Little Women: The Feminist Film We Needed

I’ve written a fair bit about Hollywood’s failure to portray true strong female characters, free from a male gaze and traditionally masculine standards. It is rare to see any heroes embody compassion and empathy, display emotional intelligence as a key strength, and achieve success without a rejection of femininity. Rarer still are examples of female growth achieved without trauma.

I went to see Little Women (Gerwig, 2019) by myself in theatres last week, and it hit every note I needed. I’d read the book when I was 9 or 10 and remembered little more than identifying most with Jo, the tomboy writer. Watching it at 24, I was surprised by how much I admired and identified with a bit of all the girls — Beth’s kindness, Amy’s ambition, Jo’s independence, Meg’s longing for a loving home life, and everything in between. This film was a beautiful, nuanced depiction of girlhood and womanhood that I had been craving for years.

Some of my favourite parts of Little Women were the portrayals of female relationships, particularly in gestures and touch. I’ve always found this to be a special yet underrated part of my own female friendships — sleepovers in the same bed, cuddling when watching movies, holding hands, and of course, all the hugs. Conversely, the gestures of anger were equally accurate. 

Through it all, their relationships with men always came second, and love and emotional honesty take centre stage in the girls’ relationships. In a culture that glorifies stoicism, all the teasing, squealing, and giggling — a word my writing professor at U of T said to never use if we wanted to maintain credibility — was so refreshing to see in a Hollywood blockbuster that took itself so seriously.

Women’s stories are still so often confined to genres typically mocked or frowned upon as immature — romantic comedies being the most obvious example. Little Women tackles this idea head on, with Jo dismissing the stories she writes as “just about our little life… who will be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn’t have any real importance, does it?”

Amy responds, “Maybe, it doesn’t seem important because people don’t write about them… Writing them will make them more important.”

As Virginia Woolf so aptly summarized in A Room of One’s Own, “This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.” Though so much of the richness of our lives takes place in such domestic spaces, rarely do we see that beauty and significance on display.

What I loved most about this movie, however, was the diversity of female characters and their choices, all equally validated. As Meg, on her wedding morning, tells Jo, “just because my dreams are different than yours, it doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.” 

As a little girl, I strove for tomboyishness (hence, relating most to Jo), because that was the image of strength that I’d been taught. I rejected makeup and nail polish, because I deemed myself above such triviality, even though perfectly manicured hands actually make me very happy. Embracing traditional femininity and valuing domestic aspirations has been a learning process as I’ve matured.

At the same time, I relate so strongly to Jo’s determination in publishing her novel and Amy’s drive for greatness with regards to her art. I love that these traits can coexist with Jo crying over her haircut, dresses and flower crowns, high-pitched laughter, and walking down the street arm-in-arm.

“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. And I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But I’m so lonely,” Jo expresses.

Little Women allowed all the multitudes of that speech to feel true and important, all at once. It not only gave me permission to feel all those feelings, in all that complexity, but it also made me feel seen and loved for this whole tangle of seemingly contradictory traits.

I went in to the theatre that afternoon feeling vulnerable and seeking comfort. This movie got to the heart of so much that I’d been grappling with — and I came out feeling no less uncertain in my life, but far less alone.