Little Wait-What??

I worry this may be an unpopular post, but I feel the need to confess…

Little Women—the book—was kind of hard to read. I’m sure, SURE I read it when I was a kid, and I feel like I might have (somehow) gotten more out of it back then. Am I regressing? Have I become more immature with age? Has language changed THAT MUCH and that fast?

Reading Little Women before going to see the new movie, I found myself—I hate to admit this—confused at several points. For example: I legitimately thought Beth died on page 225. I mean, Jo told her goodbye, not once, but twice. The “look of pain was gone,” “her face was pale and peaceful”… And then in the next paragraph “the fever had turned” and she was going to be just fine… well, not just fine, but she hadn’t died.

I also thought it was a dream when Laurie’s GHOST had come to talk to Jo on page 390. It literally said the word “ghost” and it also said, “Jo must have fallen asleep,” but then she wasn’t asleep and it really was Laurie (aka Teddy—yes please, let’s give all the characters multiple names.)

And then—this is where my immaturity really flourishes—SO much of the language can be read to imply sexual acts: the way they’re always petting each other or how if the pillow on the couch, “the sausage as they called it” stood on end, it was a sign that Laurie might approach and repose.

And, I legitimately have no idea what is going on here:

“I wish you’d do me the favor to rouse yourself a little,” she said sharply.

“Do it for me, there’s a dear girl!”

“I could if I tried,” and she looked as if she would like doing it in the most summary style.

“Try then, I give you leave,” returned Laurie, who enjoyed having some one to tease, after his long abstinence from his favorite   pastime.

“You’d be angry in five minutes.”

“I’m never angry with you. It takes two flints to make a fire; you are as cool and soft as snow.”

“You don’t know what I can do – snow produces a glow and a tingle, if applied rightly. Your difference is half affectation, and a good stirring up would prove it.”

“Stir away, it won’t hurt me, and it may amuse you, as the big man said when his little wife beat him. Regard me in the light of a husband or a carpet, and beat till you are tired, if that sort of exercise agrees with you.”

Yeah, no idea.

The movie, though, was charming. Part 1 and Part 2 of the book were told simultaneously, and the same actresses played both the teenage roles and the adult roles—meaning it sometimes took a second to try to gauge the length of Jo’s hair in order to know where exactly we were in the story….

At the end of the day, I liked the movie better than the book, which is sometimes (but certainly not always) the case for me.