Jo's desire to become a mother
Niina Niskanen/ Little Women Podcast
Summary:
Louisa May Alcott always wanted to become a mother and she always seemed to
have grieved that she didn´t have children of her own. Like many other things, she
gave what she wanted to her literal counterpart. Join Christina and me in our
discussion about Jo´s and Friedrich´s desire to become parents
Hello Little Women fans!
I am very excited about today´s episode. When I read Louisa May Alcott´s diaries I
can say she really loved children. I was reading a letter she wrote to the publisher
and she is like ”my nephews are asking my attention, if you excuse me I need to
leave this letter short”.
Jo in Little Women adores children, especially boys and when Little Women became
very successful Louisa donated lots of money to different child organizations and
orphan houses there is a mention in her journals from the time when she was in her
twenties that she would like to start a school for boys someday. She didn´t do that in
real life but gave that dream to Jo.
Louisa´s sister Anna (who was the real-life Meg March) she and her husband John
had two sons and Louisa adored her nephews. In Little Women, Jo worships her niece
and nephew and she is over the moon because Friedrich has two nephews that he is
raising and it´s mentioned in the books that Jo was particularly close with Friedrich´s
older nephew Franz. Franz is written to be very calm and academic. The younger
nephew Emil, he is wilder but I always thought that Jo liked Franz more because he
was different to her and Emil was more like Jo herself. I remember reading that
Louisa was closer with the oldest nephew, whose name I now forgot and maybe that
is where it came from.
One of the saddest things in Louisa´s letters and journals are her quotes about her
”next life”. Louisa believed in reincarnation and she writes that in her next life she
gets her ”reward”. Then she gets love and family because she has worked so hard in
her current life and made so many sacrifices that she deserves them. If you ever
want to find the sources I’ve used for this podcast, they can be found in the episode
transcripts.
Some of you must have heard someone saying that Louisa married Jo to her father.
Every time when I hear that I wonder have these people actually read Little Women,
, because more than anything Friedrich and then John Brooke, they are written, anti-
Bronson Alcott. Jo´s father in the novel is actually pretty different to Bronson. They
are both pastors but their work ethics are different.
One of the book bloggers I came across said that Bronson Alcott was actually more
similar to Laurie. This is a quote from Kaeley Rhone.
As a German immigrant, Professor Bhaer understands and experiences hard work
and struggle. He bares in mind the responsibility he has in caring for a woman if he
is to marry. He is more grounded and stable than Laurie, whose idealized hopes of
marriage remind me of Louisa’s own descriptions of her imprudent father (“…he was
a man in a balloon, with his family holding the ropes trying to hold him down to
Earth”)
I have quite mixed feelings about Bronson Alcott. I quite like some of his teaching
methods, they were very progressive, but there were times when he would go on
these long lecture tours and leave his family to struggle financially he had all these
great ideas but then he always left things halfway. Laurie in Little Women likes to
procrastinate a lot. He says how he likes to do things and then he doesn´t. In the
book, there is a chapter called ”Lazy Laurie”. That to me is what makes Amy and
Laurie so special because she says to him, if you want Jo to love you or at least
respect you, she is not going to do that because Jo hates lazy people” and Laurie has
such great regard for Amy that he actually listens to her.
I do believe that Louisa and her sister May (the real-life Amy) both loved their father,
but they are very critical of him in their letters, and the same goes with the real-life
Laurie like Laddie Wisniewski, whom they knew. John and Fritz in Little Women are
really not like Louisa´s father. They are hardworking men who would never abandon
their families and Laurie gets better after he decides that it´s time to be productive,
but like we have said many times in this podcast, filmmakers seem to have a
collective desire to ignore Laurie´s character arc.
This is the Little Women podcast ”Jo´s desire to be a mom”.
Jo´s maternal nature
Niina: The whole story about Laddie (Wisniewski) I think is one of the reasons why
Louisa liked to hang out with him…it´s almost like she always wanted to have
somebody there that she could take care of. Was it her sister or when she worked in
the war as a nurse and then there was Laddie and she took care of him because he
had tuberculosis? You can see that Louisa always had this very maternal side that
she liked to take care of people like her parents, later on, and Jo is very much the
Niina Niskanen/ Little Women Podcast
Summary:
Louisa May Alcott always wanted to become a mother and she always seemed to
have grieved that she didn´t have children of her own. Like many other things, she
gave what she wanted to her literal counterpart. Join Christina and me in our
discussion about Jo´s and Friedrich´s desire to become parents
Hello Little Women fans!
I am very excited about today´s episode. When I read Louisa May Alcott´s diaries I
can say she really loved children. I was reading a letter she wrote to the publisher
and she is like ”my nephews are asking my attention, if you excuse me I need to
leave this letter short”.
Jo in Little Women adores children, especially boys and when Little Women became
very successful Louisa donated lots of money to different child organizations and
orphan houses there is a mention in her journals from the time when she was in her
twenties that she would like to start a school for boys someday. She didn´t do that in
real life but gave that dream to Jo.
Louisa´s sister Anna (who was the real-life Meg March) she and her husband John
had two sons and Louisa adored her nephews. In Little Women, Jo worships her niece
and nephew and she is over the moon because Friedrich has two nephews that he is
raising and it´s mentioned in the books that Jo was particularly close with Friedrich´s
older nephew Franz. Franz is written to be very calm and academic. The younger
nephew Emil, he is wilder but I always thought that Jo liked Franz more because he
was different to her and Emil was more like Jo herself. I remember reading that
Louisa was closer with the oldest nephew, whose name I now forgot and maybe that
is where it came from.
One of the saddest things in Louisa´s letters and journals are her quotes about her
”next life”. Louisa believed in reincarnation and she writes that in her next life she
gets her ”reward”. Then she gets love and family because she has worked so hard in
her current life and made so many sacrifices that she deserves them. If you ever
want to find the sources I’ve used for this podcast, they can be found in the episode
transcripts.
Some of you must have heard someone saying that Louisa married Jo to her father.
Every time when I hear that I wonder have these people actually read Little Women,
, because more than anything Friedrich and then John Brooke, they are written, anti-
Bronson Alcott. Jo´s father in the novel is actually pretty different to Bronson. They
are both pastors but their work ethics are different.
One of the book bloggers I came across said that Bronson Alcott was actually more
similar to Laurie. This is a quote from Kaeley Rhone.
As a German immigrant, Professor Bhaer understands and experiences hard work
and struggle. He bares in mind the responsibility he has in caring for a woman if he
is to marry. He is more grounded and stable than Laurie, whose idealized hopes of
marriage remind me of Louisa’s own descriptions of her imprudent father (“…he was
a man in a balloon, with his family holding the ropes trying to hold him down to
Earth”)
I have quite mixed feelings about Bronson Alcott. I quite like some of his teaching
methods, they were very progressive, but there were times when he would go on
these long lecture tours and leave his family to struggle financially he had all these
great ideas but then he always left things halfway. Laurie in Little Women likes to
procrastinate a lot. He says how he likes to do things and then he doesn´t. In the
book, there is a chapter called ”Lazy Laurie”. That to me is what makes Amy and
Laurie so special because she says to him, if you want Jo to love you or at least
respect you, she is not going to do that because Jo hates lazy people” and Laurie has
such great regard for Amy that he actually listens to her.
I do believe that Louisa and her sister May (the real-life Amy) both loved their father,
but they are very critical of him in their letters, and the same goes with the real-life
Laurie like Laddie Wisniewski, whom they knew. John and Fritz in Little Women are
really not like Louisa´s father. They are hardworking men who would never abandon
their families and Laurie gets better after he decides that it´s time to be productive,
but like we have said many times in this podcast, filmmakers seem to have a
collective desire to ignore Laurie´s character arc.
This is the Little Women podcast ”Jo´s desire to be a mom”.
Jo´s maternal nature
Niina: The whole story about Laddie (Wisniewski) I think is one of the reasons why
Louisa liked to hang out with him…it´s almost like she always wanted to have
somebody there that she could take care of. Was it her sister or when she worked in
the war as a nurse and then there was Laddie and she took care of him because he
had tuberculosis? You can see that Louisa always had this very maternal side that
she liked to take care of people like her parents, later on, and Jo is very much the
