{"id":3096,"date":"2021-02-23T19:25:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T00:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=3096"},"modified":"2021-02-23T19:25:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T00:25:07","slug":"fiction-into-film-a-study-of-adaptations-of-little-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/fiction-into-film-a-study-of-adaptations-of-little-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction into film: a study of adaptations of “Little Women”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last fall I was privileged to teach a fiction-into-film adaptation course that studied just one work of fiction: Louisa May Alcott’s\u00a0Little Women<\/em>. I’ve taught\u00a0Little Women\u00a0<\/em>as a case study in adaptation for many years, but always as part of several case studies in a course, never as the sole focus. Last fall, it was\u00a0Little Women<\/em> and only\u00a0Little Women<\/em>, so there was more time to analyze the novel in detail as well as to analyze the four main sound-era film adaptations (1933, 1949, 1994, 2019) and a couple of TV adaptations as well (a BBC production from 1970, and a US television production from 1978). We were very fortunate to have W. W. Norton & Company’s beautiful and reasonably priced\u00a0The Annotated Little Women<\/em> as our textbook–and to have the senior editor at Norton, Ms. Amy Cherry–come to class via Zoom one day to talk to my students about book publishing,\u00a0Little Women<\/em>, and careers in editing and production. Special thanks are due to the world’s greatest publishing sales rep, Ms. Mary Helen Willet, who encouraged me all the way and connected me with Ms. Cherry.<\/p>\n

It was truly magical to spend the entire semester immersed in one novel and its many transformations into cinema and television. For me, and for most of the students, Alcott’s novel became a true companion, and each adaptation another chance to encounter Alcott’s vision or, inevitably, ways in which Alcott’s vision was altered or even traduced as it was prepared for yet another audience.<\/p>\n

As is often the case, I am both thrilled and frustrated by the first time I teach a course. There’s an undeniable energy in that first attempt, and sometimes even the panicked moments yield surprising insights (and insightful surprises). The second time, of course, I have a chance to address my mistakes from the first time, which also trying hard not to fix something that was not in fact broken. You’ might think I could tell the difference pretty easily and consistently–but you’d think that only if you’ve never tried to teach a course.<\/p>\n

Little Women<\/em> is not a perfect book; those books don’t exist, of course. But it is, I think, a kind of foundation-book, an eerily powerful vision, a book full of love, full of compromises, full of contradictions, full of the strangest and most exhilarating and most powerful experience most of us will ever have: the experience of family.<\/p>\n

I’ll be teaching the course later this year, this time as a summer course. To be honest, I can’t wait.<\/p>\n

Here’s the course description:<\/p>\n

ENGL 385 Fiction into Film: The Ongoing Legacy of Little Women<\/em><\/h1>\n

President Theodore Roosevelt said he \u201cworshipped\u201d Little Women<\/em>. Simone de Beauvoir reported she \u201cidentified \u2026 passionately with Jo\u201d and \u201cshared her horror of sewing and housekeeping and her love of books.\u201d Cynthia Ozick said she read Little Women<\/em> \u201cten thousand\u201d times. Barbara Kingsolver insisted, simply, \u201cI, personally, am Jo March, and her author Louisa May Alcott had a whole new life to live for the sole pursuit of talking me out of it, she could not.\u201d Camille Paglia, in a dissenting opinion, stated that \u201cthe whole thing is like a horror movie to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The curated fanfiction website \u201cArchive of Our Own\u201d contains 433 works in the Little Women<\/em> series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And the most important statistic for our purposes in this course of study: Little Women<\/em> has been adapted for film or television over 20 times, from 1917 to 2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to think of another American novel, or of any novel at all, that has such a long and influential legacy in film and popular culture.\u00a0 Its author, Louisa May Alcott, dismissively referred to Little Women<\/em> and its sequels as \u201cmoral pap for the young.\u201d Yet the book is still read, and movies are still made of it, and each new adaptation teaches us something not only about strategies of literary adaptation but also, and crucially, something about the role of women in the cultural context in which Alcott lived and in which each of the adaptations was undertaken.<\/p>\n

Together we\u2019ll read and analyze Alcott\u2019s novel\u2014as art, as biography, as fantasy, as feminism, as livelihood\u2014as well as its many adaptations, with an emphasis on the 1933, 1949, 1994, and 2019 cinematic adaptations. In addition to a final course project, we\u2019ll use reflective blogs, a discussion forum, and online annotation to explore the literary, cinematic, and cultural phenomenon that is Little Women<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the course trailer I made for last fall’s offering. I hope you enjoy it.<\/p>\n