Love and Little Women
So Valentine’s Day has come and gone once again. This holiday, if it could be called that — we don’t get work off so does it really count? — has never held much importance to me. It’s unique in that the convention is for people to dine out as opposed to the home cooking-centric majority, and for me that means it’s the one night to avoid like the plague, unless I and whoever lady I’m with at the time are in the mood for crowds and obnoxiously overpriced and gimmicky Valentine’s “specials” from otherwise respectable restaurants.
Oh, and love, of course. In the mood for love. To be honest, despite the preamble, this year’s Valentine’s is no different from those of years past. A few recent experiences however, have had me thinking on the topic of love more than usual.
The first is Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, her sophomore directorial effort, and the follow-up to the superb Lady Bird, a movie I connected with intimately and admired tremendously. My expectations had been obscenely high since the first trailer had dropped, and happily the film did not disappoint. Whilst it had its share of flaws — notably, it’s more sprawling than its predecessor, partly a consequence of its source material, and so comes off less focused at points and at seldom occasions meandering — it was an accomplishment in its own right. Gerwig’s dialogue, both blunt and razor-sharp all at the same time, conveyed the varying thoughts and emotions of the movie’s cast in entertaining, touching ways, and vividly brought out the inner worlds of its characters.
And it’s in the characters and the portrayal of their worldviews and idiosyncrasies that Little Women really shines, thanks to the synergies between Gerwig’s auteur sensibilities and approach to storytelling, and the personalities sketched out by Louisa May Alcott in the beloved original novel. Speaking of the book, I had managed to go through my life never having read it or seen any of the many, many adaptations (including an anime series, a commercial for which was my first exposure to the story in any form). This was a boon in that I was able to take Gerwig’s interpretations of its characters as they were, without any preconceived notions or expectations. But Little Women (and by this I mean Gerwig’s film) features a good number of multifaceted personalities, and my unfamiliarity with the source material was a hindrance only in that I was less able to parse out what aspects stem from Gerwig’s own voice, independent of Alcott’s.
From a certain point of view
Wherever they may have originated, one of the many aspects that caught my fascination was the characters’ respective, often conflicting, stances on love and its role in a person’s life. There’s an exchange between Florence Pugh’s Amy and Laurie, played by Timothée Chalamet of Call Me by Your Name fame (a film that depicts the development of attraction and explores how a love affair can irrevocably change someone in an extremely effective, and affecting, way), one of the moments from the first trailer that convinced me I needed to see this movie, that so succinctly captures the binary nature of romance.
“I believe we have some power over who we love, it isn’t something that just happens to a person.”
“I think the poets might disagree.”
So go Amy and Laurie’s respective declarations on the subject, embodying the opposing views of pragmatists and romantics throughout the ages. In the film, Amy further expounds on her stance by pointing out the logistical realities she faces, specifically as a woman of her time. She doesn’t have the luxury of not exercising control, a control informed by detached rationalisation, over who she gets with. Laurie, the idealist, can’t help but acknowledge the reality of her situation, but insists, implicitly, that such a compromise of one’s true desires will inevitably lead to dissatisfaction, and ultimately, unhappiness.
And that is just the thing — there’s no denying that love, or more pointedly, to enter into a committed relationship with someone, is an act of conscious will. Furthermore, it’s a sustained one. To stay in a relationship requires constant, active decision-making, and a hell of a lot of work. But at the same time, Laurie is right in that attraction is a wild, mercurial thing. And we human beings, in all our wisdom and self-control, simply cannot cultivate it just because we choose to. That isn’t to say one cannot forge a functional marriage or relationship based on willpower alone — I’d wager the vast majority of marriages in history have been purely functional, due to extenuating circumstances in society stemming from the state of human culture. That’s exactly Amy’s point. But the kind of connection that’s the stuff of stories like Tristan and Isolde, or Orpheus and Eurydice, and the level of fulfilment that brings, is reserved for the lucky few. Even if they have to put in the work to maintain the relationship itself.
La isla bonita
The other major experience I’d alluded to was, fittingly enough, a wedding. I was fortunate enough to be invited by my friends Maan and Alex to their nuptials in December of 2019, on the island of Boracay in the Philippines, where I grew up. Returning to the country is always interesting in that it functions as sort of a psychological baseline for me; trips back always remind me of what I used to be like and how I used to think, and so help me in contextualising my journey as a person and in processing the experiences I’ve had since. All in all, not too dissimilar from what Saoirse Ronan’s Jo March goes through in Little Women, a neat structural conceit added by the way Gerwig’s film is edited (also similar to Ronan’s character Eilis in Brooklyn, another of her great performances, but I digress).
That it was in a splendid resort on such a gorgeous island wasn’t too shabby either. Alex and Maan had friends and family fly in from the four corners of the globe to witness their union (almost literally; the contingent spanned four continents!). See, they’d met on Boracay, all those years ago, and it was fitting that they formalise their relationship there, in true full-circle fashion.
And so there we were, powder-white sand beneath our feet, austere cliffside behind us, the sun dipping into the sea over the horizon, the stars beginning to peek out above us, and music from the very good live acoustic band filling out the spaces in between (fact: you can’t beat Filipino bar bands). But even in the midst of such beauty, one scene managed to sear itself into my memory above all others.
It was in the middle of Maan and Alex’s first dance as a married couple, a three-act set featuring a medley of styles (Maan’s a professional dancer). There was a point — Maan exhilarating in the moment, Alex outside of his comfort zone but gallantly keeping pace, both with the biggest, sincerest smiles I’ve seen in my life, and Michael Bublé’s “Everything” underpinning it all — where they just looked each other in the eyes, and I knew what I was witnessing was something truly special.
It felt then that despite all of us who’d gathered to share in their joy and to express our support, despite the extraordinary setting we all found ourselves in, they were just happy to really be together, drinking in each other’s presences. This is what they write stories about.
As it happens, history’s done it for them, because it took a hell of a lot for Maan and Alex’s relationship to get to its fairytale culmination. After a chance encounter at a bar, in which they barely talked and which was cut short by Alex deciding he’d had enough to drink and going back to his hotel room (albeit without telling anyone in his party, but that’s a story for another time), the most likely outcome was for the two never to cross paths again. But this chance encounter was followed by another along the beach, where with very little incentive, members of their parties exchanged details and agreed to meet up when they all got to Manila before they once again parted ways.
As it happened, the Manila plans came to fruition and it was there, whilst Maan and co. showed Alex’s crew around town, that sparks finally flew between the two. As anyone who’s gone on an island vacation can tell you though, when you return to the mainland, reality is never far behind, and the erstwhile couple was soon faced with Alex’s return to London. This is what astounds me though, because somehow — and remember, there was nothing but a bit of flirtation at this point — each party had independently decided to keep and maintain contact. They got together two years later, maintained a long-distance relationship, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Let’s not overlook the context behind that decision to make contact though; and I do acknowledge that it’s maybe less a decision, and more a series of in-the-moment actions, largely subconscious: sending a message, choosing when — or whether not to — respond, the amount of effort put into each one. And while you’re asking about that island vacation, ask them if they use Tinder or Bumble or whatever other app is hot these days, and they’re likely to tell you, while your life is going on, it’s a goddamn chore responding to text messages to someone not in front of you, never mind on the other side of the planet.
Whatever it is that drove them to keep at this, and in effect decide that this, whatever they perceived it to be at the time, was more worthwhile than any of the easier, more accessible opportunities immediately around them: that’s what Laurie was talking about. That they each devoted whatever time and resources they had at their disposal to see each other at every chance they could get: that’s the choice.
And that brings us back to Jo, Jo, Jo, Jo…
While Laurie and Amy may have served as voice pieces for each of these facets of love, Jo March is, ultimately, the hero of our story, the character that Alcott poured the most of her personal experiences and sentiment into. Among the story’s primary themes are the struggle for self-realisation and finding one’s place in the world, and it’s through Jo that we see the role love plays within that larger narrative.
Jo is anomalous for her time in that she’s incredibly expressive, strong-willed, and self-sufficient, not just emotionally but even with the odds stacked against her, financially. She’s able to do so because she’s secure in herself and her capabilities, and when she wants something, she does what it takes to make it happen. She comes to realise though, that such things come at a cost. At the outset of the film, she’d sacrificed her personal voice as an artist and a storyteller in order to make a living, though due to her own willfulness, she appears to have convinced herself otherwise. We find out that as a child, she’d learned that her convictions, such as righteous fury over her sister Amy’s vandalism of her work, could alienate her from those she loved. She’s unable to stem the flow of nature with her other sister Beth’s illness. And of course, she turns Laurie down because she’s unwilling to curtail her freedom in an era where marriage for women meant a surrender of power.
This too, is something Amy realises, but having always been more pragmatic than her sister, she acts to maximise her benefit within this system, regardless of how unfair or distasteful she finds it. Jo chooses not to take part, but that doesn’t mean that she’s immune to the very human longing for connection.
Alcott’s solution was to bring in the character of Friedrich Bhaer as sort of a second shot at love for Jo, but Gerwig does something incredibly interesting. Bhaer is present in her story as in Alcott’s, but she keeps it ambiguous as to whether or not Jo pursued any romantic involvement with him. The possibility exists that Jo stayed true to her belief that she — or any woman, really any person — could be complete and fulfilled in and of themselves, not because they’re immune to loneliness, but because human beings have many desires and values, and what we have is the power to choose what matters most to us.
After all, the film is unconvincing in portraying a relationship with Bhaer as fundamentally any different from one with Laurie. Yes, they connected intellectually, but Jo and Laurie too shared an devil-may-care streak that gave them conviction in their own worldviews and enabled them to act with a level of disregard over how wider society would perceive and judge them. Gerwig’s framing entertains the train of thought that Jo pursuing something with Bhaer when the reasons she had turned Laurie down remained unaddressed would be a compromise. In short, she’d be settling.
Instead, she stays true to her convictions whilst finding a level of compromise suitable to her (she marries her novel’s lead character off so she can get published under advantageous terms), and we’re left with a Jo that, whilst not master of all she surveys, is content in the agency she’s won and fulfilled artistically and emotionally. Even Amy chooses Laurie over Fred Vaughn in a union that’s less exclusively opportunistic (Laurie is still, of course, extremely rich, but Amy shouldn’t need to renege on all her convictions either).
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
So where’s that leave me, now in February of 2020? Well, my experience on the island has given me a genuine appreciation for what real love can do for a person, for the joy and fulfillment it can bring into one’s life. It’s also given a sense of awe at the enormity of what it takes to make it happen. Maan and Alex somehow found that sense of connection with each other, but it was only after crossing paths several times due to the machinations of random chance and the whims of other people, and after many years of correspondence marked by difficulty and effort.
My appreciation comes with the realisation that this kind of love is incredibly rare, and as with all great human experiences, we are not all destined to live it. Despite what the fairy tales tell us, there isn’t a special someone for every single one of us, waiting to lock eyes with them across a crowded room as the sparks fly, any more than the promise that we’ll all be millionaires living in palatial manors someday.
And the thing is, that’s ok. A human life is so rich with potential, and it’s up to us to navigate the world according to our own values and convictions. Not every opportunity is going be available to us, but we make our choices to make the most of the ones that are truest to our sense of self, and be content with the ones we decide to let fall by the wayside.
But boy, am I glad just knowing it’s out there, and being privileged enough to witness it.
