Little Women: Book vs. Movie
Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film Little Women adapts Louisa May Alcott’s novel, published in two parts in 1868 and 1869. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March grow up with different hopes for art, work, marriage, and family.
From Books Adapted
What changed from the book
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Jo's ending also becomes the story of publishing her book
Alcott's novel gives Jo a marriage to Professor Bhaer. The movie shows their romance alongside Jo negotiating with a publisher who insists that her heroine must marry. It also follows the printing and binding of her book.
Gerwig brought Alcott's own history into that ending. Alcott remained unmarried and kept writing, while Jo takes a different path at the end of Little Women. Gerwig wanted the finished book in Jo's hands to provide its own resolution, alongside the marriage the publisher demands.
How it was adapted
The movie begins with the sisters as adults
Greta Gerwig adapts both parts of Little Women: the sisters' childhood and their lives as young adults. Instead of following the book's order, the movie begins in adulthood and returns to childhood in flashbacks.
Gerwig said reading the two halves together revealed scenes and experiences that echo each other. She wanted the adult sisters' work and ambitions to carry as much weight as their childhood adventures.
The later books Little Men and Jo's Boys continue the March family's story. The movie does not tell those books in full, though Gerwig said their account of Jo returning to writing helped shape her ending.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Louisa May Alcott
- Year
- 1868
- Pages
- 352Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 19 hr 2 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Christina Ricci
- Series
- March Trilogy, book 1
With their father away during the Civil War, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March grow up under their mother’s guidance in a household short of money. Their different ambitions lead to quarrels, friendships, mistakes, and first attachments, as each sister tries to reconcile the person she wants to become with her responsibilities to the others.
- Director
- Greta Gerwig
- Writer
- Greta Gerwig
- Year
- 2019
- Runtime
- 2 hr 14 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep
- Genre
- Drama
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
Jo March tries to make a living from writing while memories of childhood with Meg, Beth, and Amy interrupt the sisters’ separate adult lives. Moving between their shared home and the choices that take them away from it, the story follows their efforts to make room for artistic ambition, love, and financial independence.
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