Gerwig is a Little Women scholar who grew up reading and rereading the novel. “I wish I could find it!” Gerwig said, adding that she’d saved the piece because, to her, “you never really stop making a film you just keep thinking about it.” She’d emailed the article to the film’s producer, Amy Pascal, except that email and the essay’s exact wording remained elusive. Amy becomes the family’s golden child, heading to Europe to study art and eventually becoming wife to Laurie, Jo’s best friend and the man everyone-the characters in the novel and readers poring over the text-thought Jo would marry.īut Gerwig recently read a piece about how both women, in making choices about whether to marry Laurie, exercise their power in similar ways. The rivalry between Amy and Jo grows as they get older. As a child, she’s spoiled, bratty, and self-obsessed-qualities that especially grate on her older sister (and Alcott’s proxy) Jo. “This equally potent character to Jo.”Īmy, though, has long been maligned by Little Women readers. “I think I started seeing her as this …” she paused. “When I read as an adult, Amy was the one who struck me as having some of the most interesting things to say and having the most utterly clear-eyed view of the world,” she said. Gerwig, who has adapted the novel about four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War, adored the youngest sibling and thought previous onscreen takes on her didn’t give the character her due. It contained an argument that dovetailed nicely with what we were discussing: the underrated appeal of Amy March, perhaps the most divisive character in Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age classic.
There was an email she wanted to show me, Gerwig explained as she scrolled. As we sat inside the Boxwood restaurant in West Hollywood in November, Gerwig struggled to sort past the new ones. Greta Gerwig had just encountered a problem that the characters in her film Little Women never would have: a deluge of messages on her iPhone.