Little Women

Hook, making your own way

Guiding thread: Finding one’s place in the world · Sub-thread: Giving and receiving, we can only give and receive from a place.

Finding one’s place in the world · Young people today

Jo March says: “I intend to make my own way in the world.” What do young people today do to make their own way, and to make their voices heard?

Sentence starters

• Jo wants to earn her own money because…
• Today, young people who want to be heard can…
• Starting a blog, a podcast or a school newspaper can help young people…
• In the end, Jo understands that her place…

Visionary filmmakers. In 2019, Greta Gerwig gave a 150-year-old classic a new ending: her Jo March sits in a publisher’s office and negotiates her own copyright. The trailer told audiences: “Own your story.”

Talk about the characters and about young people in general, not about yourself.

Then, a second question:

Why does Jo’s publisher want her heroine to be married by the end? In the trailer, Mr. Dashwood tells her: “Make it short and spicy. And if the main character is a girl, make sure she’s married by the end.”

The film in three lines

Concord, Massachusetts, during and after the American Civil War. Four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, grow up with little money and big dreams. The film moves between two times: 1868, when Jo tries to sell her stories in New York, and seven years earlier, in 1861, when the sisters were still girls at home.

Start with the trailerFilm study sheet

A Gerwig pair

Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019): the same director, the same lead actress, Saoirse Ronan, and two young women who want to write their own story, more than 130 years apart. Timothée Chalamet and Tracy Letts act in both films too.

Compare Jo March and Lady Bird Film study 10: Lady Bird

Film credits

Film language, with examples from the official trailer

Timecodes are approximate (± 2 s). Pause the trailer and check each example yourself.

Shots

• ≈0:01close-up of Jo in a straw hat by the sea: sunlight on her face, a smile, freedom
• ≈0:12long shot: the four sisters walk together through the snow, each in her own colour
• ≈0:42establishing shot: the March family house in the snow

Angles

• ≈0:15over-the-shoulder shot: we see Jo from behind, facing the publisher at his desk, he sits, she waits
• ≈1:36eye level on the hill: Laurie and Jo face each other as equals

Camera movement

• whole trailerscenes of childhood move and “dance”; scenes of adulthood are more still and frontal
• ≈2:06tracking shot: Jo and Laurie run side by side on the beach

Lighting & colour

• whole trailerthe past is golden and warm; the present (1868) is colder and bluer
• ≈2:00low-key lighting: Jo’s face in the dark as she speaks about women’s ambition

Sound

• ≈0:09Jo’s voice first: “I’m working on a novel.”
• ≈1:49a sound bridge: Jo’s speech continues over images of her sisters

Editing

• whole trailercross-cutting between two times, seven years apart
• ≈1:21intertitle: “Based on the classic novel”
• ≈2:24title card, then the tagline “Own your story”

Step into the period

Historical landmarks

• 1832 Louisa May Alcott is born on 29 November in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
• 1858 The Alcott family moves into Orchard House, Concord.
• 1861 The Civil War begins, and so does the film’s “past”.
• 1862 to 1863 Alcott works for six weeks as a nurse in the Union Hotel Hospital, Georgetown, near Washington.
• 1863 She publishes Hospital Sketches.
• 1865 The Civil War ends.
• 1868 May: her publisher Thomas Niles asks her for “a girl’s book”. 30 September: Little Women (volume 1) is published. The film’s “present” is 1868.
• 1869 April: volume 2 is published.
• 1879 Alcott is the first woman to register to vote in Concord, for a school board election.
• 1888 She dies in Boston on 6 March.
• 2019 Greta Gerwig’s film premieres in New York (7 December).
• 2020 6 Oscar nominations; it wins Best Costume Design.

Sources: Sony Pictures, Little Women · Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House · Oscars, 92nd Academy Awards · The novel on Project Gutenberg

Official trailer (Sony Pictures)

Official channel: Sony Pictures Entertainment · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AST2-4db4ic

First viewing (0:00 → 2:43)

1. What is Jo writing, and what is it about?
2. What does the publisher ask her to do with her heroine?
3. What does Amy want to be?
4. Why is Aunt March not married, according to her?
5. What does Laurie tell Jo on the hill, and what does she answer?

Second viewing, exact words

1. ≈0:14 “Make it short and ___.”
2. ≈0:41 “I intend to make my own ___ in the world.”
3. ≈0:43 “No one makes their own way, least of all a ___. You’ll need to marry ___.”
4. ≈1:30 “Just because my dreams are different than yours doesn’t mean they’re ___.”
5. ≈1:49 “Women, they have minds and they have ___ as well as just hearts.”
6. ≈1:54 “I want to be great or ___.”

Two times, two lights

Greta Gerwig tells the story in two times, seven years apart. With cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, she filmed the past with a “golden warmth of youth”: the four sisters fill the frame and the camera moves like a dancer. In the present, the sisters are often alone in the frame, the camera is still and the colours are colder.

Portrait task

Pause at ≈2:00 (Jo’s face in the dark). Describe the shot as if it were a painting: position, light, expression, what it says about her.

Colour detective

Find each sister in the trailer by her colour: red for Jo, green and lavender for Meg, brown and pink for Beth, light blue for Amy. What does each colour say about her?

Concord and Orchard House

Concord is a small town in Massachusetts, near Boston. In the 1860s it was home to famous writers: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts. The family lived in Orchard House from 1858 to 1877, and Louisa wrote Little Women there. The March house in the novel is modelled on it; today it is a museum.

Louisa May Alcott and the Civil War

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Alcott wanted to help. In December 1862, at thirty, she became an army nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, near Washington. She worked there for six weeks, until she caught typhoid fever. Her letters became a book, Hospital Sketches (1863). In Little Women, Father March is away with the Union Army, and Marmee travels to Washington to nurse him.

A book written on request, and for money

In May 1868, Alcott wrote in her journal: “Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girl’s book. I said I’d try.” She wrote it very quickly. The first printing of 2,000 copies sold out, readers asked for more, and volume 2 followed in April 1869. Alcott used her own family: Anna became Meg, Lizzie became Beth, May became Amy, and Louisa herself became Jo.

Women, work and money in the 1860s

• Women could not vote in national elections.
• Paid work for middle-class women was rare: teaching, sewing, nursing, writing.
• For many families, a “good marriage” was a woman’s only security, as Aunt March says in the trailer.
• Alcott never married. She earned her living by writing and supported her family.

The March sisters in 1880 illustrations

How do these drawings from 1880 show the sisters? Compare one drawing with a shot from the trailer.

1 · Continuous speech, 2 minutes

Present Jo March as a character: her family, her dreams, her conflicts.

2 · Interaction, the publisher’s office

Pairs. Jo and Mr. Dashwood negotiate the contract for her novel. Mr. Dashwood wants a married heroine and a cheap price. Jo wants to keep the copyright and a share of every book sold (royalties). Each character must make one compromise.

Useful words: copyright · royalties · a percentage · to pay in advance · a deal · to negotiate · to sign a contract

3 · Debate, “Should an artist change her story to sell it?”

Argue using Jo’s case only.

Write

B1 · 150 words: New York, 1868. As Jo, write a letter to Marmee: you have just sold your first story. (Written as the character.)

B2 · 220 words: “Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts.” How does the trailer present the ambitions of the March sisters?

• Listening: trailer · Reading: Alcott’s journal, the timeline · Speaking: portrait, the publisher’s office, debate · Writing: Jo’s letter / analysis.

Project, “The March sisters’ newspaper”

In the novel, the sisters write their own family newspaper, The Pickwick Portfolio. In groups, create a one-page newspaper written by the March sisters in 1868: Jo’s editorial, Amy’s art review, Meg’s advice column, Beth’s music corner. Use public-domain or own images, credited.

Jo March and Lady Bird, two heroines, one director

Greta Gerwig directed Lady Bird in 2017 and Little Women in 2019. Saoirse Ronan plays both heroines. Compare them, talk about the characters only.

Cross-study task, 2 minutes

Pairs. One student speaks for Lady Bird, the other for Jo March. Each heroine explains her dream, her obstacle and what she has learnt at the end. Then answer together: What do the two heroines have in common?

Notes pour le professeur

• Rattachement : séquence 2^nde 06 « Looking ahead », en binôme avec Lady Bird (même réalisatrice, même actrice principale) · thème Growing up.
• 1^re : séquence 01 « Identities in the making » (axe « Identités et échanges » : se dire / être dit), étude croisée Lady Bird × Little Women au niveau B2, préparant le « 2-min talk » de la tâche finale.
• Axes : 2^nde « Représentation de soi et rapport à autrui », « Vivre entre générations » · 1^re « Art et pouvoir », « Identités et échanges ».
• Titre français : Les Filles du docteur March (roman : Les Quatre Filles du docteur March).
• La fin : Greta Gerwig modifie la fin du roman : Jo négocie ses droits d’auteur avec son éditeur pendant qu’on voit la scène romantique « écrite » pour lui plaire. Bon support pour l’axe « Art et pouvoir ».
• Deux temporalités : le passé (1861) en lumière chaude et caméra mobile, le présent (1868) plus froid et plus statique (Yorick Le Saux, chef opérateur).
• Bande-annonce : chaîne officielle Sony Pictures Entertainment, vérifiée par oEmbed ; les répliques citées ont été vérifiées sur la bande-annonce.

Mode d’emploi professeur complet →