What can Little Women (2019) teach us about dramatising the past?

Greta Gerwig's Little Women: a beautiful metafictional piece that gives the author the ending she wanted, or an erasure of voices from the past in pursuit of a feminist spin?

I'm super excited about my most in-depth video yet. Grab a cup of tea and give it a watch during your lunch break or while you're doing something boring like the washing up 😉 As always, timestamped footnotes are below. I hope you like the video as much as I enjoyed making it!

00:00 [1] HeyUGuys, Greta Gerwig Interview - Little Women (2019), YouTube video, 7 Jan 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtWosqIy2Bg

01:07 [2] 'Women Making Art: Little Women Special Features', from Little Women, dir. by Greta Gerwig (Columbia Pictures, 2019) [iTunes Extras]

02:14 [3] HeyUGuys, Greta Gerwig Interview - Little Women (2019), YouTube video, 7 Jan 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtWosqIy2Bg

02:55 [4] Atonement, dir. by Joe Wright (Universal Pictures, 2007)

03:29 [5] Tom Ue, 'Once More, with Feeling: The Sonata￿Pathétique in Louisa May Alcott’s and Greta Gerwig’s Little￿Women', ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews (2020), 2-3

05:00 [6] 'Orchard House', from Little Women, dir. by Greta Gerwig (Columbia Pictures, 2019) [iTunes Extras]

07:36 [7] 'Women Making Art: Little Women Special Features', from Little Women, dir. by Greta Gerwig (Columbia Pictures, 2019) [iTunes Extras]

08:29 [8] Alison Landsberg, 'Theorizing Affective Engagement in the Historical Film' in Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), pp. 25-60

09:58 [9] 'Women Making Art: Little Women Special Features', from Little Women, dir. by Greta Gerwig (Columbia Pictures, 2019) [iTunes Extras]

10:19 [10] Francis William Edmonds, 'The New Bonnet', 1859, oil on canvas, Met Museum, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10843

12:36 [11] 'Women Making Art: Little Women Special Features', from Little Women, dir. by Greta Gerwig (Columbia Pictures, 2019) [iTunes Extras]

12:44 [12] 'Women Making Art: Little Women Special Features', from Little Women, dir. by Greta Gerwig (Columbia Pictures, 2019) [iTunes Extras]

13:19 [13] Louisa May Alcott, Little Women and Good Wives (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1993), p. 434

13:22 [14] Alcott, Little Women, p. 79

13:24 [15] Alcott, Little Women, p. 7

13:29 [16] Alcott, Little Women, p. 281

13:32 [17] Alcott, Little Women, pp. 262-4

13:48 [18] Matthew Taunton, Matthew Taunton, 'Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians', British Library (London: 15 May 2014) www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/print-culture#

13:53 [19] Alice Castle, 'Victorian Children’s Literature and the Invention of Childhood', Egham Museum, eghammuseum.org/victorian-childrens-literature-and-the-invention-of-childhood

14:00 [20] M.O. Grenby, 'Moral and instructive children’s literature', British Library (London: 15 May 2014), www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/moral-and-instructive-childrens-literature

14:01 [21] Maria Edgeworth, The Purple Jar (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1801)

16:29 [22] Behind the Curtain, How I Wrote Little Women — Greta Gerwig's Writing Advice, YouTube video, 16 Feb 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG906HuUz38&t=394s

17:24 [23] Behind the Curtain, How I Wrote Little Women — Greta Gerwig's Writing Advice, YouTube video, 16 Feb 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG906HuUz38&t=394s

18:02 [24] Geruzet Freres, 'A portrait of a wedding couple', cartes-de-vistes, c. 1860s, V&A, collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1461146/a-portrait-of-a-wedding-photograph-geruzet-freres

18:15 [25] Millicent Fawcett, What I Remember (Librobium Editions, 2019), pp. 57-8

18:10 [26] Olive Edis, 'Dame Millicent Fawcett', matte bromide print, c. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw161656/Dame-

18:50 [27] Currier & Ives, 'The Lovers Walk', lithograph, 1856, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2002709974/

18:51 [28] Talia Schaffer @taliaschaffer1, 26 Dec 2019 [Twitter], twitter.com/taliaschaffer1/status/1210219696651419649

19:02 [29] Alcott, Little Women, p. 152

19:12 [30] Alcott, Little Women, p. 231

19:18 [31] Alcott, Little Women, p. 401

21:07 [32] Alcott, Little Men and Jo's Boys (Project Gutenberg, 2008), www.gutenberg.org/files/2788/2788-h/2788-h.htm

21:20 [33] Alcott, Little Men

21:34 [34] Louisa May Alcott, 'Letter to Miss Churchill, 1878', from Little Women, edited by Anne Hiebert Alton (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2001), p. 511

21:48 [35] Alcott, Little Women, pp. 415-7

22:06 [36] Alcott, Little Women, pp. 457-8

22:21 [37] Alcott, Little Women, p. 411

23:11 [38] Louisa May Alcott, 'Letter to Elizabeth Powell, 1869', from The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Joel Myerson, ‎Daniel Shealy and Madeleine Stern (Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987), pp. 124-5

24:09 [39] Abraham Solomon, 'First Class: The Meeting… and at First Meeting Loved,' oil on canvas, 1854, National Gallery of Canada, www.gallery.ca/collection/artwork/first-class-the-meeting-and-at-first-meeting-loved

Ayda Loewen-Clarke, 'Date Like a Victorian: Courtship and Romance in the Victorian Era', Dalnavert Museum and Visitors' Centre (Manitoba: 12 Feb 2021), www.friendsofdalnavert.ca/blog/2021/2/12/date-like-a-victorian-courtship-and-romance-in-the-victorian-era

26:26 [40] Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals, edited by Ednah D. Cheney (Boston: Little Brown, 1898), www.gutenberg.org/files/38049/38049-h/38049-h.htm

27:06 [41] Alcott, Little Women, pp. 328-330

28:36 [42] Lis Adams, 'Fiction vs. Reality: Discovering the Real Little Women at Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House', Journal of Museum Education, 45:3 (2020), 292