"You have to watch the movie, and you're not gonna be so disappointed after all," that was what my friend told me when I told her of how disappointed, how terribly irritated I was to find the ending of Little Women, a classic novel written by Louisa May Alcott.
Like most of the readers, and especially the telenovela-oriented ones, I had expected since maybe the beginning of the book that boyish Jo --the main character-- would have eventually ended up marrying her good friend Laurie; the young, Italian-born and affluent boy next door.
But, no; she rejected his proposal of marriage, leaving Laurie in great disappointment. She then indirectly let him marry her youngest, snob sister Amy and, most irritatingly, she herself finally married a 40-something poor professor from Germany instead; someone more than 20 years older than her (!) and suit her better as a father.
That marriage stuff can be found in Little Women's sequel, Good Wives.
To speak about this Little Women and my disappointment over the ending is actually very embarrassing to me. But, well, as I guess nobody here knows me anyway (excepting some friends knowing me very well already), I decided to write it down here, especially because I've been quite engrossed with it.
I first knew about Little Women from its animated series (produced in 1985, cmiw). I was maybe 9 or 10, and I liked the series a lot, maybe because of the long dresses of America's late 19th century that the ladies wore, or maybe because of the characters, or maybe because there was no other better animated series movies to be watched. My favorite character was always Jo (she had long dark brown hair which was always tied up like ponytail, and always wore long green dress) because, well, she resembles me in many ways: the second child of four children of the family, boyish, hater of socialization affairs, and, well ... has a great ambition to be a writer.
I like her, and I like the depiction of Laurie in the series. He looked like a sweet, nice, and very helpful young boy who was a very good friend to Jo, though he also befriended her three sisters.
But, that animated series were no longer broadcast even before I knew how it ended. I used to believe, however, like telenovelas always end, that Jo would end up "living happily ever after" with her dear Laurie.
Years went by then, and I grew up growing a character more and more resembling that of Jo. She had become somewhat of a model to me, though I only realized it when, while doing my final year at the university (which means about 12 years since I watched the animated series), I found the complete and unabridged version of Little Women novel, and even its sequel Good Wives.
I felt so tremendously happy when I found the books at the book store, like someone who has just found her long lost love. I started reading them with immense excitements.
But, that was before I got to the second half of Good Wives, where all things I had expected to find in the story (especially that related to Jo's relationship with Laurie) were seemingly not those what Ms. Alcott wanted to write.
She just so in a sudden separated Jo and Laurie, and bring Jo to meet with the German professor, who just came out of the blue.
I have never dared to see the chronologies of what happened next after Jo's and the professor's immense meetings. I very anxiously suspected that Alcott would give the most unwanted ending to the story, so I decided to straightly go to the ending (that was really unlike my habit of never seeing the ending before I finish with all other parts preceding a book), and yes, I found that Laurie married Amy and Jo married Prof. Baehr instead.
I was so disappointed, so broken-hearted with the ending that despite my excitations in reading Little Women and the first half of Good Wives, I have never read to the date the second half.
I googled and read the review in Wikipedia instead -- several months after I could fairly cope with the deep irritation and disappointment -- from which I found that Beth, the third child of the March family, died of scarlet fever.
Yeah, I know this is highly ridiculous, and very childish indeed. But, well, after years of associating myself with Jo and keeping hopes that I would, too, like Jo, find my own Laurie, it was just a great slap to my face that the ending is not at all like I had expected.
I would never want to marry someone more than 20 years older than me, someone who deserves better to be my father.
And, it takes months before I can mend the broken heart and maybe more than a year before I can separate myself from Jo.
I said to myself, 'I AM NOT JO. I AM ME. I WILL NEVER BE JO, AND WILL NEVER MARRY SOMEONE 20 YEARS OLDER THAN ME!'.
And indeed, it was not at all easy to cope with the disappointments. Since then, I always firstly read reviews of the books I want to read before deciding to buy it, so as to prevent other disappointments over unwanted endings.
And, well, my friend's suggestion that I watch the movie has indeed helped me. She said if I saw the movie, I wouldn't like Laurie because, she said, 'It's Christian Bale who starred as Laurie, and I never like him. I believe you won't like him either. And Professor Baehr, in the movie he's not bearded and corpulent as you imagine. It was Gabriel Byrne who played him, and although he is perhaps sort of old and not so handsome, I like him better than Christian Bale'.
And so, I watched the movie, which, I must say, has very good pictures and setting. I do like Winona Ryder's starring as Jo in the 1994 Little Women movie, but Christian Bale's starring as Laurie has indeed downgraded Laurie's image in my eyes.
I watched the movie for the second time last week, and found that the image even more degraded that I can hardly feel personally hurt by his marrying of Amy.
There is still a little disappointment; and foolish hope if only the story has a better end, that Jo did not marry the old professor... But, well, thank God it is no longer personally. I have been able to separate my life from Jo's; and partly that's because of Christian Bale's depicting of Laurie in the movie.
So, Mr. Bale, I specially thank you for that ... Hope this doesn't make you offended, though I don't think you'll ever read this piece of writing anyway.
