One of Louisa May Alcott´s favourite writers was the German poet Goethe and Laurie´s character arc in Little Women is surprisingly similar to Goethe´s young hero, Werther. Join me in a discussion where we are decoding these two characters.
Laurie and Werther Romanticizing Path To Self-Destruction
University of North Wales/ Glyndwr University
Children's books and book publishing industry
Podcast Project
Summary:
One of Louisa May Alcott´s favourite writers was the German poet Goethe and Laurie
´s character arc in Little Women is surprisingly similar to Goethe´s young hero,
Werther. Join me in a discussion where we are decoding these two characters.
Little Women Podcast Transcript
Hello, Little Women fans. Welcome to the second season of the Little Women
Podcast. I am very happy and excited about this season. There will be new episodes
every Thursday for the next 12 weeks. Today's comment shoutout goes to Melodie.
This is what she says.
"I wish instead of remaking Little Women into a story where Jo is
a spinster, they give us a movie about Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.
I want to see that story. Maybe folks would then understand that Friedrich was the
real price and maybe they could understand better that Louisa did not remain
unmarried because she wished it. She needed a meeting of the minds and mutual
respect sort of love. It is my experience that Jo and Laurie's shippers are usually
folks who haven't read the book, or if they had it was when they were very young
and it was still only as a companion to 1994. I love your comparison to the
Notebook. I am always horrified when I hear that it is someone's idea of romance.
It's so toxic and problematic to read Jo and Laurie as that. I think one of the beautiful
things about Little Women, is the way it shows the difference between immature and
mature love.".
"When we are young love often looks like what Jo and Laurie had. I think Laurie just
wanted to be in love, so he latched onto the idea of Jo. It's hard to see this, because
of the movie portrayal, how do you say no to a young and beautiful Christian Bale?"
, I think we can say the same about Timothee Chalamet in the 2019 film and Peter
Lawford in the 1949 film, and I agree 100% Perhaps the problem is not the way the
book is written, but that society at large romanticizes that type of toxic behaviour.
Louisa found Henry very attractive, even though he wasn't considered
conventionally attractive, but it wasn't just about his looks. The connection that they
shared was what made it special. Then there was Laddie, who was one of the real-
life Lauries. He was a conventionally good-looking man, but he and Louisa did not
share that connection.
Romanticizing possessive behaviour in a male character runs very deeply in our
culture. There are double standards because when a man is pursuing a woman, no
matter what the woman says, a lot of people think it's romantic. But when a woman
does the same to a man, she's automatically labelled as crazy.
This episode is about the similarities between Goethe's novel "the sorrows of young
Werther" and Laurie's character in Little Women. Especially how Jo's and Laurie's
relationship can be directly traced to Goethe's novel There will be mentions of
suicides. If this is a topic that triggers you, use your judgment on how to proceed.
It is not going to be overly explicit, but it can be a difficult topic for some people.
It was a good novel to me, in terms of my character research and it helped me to
understand Laurie's character a lot more and also it made me understand the
transcendental's word view and their belief system better because Goethe was one
of their heroes and they believed that nature was the manifestation of God.
This is an idea that Goethe writes a lot in his novels, and because he was Louisa's
favourite writer as well, it has helped me to understand Louisa as a person. This is
the Little Women podcast; Laurie and Werther romanticising the path to self-
destruction.
Goethe was one of the most praised German authors of his time. Louisa May Alcott
was a big fan of Goethe. Louisa was a transcendentalist. The whole worldview of the
transcendentalist could be described as a nature-centric form of Christianity. It was
based on German philosophy and German romanticism. Goethe was one of the most
important literal inspirations for the transcendentalist because he captured the
essence of their belief into poetic form.
Louisa according to her own words, grew up hearing stories of Goethe on her father's
knee. Bronson Alcott's library included a contemporary translation of Goethe's
biography, and we can assume that it was one of the first books that Louisa read.
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