Little Women: A Brief Essay

How do I summarize what Little Women made me think and feel upon watching it last night?

I'm not sure I'm capable of it.

But I can at least share with confidence that there is power in the stories of women and, as discussed in the film, importance bestowed upon them in the very telling of them.

This particular telling valued women's stories in many ways, but here is perhaps my favorite: almost every part of the script was taken from the writings of Louisa May Alcott, and the film tells both the stories of the Little Women and the stories of Louisa herself.

Alcott wrote in a time and place where her first works demanded a pseudonym, which offers insight to the general acceptance of female written works at the time. Thus, although Little Women was an instant success and clearly remains a success today, there was no guarantee for Alcott that her writing would be taken seriously, much less celebrated. How could she have known that her book would someday become all of what it has become?

To see her words--not just her successful book, but her notes and letters and journals--portrayed on screen in a popular and meaningful film gives heft to them. It says that her words and her thoughts and her experiences are important. They were important when she lived! They are still important now.

The experiences and stories of women throughout history and across the world are important, even if they are not what have been more commonly told.

In the end, the more female stories we share, the more female characters (alive and non-fictional) we empower. Making room in the records we are now writing for women's experiences is an important job. And I appreciate the way Little Women modeled it.