What Greta Gerwig Did Right: Rethinking Amy March in the Light of May Alcott Nieriker (2023)

AMY MARCH IS THE ONE most modern readers tend to hate - the most original, most self-absorbed, most indulgent girl in the group of sisters whose exploits are chronicled in Louisa May Alcott's classic novellittle woman(1868). Some readers may even sympathize with Carmen Maria Machado, who recentlywrotethat she thinks Jo should have let Amy drown. But the tide could be turning for the youngest March sister. Greta Gerwig's 2019 film adaptationlittle woman, fueled by an Oscar-nominated performance by Florence Pugh, Amy reimagined and in theWordsby Kate Erbland, "made the brat the film's breakout heroine."

In the months since the film's release, reviewers have had bothsupportsandrejectedErbland's claim. But there seems to be a "moment" for Amy March, one that encourages fans to reconsider this youngest sister, as Gerwig did herself as she prepared to write the screenplay. "Actually, one of my experiences reading the book was reliving Amy as a profound character who is Jo's equal, and someone who in some ways is a worthy opponent of Jo," says Gerwighas said. "It seems so obvious to me that she hasn't been given her due in our collective consciousness." And Gerwig isn't the only one who has looked it uplittle woman. Romanautorin Jane Smiley, in anew collectionjustifiedThe March Sisters: On Life, Death and Little Women, argues that Amy is the most seductive character in the book: "Amy is the modern woman, the thoughtful feminist [...] and more in line with who we want to be today."

Gerwig and Smiley's reading is indeed supported by the historical record. The real Amy March - May Alcott Nieriker, Louisa's youngest sister - was anything but distant and demanding. In fact, she was a genuine feminist force, promoting transatlantic networks for independent travelers. This forgotten legacy of May Alcott Nieriker lends credence to our new cultural attitude toward Amy, particularly our renewed sense of her ability to get things done in the face of concerted cultural opposition.

Both Gerwig and Smiley noticed certain comments made by Amy when rereading the novel. For Gerwig, it was "I'll be great, or I'll be nothing." For Smiley, it was a less obvious line: "I think fear is very interesting." In this remark, Smiley writes, Amy reveals that she is fundamentally a is an "introspective" character who tends to analyze her own feelings and find ways to learn from them. I would guess that Gerwig and Smiley probably didn't quite realize how correct their suspicions about this character are. Also, Amy isn't the first character inlittle womanbe reconsidered by sensitive readers.

In the most famous case of readers getting it right, Carroll Atwood Wilson, a rare book dealer specializing in the Alcotts, told Leona Rostenberg, friend and business partner of Madeleine Stern - author of a 1950 Alcott biography – that he was convinced “Louisa used a pseudonym to write sensational stories” and that she had to “discover the pseudonym”! Stern tells the story in her introduction to the 1996 reprint of her biography Es Rostenberg

found the answer in the manuscript room at Harvard's Houghton Library, where silence reigned as we both rummaged through the masses of Alcott manuscripts, letters, family papers, and memorabilia. Suddenly the silence was broken by a howl of war. Leona Rostenberg had found five letters from a Boston publisher to "Dear Miss Alcott" - letters that would change the childhood friend's image forever.

Rostenberg had found evidence that Louisa May Alcott had a number of contracts under the name of A. M. Barnard, a fact faithfully presented in Gerwigslittle woman.

Over 70 years later I had the opportunity to look through the papers myself at the same Houghton archives. In a box marked as Louisa's Papers, I found a small red diary that belonged to her sister May. As many know, May became a painter in Europe, her work being exhibited at the Paris Salon in the late 1870s. Living in London, Rome and Paris, she perfected her craft and visited museums, bought cheap dresses in the off-season and cried alone in a chapel when her beloved mother died. Eventually, in her late 30s, she married and gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Louisa after her older sister. After May's death, young Louisa (called Lulu) came across the sea to be raised by her eponymous aunt until Alcott's death in 1888.

This is less well known, however: in the final years of her short life, May became a staunch advocate for women studying abroad. She threw her public influence behind the cause, first in articles forDas Boston-Transcript(the most widely circulated daily newspaper in Boston at the time) and later in a book written and marketed for young women of limited means who wanted an artistic adventure. There may be reasons why this story has been forgotten. The only biography of May, a "Memoir" written by Caroline Ticknor and published in 1928, devotes less than 10 of its 300 pages to her public writings, which Ticknor said were not important to the practicing artist. In fact, Ticknor doesn't even bother to add the title of what she calls "May's Little Book." But the journal I found in the Houghton Library tells a different story.

Carefully pasted into the diary of 1879 are several newspaper clippings from "artists' letters" addressed to theBoston transcript, as well as five printed reviews of May's book,Study art abroad and how to do it cheaply, published by the same house, Roberts Brothers, that had publishedlittle woman. The book offered practical tips for traveling in Italy, France and England - including the names and prices of reputable hoteliers, recommendations on where to shop for discounted clothing and the names of art studio contacts. May referred to the book's audience as her "artistic sisters" who "wanted to study abroad but were unsure how to go about it." She cheerfully encouraged her readers—they could actually go abroad, they could do it cheaply, and they don't need an official chaperone to protect their female honor.

May offered her own life as a model and positioned herself as a secret sharer who could offer young female artists a professional network. She was, I would say, as adept at crafting an argument as she was at painting a picture. And many of the qualities we now admire in Amy — her ambition, her perspicacious appreciation of the injustices women face, her rhetorical power to maneuver through life and get what she wanted — also apply to Amy's real-life counterpart.

Armed with the trust of her parents and financial support from her sister, May was in an unusually secure position to pursue her artistic dreams. Before leaving Concord, she and Louisa had been working on a tourism bookConcord Skizzen(1869) showing the homes of Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau and their own family. She also illustrated the first edition oflittle woman. This work demonstrates that May was an established and successful local artist, and her family's inclusion in Concord's elite demonstrates the literary and cultural connections she enjoyed as an Alcott. She had studied in Boston with William Morris Hunt, an important painter, and opened her own artist studio. Because of her family's reputation and the way she had already used that reputation to find success in Concord and Boston, May had a built-in platform for her views. Unlike artists, who had no public status and might have had to fight for attention — let alone get a work placed in a leading newspaper — May had tools at hand and she used them. Above all, it was the profitslittle womanwhich enabled the real May Alcott to continue her artistic career.

In a 1878Boston transcriptColumn May wrote: "I yearn daily for an opportunity to tell many of the girls who are struggling in America to find the right kind of help how easy it is to cross the Atlantic without an escort but with one of the kind, courteous captains to cross the Cunard Line.” Her description of her ideal reader is similarArt studies abroad:

I suppose our particular artist is not a gay tourist touring Europe for guidebooks […] but a thoroughly serious worker, lady and poor like so many in the profession who wants to make the most of every opportunity, and the bag of gold as long as possible.

As an artist who has already been accepted into the Paris Salon and claims to be content with her life choices, May positions herself as the voice of experience and challenges readers to embrace their own lifestyle. She writes: "I am so free, so busy, so happy that I envy no one and find life infinitely rich and fulfilled. With that in mind [...] I think I could dare to say to any other young woman of modest means and artistic aspirations: 'Take heart, come and try art life in London.'”

The position that May took here has been controversial. Studying abroad - not as a "gay tourist" but as a "serious worker" - was considered a male adventure. Many art studios in the 1870s did not admit women. There were widespread concerns that painting nudes impinged on women's artistic virtues and that studying abroad might corrupt a woman's morals. Other cultural conservatives preferred that women study art only as a preliminary to household management rather than as a career. Faced with this resistance, some women artists tried to take the radical position that gender shouldn't matter at all.

For example, in 1873 the journalist Albert Rhodes visited a well-known studio in Paris, the Académie Julian, where two American women were working. How he reportedThe galaxyWhen he interviewed one of the artists, she told the magazine that an art student abroad had to "forget the conventions of society" to be successful:

[I] If a woman wants to be a painter, she must overcome her squeamishness; if she wants to paint strong and healthy like a man, she must go through the same training. […] There is no sex here; the students, men and women, are simply painters. In the studio, excessive modesty in a painter is a sign of mediocrity; only the woman who, in pursuit of art, forgets the conventions of society has a chance of an award.

Rhodes notes that "[t]here was something almost defiant in the young woman's remarks, as if she held a position that needed to be defended. What she said also suggested that she had broken many lances to assert herself on what was considered controversial ground.” Looking back at the interview, the woman wasobviouslytook a controversial position. Despite their claim that “there is no sex [i.e. Gender distinction] is,” Rodolphe Julian, founder of the Academy, eventually decided that it was inappropriate to mix the sexes in his own studio, thus separating men from women. Furthermore, large schools like the École des Beaux-Arts did not allow women to apply at all - and did not change this policy until 1897.

Writing from London just five years after interviewing the young artist, May takes it for granted that a woman need not check her respect for convention at the door when pursuing an art profession. In other words, her advocacy attempts to balance a passion for professionalism with distinguished femininity. Walking that fine line, she shows that in real life she was what Jane Smiley described the fictional Amy: a political actor adept at operating within oppressive systems to achieve her desired ends.

May's appearance on the site is unabashedly upbeat, both dreamy and soberly practical. She uses references to children's songs to convey the wonders of the art scene abroad, while also providing names and contact information (as well as prices) for art studios. She raves about how wonderful it is to shop for clothes in August, the off-season when "a young woman of modest means can get a neat and beautiful wardrobe for half what it costs at home." While she occasionally acknowledges the sexism women face abroad, she more often gushes about the wonderful opportunities unavailable in Boston. Guidebooks written for men at the same time openly acknowledge the many hardships of studying abroad: loneliness, the difficulty of the language barrier, unfamiliarity, and homesickness. May doesn't address these issues, which would only have been worse for most women in the 1870s.

In "A Letter from an Art Student in London," May lists the great galleries one by one, calling them "the crowning glory of all newcomers" and describing how accessible they are to students. At the National Gallery, for example, art students have "the right" to copy artworks two days a week "in camera" by submitting an "application to Mr. Norman." (The purpose of giving the name "Mr. Norman" is to provide her middle-class readers with a respectable, concrete connection. Elsewhere, May states, "Especially when a woman, a few notes, suggestions, and addresses will prove useful . ) May acts as a sort of professional coordinator, providing her readers with a respectable network to continue their studies.

Her enthusiastic discussion of these museum opportunities differs significantly from the description of the situation in The Art Student in Paris, a pamphlet published by the Boston Art Students Association in 1887. Writing for a predominantly male readership, the anonymous authors claim that for a student who has not taken the time to study art history, a visit to a gallery or museum can be exhausting: "Every time , when he visits the Louvre, he is called upon to exert himself mentally, for which he has neither time nor strength; and he will end up taking much of his artistic information second-hand.” The layouts of some major museums are described as “confusing” to someone “unfamiliar” with the major art schools. These kinds of warnings are rarely found in May's writing, which seems to assume that young women artists will be able to interpret the galleries' treasures without much study.

Why was she so positive? I think the same qualities that Smiley observed in Amy apply to May: "As she grows up, [Amy] realizes that a combination of charm, determination and self-awareness works." Manners, focused focuses on the positive and uses raw energy to break through potential barriers. May trusted her readers to do the same, leaving them no room for question or doubt. As Amy's speech to Laurie points out in the film, women cannot afford to admit weakness. They must use the skills at their disposal to navigate the world, especially when they are of modest means.

As the 19th century turned into the 20th, more women than ever were studying art abroad for a living. Citing census data, art historian Kirsten Swinth, in her 2001 volumePainters Professionals: Female Artists and the Development of Modern American Art. 1870–1930, notes that the number of women identifying as professional artists increased from 414 in 1870 to almost 11,000 in 1890. By the early 1900s, by the time both May and Louisa had died, women's networks in Paris were well established. Swinth writes: “Women's networks started at home. […] Advice, filtered through letters, contacts and friendships, pointed women to the best studios, reliable teachers and the most likely means of gaining a salon entry.” The period in which May wrote – 1876 to 1879 – was one formative time for professional women artists in the United States, and her vigorously optimistic rhetoric was necessary to balance the equally extreme opposing views that existed at the time. The world needed an "Amy," a confident, articulate feminist who could run through adversity with a knowing smile.

It may be tempting to dismiss these efforts as trivial for a variety of reasons. First, May would not have been able to travel to Europe without the financial support of her older sister, Louisa, at least initially. Given that fact, can we really say that she was independent? Also, it's perhaps a bit annoying that May is essentially advocating more privilege for women who were already quite privileged. In the face of slavery, child labor and mass poverty, does helping middle-class women study art abroad really count as significant feminist work? I would argue that it is, because ultimately, May is trying to give more women physical autonomy, financial freedom, career opportunity, and adventure.

In her writing, May appears as a staunch advocate of women's professional rights. She positions herself not only as a tourist guide for her readers, but as an artistic sister, mentor and friend. This actually sets her apart from her fictional counterpart. Inlittle woman, Amy admonishes Jo not to share the secrets of the good life on a budget: "You don't have to tell them all our little things and expose them to our poverty in this totally unnecessary way." In contrast, the real Amy - May was Alcott Nieriker – eager to share her tricks to enrich the lives of her readers. It's high time we recognized the true complexity of her character - as an aspiring artist, political actor and accomplished feminist.

¤

Kelly Blewett teaches in the English Department at Indiana University East.