Reviewing the Classic Movie Version of Little Women

There were some differences portrayed in the movie, although not as many as one might think. I thought the filmmakers did a beautiful job of covering the key points and even the smaller details that were written in the novel. I loved that the movie portrayed the characters much as we’d read about them and didn’t change them to meet the expectations of the reader. Jo was the most startling contrast of the ones I did note from what I read, and what I saw in the movie. She did not seem as loud and abrasive in the book as she came across in the film, but it still did not harm her character to be so, only reiterated that she was delightfully different than the norm. In terms of attitude, I also think Meg was displayed much softer in the movie than she was in the book.

I think this was done assuming the audience would expect it to be so. She was very proper and submissive, almost, in nature, from beginning to end. This was reiterated when Jo came home to find her expecting a baby and asked her why she hadn’t been informed of such a delightful event and Meg noted that ‘these things are not often spoken of.’ This, and most everything, just made Meg seem ‘the little woman’ in terms of the traditional sense we hear that phrase being used today. It did not deter from the storyline because that is more or less how the audience would assume the women of that time period to behave on romantic matters in life such as the ones Meg went through on screen; courting, engagement, marriage, and having children.
The other difference that I thought quite large was that the beginning of the book the children seem to be a lot younger than they do at the beginning of the movie.