I don’t remember exactly how I came across it, but a while ago I stumbled upon an online list that an organization called the Publishing Triangle had made of the “100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels of all time.” Since I was a literature major, and reading is still pretty much like breathing for me, it was an interesting list. There were the overtly gay-themed novels you might expect — E. M. Forster‘s Maurice, for example, and Radclyffe Hall‘s The Well of Loneliness — as well as books that I recognized as subtextually gay, even if it’s not quite made explicit: D. H. Lawrence‘s Women in Love (which, somewhat counter-intuitively, is really about men in love with each other), and
Henry James‘s The Bostonians. One selection, at No. 43, came as a pretty big surprise, though: Louisa May Alcott‘s Little Women.
I thought about this. Little Women? Really? I mean, yes, Jo March was a tomboy; yes, she had a propensity for dressing up in men’s clothes and swaggering about; yes, the handsome, wealthy, intelligent, kind boy next door was in love with her, and she just wanted to be friends. But it still seemed like a pretty big, and presumptuous, leap to me, to claim it as a lesbian novel.
Until I did some Googling, that is, and came across this quote from the Penguin Classics introduction to LW:
“In an interview with the writer Louise Chandler Moulton, [Alcott] later commented with pre-Freudian candor on her own feelings: ‘I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.'”
Well. Um. Words mean different things at different periods of history … but still, as statements go, that one seems pretty unambiguous. Jo is a fictional character, of course, and not a literal representation of Louisa May Alcott — but with her literary aspirations and her position as the second of four sisters, she has long been looked on as a sort of alter ego for her author. I began to look at her marriage to Professor Bhaer (in a later book, Good Wives) in a slightly different light.
I also began thinking about the three Hollywood film versions of Little Women, and the Jos there. If you don’t count two early silent versions, then the first one, with Katharine Hepburn, was made in 1933:
Although I’ve never seen it, I can’t help thinking that the woman who played Sylvia Scarlett could probably bring some lesbian subtext if needed:
The most recent adaptation was the one with Winona Ryder, in 1994.
Although I don’t really find Winona Ryder a convincing tomboy, no matter how many fake mustaches she draws on herself, the screenplay does contain some interesting quotes. Jo’s manner of admiring Laurie, for example, is to say, “If I were a boy I’d want to look just like that.” And when she has turned down his marriage proposal and is upset that Aunt March has chosen Amy rather than her to go to Europe, she says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Marmee. There’s just something really wrong with me. I want to change, but I — I can’t. And I just know I’ll never fit in anywhere.”
That film also spawned a close friendship between Ryder and co-star Claire Danes; which I mention for no better reason than as an excuse to post these pictures:
The first Little Women adaptation that I saw, though, and my personal favorite — even if it always seems to get ranked lowest in critical discussions of the three — is the 1949 version, with June Allyson as Jo.
Not only does Allyson bring a convincing swagger to the role, but the film also contains a couple of scenes that, in retrospect, are interesting from a lesbianish point of view. Since I don’t want to ick anyone out here, I should begin by saying that I am well aware that Janet Leigh (as Meg) is playing Allyson’s
sister in the film.
At the same time, the fact that the actresses are not sisters in real life makes me feel not totally unjustified in noting that there is a particularly strong, possessive, jealous element in Jo’s reaction to Meg’s suitor John Brooke, that at times does kind of seem to verge on the lesbianish:
(Of course, it could just be that I am projecting my feelings onto Jo, because I have a crush on Janet Leigh).
In the film, as in the books, lesbian subtext is pretty firmly submerged by the end. Jo meets the very likeable Professor Bhaer, and any questions the reader might have had about her sexuality earlier on seem resolved: she simply hadn’t met the right man yet.
It is interesting to note, though, that in the third volume of her March family quartet, Little Men, Alcott introduces a new character called Nan, who in many ways is a younger version of Jo: tomboyish, athletic, rebellious. By the last volume, Jo’s Boys, Nan is a young woman and training to be a doctor. But although she is devotedly pursued by one of the male characters, she is determined to stick to the single life, saying that “[I] am very glad and grateful that my profession will make me a useful, happy, and independent spinster.” This aim, Alcott tells us in the last chapter, she goes on to fulfill.
