Dear Little Women...

I first met you when I was six. I had stayed home from school, picked up an abridged version of your story, and finished it in one sitting. When Greta Gerwig’s film came out in 2019, I was eleven. I’ll be honest; at the time, I mostly watched it for Emma Watson. The abridged version had omitted a large extent of the story, and I found the rest in the movie. I didn’t know how much I had missed. A few years later, when I was fourteen, I rewatched it with a friend who was in the mood for a classic. Not to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure it changed my life (and then I watched it many more times in the years to come). 

There are so many book-to-screen adaptations that try too hard to do too much. They’re rushing to cover plot and character in under two hours, trying to please people who read the book and those who never will. Because let’s face it; movies are faster, easier, and less demanding. But some of us still carry stories in our heads like pressed flowers. We underline lines and write in the margins. And when we love something that deeply, we want to see it come alive on screen; properly, truthfully. That’s why I think Greta Gerwig’s Little Women worked. Not because it copied the book, but because it understood it.

There have been many of you over the years; films, plays, an anime, even a musical. But you were born in 1868, and that beginning matters. I believe that there are certain stories that only make complete sense when you look at the life of the author behind them, and Little Women is one of those. Louisa May Alcott wrote herself into Jo March, and Jo carried her legacy through generations. Each adaptation brought something different, but Greta’s version felt like the one Alcott would’ve wanted. Or at least, the one that let her say everything she wasn’t allowed to say in her time.

The screenplay speaks in overlapping dialogue, like family dinners where no one waits their turn. Greta Gerwig wrote it that way on purpose. The interruptions, the laughter, the unfinished thoughts; it all felt real. Like love that doesn’t need to explain itself. And those aren’t even the most impactful scenes. There’s weight behind every word Jo and Beth say to each other at the beach, or in Laurie and Amy’s fight in Paris, or the conversation between Meg and Jo before the wedding. The dialogue never feels like it’s explaining things to the audience. It’s just people being who they are, and trusting you to catch up.

Jo March has always been your heartbeat. She is fierce and brilliant and flawed, and through her, Alcott stitched her soul into fiction. Greta’s Jo doesn’t only want to be free; she wants to be understood. And Saoirse Ronan plays her with this perfect tension: wild and focused, gentle and infuriating. She doesn’t just act; she feels. And so we feel, too.

And then there’s Amy. For so long, she was the villain of girlhood; the jealous one, the dramatic one. But Florence Pugh redeemed, if not restored her. Her Amy is aware of the system she’s trapped in, and instead of collapsing under it, she builds her life around what power she does have. For the first time, I admired her. Amy isn’t Jo’s shadow anymore; she’s her own kind of brilliant.

That’s the thing about you. You aren’t just one story. You’re four. You’re a mirror held up to girlhood, in all its ambition, softness, stubbornness, and ache. You remind me that growing up doesn’t have to look one certain way. That different dreams can be equally worthy. That love, in all its forms, holds us together.

I read the original book eventually. But it was the movie that taught me to appreciate the little things. And even though it’s set in the 1800s, there’s a version of each sister inside all of us. We’ve been Jo—full of fire and frustration, trying to carve out space for ourselves. We’ve been Amy—desperate to be taken seriously. We’ve been Meg, wanting stability, and Beth, quietly holding things together. 

Thank you, Louisa May Alcott. Thank you, Greta Gerwig.

Love,

Zainab <3 

Written by Zainab Wani