#laurielawrence

[joandfriedrich]

Laurie and Adaptive Attractiveness (Where is The Brown Skinned Laurie)

In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott wrote that Laurie has "curly black hair, black eyes and brown skin", but Laurie has never been played by a brown-skinned actor. In this episode you will also learn about Laurie's relationship with his grandfather and the loss of his parents. How Hollywood has actively erased major parts of Laurie's personality, such as his vanity and temper, things that also play major roles in his character arc, and why he moves on from Jo to Amy. Once again, this is something that is completely erased from Little Women films between 1933 and 2019.

[xanaxswallower]

"Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it!"

-Jo March, Little Women, 2019

[eternattesa]

Tu ora pensi così, ma verrà il giorno in cui amerai qualcuno, e lo amerai pazzamente, e vivrai e morrai per lui. Ne sono sicuro, lo so. Sei fatta così tu, e io dovrò stare a guardare.

Piccole donne crescono, Louisa May Alcott

[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]

Niina: You know I was thinking about that earlier today, that the way Jo collects these boys around her, she is like Wendy and the lost boys.

Melodie: Her lost boys. Exactly! and I was thinking about you know the way she interacts with Laurie in this chapter, she is like cradling him practically and touching his hair. It makes me think of this mother-type figure, that is not a real mother. It is a child pretending to be a mother. To this boy who pretends basically to be a man. So that made me think, this is like Peter Pan and Wendy and of course Peter Pan, it was first a play and then it became a novel, but it wasn’t written, until the beginning of 1900s. So it’s like 40 years after Little Women basically so then I started thinking, ”I wonder if JM Barrie was influenced by Louisa May Alcott at all” because between the relationship that Laurie and Jo have to the next book where, Jo has this group of these boys, so I did a search and what I found on a google search was that somebody had actually made their thesis on a similar idea. Thesis was written by someone named Leah Marie Kirkpatrick and it was titled ”Hidden Kisses, Walled Gardens and Angel Kinder” ”A story of Victorian and Edwardian conductions of motherhood and childhood in Little Women, in Secret Garden and Peter Pan”. So if someone else has had these similar ideas then I must be on to something. Now, I only just found this today so I have not read it yet because it is 148 pages long.

Niina: All right.

It’s a thesis but I thought how interesting because it seems like her main point is the idea how in this era, both ideas of childhood and motherhood are an angelic sort of situation. You become a saint like a mother. You are an angel as a child. This kind of a celebration of innocence within both of these ideas but, I think it is something to look at more. The idea is that in a way Laurie and Jo are kinds of a Peter and Wendy situation.

Niina: That is super interesting. I was talking in an earlier episode with somebody who said that when Jo takes care of Beth, she almost has a maternal relationship with Beth. She is almost Beth’s secondary mother as well.

Melodie: Yes

[littlewomenpodcast]

Melodie: I think that is one of those things too I feel like, something that Louisa May Alcott is totally right is your state of mind at different ages. Aren’t they in their early twenties at this point or late teens?

Niina: Early twenties I think.

Melodie: So they are in that age where they maybe wouldn’t normally just yet, just say their mind. They are tweaking around each other doing a dance ”Oh I feel this way. I feel this way” versus if they were 10 years older, instead of running away she would have already told him ”Hey, I’m not interested in you like that”.

Niina: I don’t think I ever thought about that. Yeah, I can see that.

Melodie: It’s just like how we have talked before about how Laurie’s love for Jo is immature love and again it totally fits the age that he is at. It’s not that is who he is complete as a person, because by the time when he asks Amy to marry him. He is not the same person, because he is grown up some and the fact that Louisa May Alcott could so exactly portray the inner world workings of these people to fit the real ages they are, that is one of those things that I think is the very understated thing about her as a writer. She really does capture the way we think when we are at these different ages.

Niina: The transcendentalists had this thing, Louisa was encouraged to write her inner thoughts all the time when she was younger. She had to collect all her thoughts and memories. Well..she didn’t have to do that, but she was encouraged to do it. Then you learn to know about yourself and that was part of their faith. I think you can see a lot of that in Little Women because you can read so much about the character’s inner worlds.

Melodie: Yes. I agree.

Evening meditation and morning work somewhat allayed her fears, and having decided that she wouldn’t be vain enough to think people were going to propose when she had given them every reason to know what her answer would be, she set forth at the appointed time, hoping Teddy wouldn’t do anything to make her hurt his poor feelings. A call at Meg’s, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the Daisy and Demijohn, still further fortified her for the tete-a-tete, but when she saw a stalwart figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to turn about and run away.

Niina: This part that ”she had given him every reason to know what her answer would be” really got into me. She has given him multiple reasons that she is not into him.

Melodie: I think a lot of us have been in those situations in our lives with young men. The young man, who it doesn’t matter how many times you say ”hey this is not how I see you” or ”this is not going to work”. I mean nowadays it is usually about because a movie from the 80s or something told him that if you just keep trying it will work, but in Laurie’s time, he probably had been reading romantic poetry or some other romantic writings that thought him that he was like going to win if he just kept at it because obviously he just had to play the part of the romantic lead and then she would love him.

[littlewomenpodcast]

Melodie: Yes. As an adult reading this scene, I don’t see how people are still wanting her to say yes and really I don’t see how Laurie, still ends up being people’s favourite character, that is not a sister.

Niina: I think it is the adaptations.

Melodie: Oh you are probably right because we did a poll in the Little Women book club and first we did a poll on who is your favourite sister and of course, Jo in a landslide won and then we did a poll on who is your favourite character who isn’t one of the sisters and Laurie won by double that another runner up, but at least the other runner up was Friedrich. I am happy about that but like really overall, Laurie got more votes than Jo got from both of the poles.

Niina: Interesting. In the 2019 film, Laurie has no flaws. They have all been erased.

Melodie: Well…his costuming.

Niina: That one yeah..

Melodie: It bugs me so much because I feel like in general, he did a pretty good job, but the costuming really did him no justice because when he is supposed to be a grown-up, especially in that proposal scene, he looks like he’s got a full diaper or something, his drawers are so loose like, he looks like a child who has a diaper that needs to be changed.

Niina: Somebody who was a Jo and Laurie shipper said to me that Friedrich was a terrible bully in the 2019 film. Laurie was always kind to Jo.

Melodie: Interesting. I didn’t think that Friedrich came out as a bully. I think they made a mistake by not casting someone German. I think they made a mistake by casting somebody who is too conventionally handsome. People get so wrapped up in the idea when they think that Jo and Laurie should have been together. If they actually read the book, they must not have much reading comprehension.

Niina: I think they got really defensive like they were on Jo’s side when Jo said that Friedrich was a terrible bully, so they identified with Jo. I don’t know why, because in the book Jo and Friedrich don’t argue.

Melodie: The only thing good that came out of that film is that it gave I think a lot of people new eyes to look at Amy. Amy had a little bit of redemption in that film, but at the same time, it was so weird seeing that actress playing young Amy and then adult Amy. To me, that didn’t work and then the whole thing was done with flashbacks and going forward. It just didn’t work for me.