know that and then he is so happy when he comes to Concord two years later and then he finds out that Amy and Laurie are married. Jo is available.

[littlewomenpodcast]

I really love that scene where Amy and Laurie are in Europe and she takes his hand and says ”this is like a lady´s hand, you haven´t done any real work in your life” and Amy knows the struggles of being poor and Laurie doesn´t have any experiences of that and then Amy says that Jo hates lazy people and Amy herself also hates lazy people, and that is Laurie´s wake up call. That is when he turns from a boy into a man, and that scene was not in the 2019 film, which has made millions of people think that Laurie just moved on from Jo to Amy without any good reason. It´s better in the 1994 film because Laurie says to Amy that he is going to work to make himself to be worthy of her, but before that he says to Jo that he is going to work to be worthy of her as well, but that is not in the book. Needless to say, none of that is in the 1933 and 1949 films and Amy inspiring Laurie to be productive was not in the 2017 series either.

Niina: Louisa May Alcott worked as a nurse in the war. She took care of sick people. She saw bodies lying around. She wasn’t squeamish. Maybe because she didn´t consider herself very attractive always and that also had to do with her illness. When you read Little Women, there is sometimes critical to the way people tend to pay more attention to the way things look outside than the way they look inside. You know what I mean. Jo is not a very visual person.

Christina: I had forgotten about the pillow fights. Oh, that is so adorable. Each relationship works out for each of them in the best way. Friedrich and Jo are a little bit more like ”Oh let´s just do whatever suits us at whatever time and Laurie and Amy are these people who are like ”We have to have dinner ready by 5 because we just have to”. No earlier no later, but it works for them because that is the lifestyle that they want and if you have someone like Jo who is just like ”eh let´s just eat whenever whatever” and Laurie is like ”No I want to have it at this specific time and specific meal” that is going to clash. Again I think that makes how she handles these relationships very well that it´s not just ”Oh you can trade one sister for another” No. They are so different. Their relationship with Laurie is so different that it will not have the same outcome as you think that it will. You can´t have Laurie just be with Jo and expect to have the same outcome as Laurie and Amy, because it won’t work. Not at all. In some ways, it is a story of opposites attracting as well as people who are similar attracting. You often hear people saying differently ”be with someone who is completely different from you” but then you have some people like ”get someone that is completely the same to you” and I got to find the passage but I think Marmee said it perfectly. This is when Jo wants to leave for New York, and Marmee says I think it is not just because you want to leave but you want to leave because of Laurie. I got to find it.

[littlewomenpodcast]

Niina: One of the things that came out about Amy in the book, is that when she was 12, what she really wanted was Jo´s approval. She wanted Jo to like her and there is nothing wrong with that but I think Jo also resented that Amy was so feminine and there is nothing wrong with her being feminine either. One of the things that I really liked about part 2 was this description of how Jo and Amy would fight about something and then they would burst out laughing when they realized that ”this is really stupid, this argument we are having”. Amy wasn´t anti-Jo. Jo wasn´t anti-Amy. They were just sisters. 

Christina: Again I sort of draw parallels between my sister and myself. I don´t know if we were very close when we were younger, and it is the same with every sibling, no matter who you are sibling wise. Whether it is two boys, two girls, one boy one girl type of situation, but when you reach a certain age you are just like ”I want to do things I want to do, when I have to spend all my time with my little sister or my little brother”. The younger sibling kinda feels like ”you are leaving me behind” and then for once you get into a certain age, you almost reconnect. I feel I am definitely closer with my sister now because now we are both adults and we have that better understanding of each other and not that there was never any love between us in all those years, there was. It was just in away, and I think in general children are unintentionally selfish and we just go like ”I want to do what I want to do within this age and I don´t care if my little sister wants to come along. It is what I want to do. Why should she? she can´t come along. I am not going to accommodate that because I earned my years to be able to do this and I am not going to be held back by her. So yeah I don´t think there was ever, like you said, anti-Jo, anti-Amy against each other. Whatever points they were in their lives they just did not need them to be as close as they were, but as they got older they understand themselves better as well as each other and that helped to create a closer and more developed relationship where they can actually be more like friends. I think that people tend to put them together because they both do so well with Beth. Between the two of them, they have a little bit more conflict. They grow out of it and particularly I felt with the Gerwig version, they put more attention on Jo´s and Amy´s relationship. ”Oh, it´s symbolism because they are so different and contrasting each other” and it´s like, I don´t know. I don´t feel like there is that much thought in it. Just in general that is just the nature of how sibling relationships are. You start being like ”Oh my little sister, my big sister” and then you grow into that age of ”I want to do more the adult things I don´t want to be around my little sibling as much as I used to” and then re-connecting and now that we are closer, in the sense of age-mentality, we can do those things together. I think people over-blow Jo and Amy’s relationship as if it is this full-on sibling rivalry which it really is not. Not at all.

Niina: I was really surprised because, when I did research on Louisa May Alcott´s relationship with May Alcott. Yes, there was some sibling rivalry between them when they were younger. Like I said about the angry feminists and the 70s version, I think a lot of the Alcott scholars…well not necessarily Alcott scholars, but the public in general, when they are interpreting Little Women in different times they always tend to go to the tv version or a film version, instead of the book. When I was doing the research about the sisters. It really boggled my mind that there were so many Alcott scholars who were writing about how Louisa envied May when she was living in Europe, and she was hanging out with Laddie Wisniewski (the real-life Laurie). Then I read these letters between Louisa and May. It seems that they both were fed up with him and I also got this feeling that not only had Louisa given him money. I don´t know if it was shutting him down about their fling or if she wanted to help him financially. I don´t know. It seemed that May might have also borrowed him money because she writes in a letter to Louisa that ”he never paid his debt back” and people always say to me ”Niina you really shouldn´t hate Laurie that much”. I don´t hate Laurie. Laurie, he grows in his relationship with Amy and I really like that and that is a big part of his character but I can´t deny the fact that all these real-life Lauries: Laddie Wisniewski and Alf Whitman, who was also a friend of the Alcott´s. Laddie was an adult man and he seemed to have been borrowing money from his wealthy friends and didn´t seem to be very reliable or very interested in work and I think May also wrote about Alf …” well he seems to be a bit lost in life and doesn´t really have a direction”. That sounds a  lot like Laurie. I´ve read so many bad studies about Louisa and May and how they were ”fighting” over Laddie, who was living in Paris same time as May. It doesn´t align with the letters that the sisters wrote to each other and why on earth would they be fighting about this guy. I think Louisa wrote Laurie to be this aspiring character who actually grows out of that disillusion that he has about artist life. It´s not just Laddie and Alf who were models for Laurie. You can find it from all these different books that Louisa read and all these young men she liked to hang out with. I think it´s really dismissive for both literal Jo and Amy and then the actual Louisa May Alcott and May Alcott, to present them as these sisters who just were having this love and hate relationship and only fought about this guy who wasn´t always that great. I actually really like Laurie in Little Men and Jo´s boys when he brings these poor boys to Jo. He always says that Jo was the one who raised him. He doesn´t speak about Jo as his first love or girlfriend. I just don´t like the romanticization of the young Laurie. I think a lot of these Alcott scholars try to present Jo and Amy as these people who just fight over Laurie. It´s not based on the book. That is based on the adaptations. I say the same about the people who say that Jo and Friedrich just argue. They don´t argue in the book. They argue pretty much in every single adaptation.

[littlewomenpodcast]

When I read the Little Women 2019 film guide Greta Gerwig was criticising the previous LIttle Women movies that they put too much emphasis on the romance and there was a whole sequence in the book where she was making fun of the ”Under the umbrella chapter” and Jo´s and Friedrich´s relationship and in the movie she puts way more emphasis on girls wanting to make money and not to care about anything else and then wondered why Jo rejected ”rich and handsome Laurie”. 

That is in huge contradiction with the Little Women the novel, and the entire time period since Louisa May Alcott encourages young women to marry for love instead of money and Louisa was not a happy spinster. In her diaries from the time when she was in her mid-forties, she writes how she is lonely and envied her sister’s marriages and Louisa was making about 2 million dollars a year at that time. She was one of the wealthiest women in America, so many did not make her happy. Not at all. 

In this episode, Christina and I will be analyzing the different marriages in Little Women. It does seem that Louisa herself had similar goals when it came to marriage when she was younger. I have often also wondered how much the relationship that she had with the real-life Laurie, Laddie Wisniewski affected her views about marriage because she did seriously consider marriage with him and thought about their relationship a lot. He was a lot younger and apparently had proposed to Louisa´s previous employee while wooing Louisa, I think Louisa had good reasons to reject him. 

Louisa writes in an article which was published the same year the following:

“If love comes as it should come, accept it in God’s name and be worthy of His best blessing. If it never comes, then in God’s name reject the shadow of it, for that can never satisfy a hungry heart” Louisa says that only love that is worth it is based on true feelings and that love that is based to patch loneliness is self-deceiving and not real.

[littlewomenpodcast]

Niina:  That is absolutely right. You said that Jo and Friedrich don´t really have any reasons to argue. Henry and Louisa, from what I have read, they had this sort of telepathic way of communication. That they would understand each other without words. I think you can see some of that in Little Women in Jo and Friedrich the way they communicate, and like you said, they probably have the least problems in communication, when it comes to the different couples in Little Women because they know each other so well, so it is really interesting that Louisa and Henry had this telepathic rapport between one another and even though Louisa had temper tantrums, Henry was, what I´ve read, quite a peaceful person and didn´t really care too much about arguing. I think it brings another extra layer to Little Women, and to Jo´s and Friedrich´s relationship. I think you can see a lot of that in Little Men especially when they have these teasing conversations with one another. Well…they really don´t argue a lot in the sequels and they don´t argue in Little Women. Why would they argue? they don´t have any big conflicts? Jo and Laurie are the ones who have the conflicts? and even with Meg and John …well there was a reason for that argument. After that, they were a better couple. Meg realized that she had problems leaving behind this idea that she wished that sometimes they would have more money and John realized that Meg has more needs.

Christina: It´s a growing thing. It´s not easy. I’ve not yet, been in a relationship but hearing, talking between friends and my sister, going through some of her relationships, it´s a growing thing. You got to learn each other’s ideosecrensies. You got to learn what it means to have another person in your life, that is so close to you. It´s just like when people say when they have kids, they have that realization of ”Oh I have just realized that it is not just going to always be about me. Sometimes it is about them and that doesn´t mean that you necessarily are sacrificing the overall picture of what you want for them but just take a step back and go ”I got to realize that even though I approach this situation this way, it doesn´t work when I go with this person of who I am living with and love and whatnot. I think that with Meg and John because they were already so shy with each other at the beginning of their relationship, it took a little bit more time for them to sort of understand what it really means to be in love and to be married. They are such an underrated Little Women couple. It is such a sweet little romance and it´s like ”ah they love each other” and then you can watch them blossom into these developed parents who truly care for their children, and surprisingly John is a lot more hands-on than you would expect any man from that time period to be with their kids. It really goes to show that marriage is not always as easy as one would think.