you just can't get over "lamie"

This is pure truth.

In fact, one of the first to-do’s if I ever come into money—I’m banking on this e-mail I received about my long-lost millionaire uncle who died suddenly in South Africa—is to reshoot a version of one of my favorite books growing up, Little Women.

Now, I resort to to shooting a movie because rewriting a what-if draft of this book really just can't be done.  I'd lose all of the life-lesson-learning Louisa May would want, and I'd probably lose a lot of the moral high ground too, just to spice things up a little.  Besides, whoever heard of a spin-off of...

Yes, I'm talking about you Jane Austen spin-offs!

Oh!  Of course!  Well, published fanfiction aside, I will say that the only difference I'd make in my production of Louisa May's story would be--wait, wait.  I'm getting ahead of myself.  For those of you who have yet to be amazed by Louisa May Alcott’s tale of morals and female struggle into adulthood, you’re probably either a boy or hate reading.  If you’re neither, then shame on you!

There are four women, the March sisters, of assumed normal height and build.  They grow up during the book so they're not little kids.  They're called "little," actually, because of their father, who calls them such out of a pique of affection.  Because it's Louisa May, I think she was going for humility, rather than a grander meaning.

Meg is the eldest.  Her gripe with life is her poor circumstances.  She just wants to be part of the society where she sees all of her so-called friends taking part, but eventually she falls in love and sees that love and happiness and family are more important than having pretty dresses or social standing.

Besides, when she has a teeny bit of weakness and gets dressed up and flirts at a party, the society starts to talk smack about her so she feels too ashamed to really try again.

Is it wrong to say I learned what "on the shelf" meant when I read about Meg?  There's a horrible scene, where, after a few years of marriage, Meg tries to make jam, an age-old activity she enjoyed in her youth, and fails horribly.  So when her husband comes up with a business partner, she's found crying in the kitchen among jars and pots of failed attempts of jam.  I've never heard anything so depressing, and I'm not sure what lesson I learned other than to not have such high culinary aspirations.

Then there's Jo, the second eldest.  She’s a tomboy, basically a blue-stocking with no qualms about having "boy" habits such as whistling or running around exercising (Alcott does a lot to encourage young girls to exercise).  She'd rather go to war and do something useful.  She says this often.

She’s really the belle of the book.  She speaks her mind, she gets angry, and she’s steadfastly loyal.  She sounds awesome, right?  Well, despite the anger issues that is.  Essentially, she’s everything we should be teaching little girls and whatnot wrapped into one heroine, but no.  She gets screwed over by her youngest sister!

Not this one.  No, this is Beth.  She’s really good, like really.  She risks her life helping to take care of a baby with scarlet fever.  Who does things like this?  No one in modern times surely, though an argument can be made for those heroes I see saving people from the subway tracks on morning news programs.  Heck, if Beth were living now, or in reality actually, she would be one of those people!

Beth’s pretty rad too.  She has a good conscience and is extremely selfless, but Alcott kills her off in the second half of the book.  I’m sorry to spoil that, but excuse my bluntness about Beth’s demise because that’s the only way I can cope with it.  I mean, I thought that Beth’s goodness was supposed to be a model for me, but when she dies halfway through, what am I supposed to think?

If I listen to my conscience, I'll die!  Okay, a bit extreme of an assumption, but I was young when I first read this book.

Last and least, in my mind anyway, is Amy.  Amy is the baby of the family.  She’s vain and self-conscious of their social standing like Meg, and she’s overtly dramatic.  She's often called pretty, and she pretty much knows it.  So what happens to teach Amy a lesson?  Nothing.  Amy hardly has any struggle, but she does screw over sister Jo three times!  Three!  There's a saying for that: fool her once, shame on you, fool her twice shame on thee, fool her three times and you're just a bad sister who deserves a horrible comeuppance, you horrible sister, you!

First, she burns Jo’s book of stories, the one that Jo uses her best handwriting and her best ideas in, because Jo refuses to beg Laurie for another ticket to the opera.  The girl's eight or so when this happens!  Of course she can't go to the opera!  Who does she think she is?  The pretty on--okay, so I can see her humility was wanting early on in the book.  Marmee's on Amy's side too when Jo takes physical action and starts to shake her.  I say, let them work it out, and later on, they can hug it out, if it gets to that.  Marmee just has different ideas over raising her children, I suppose.

It doesn't stop there.  Ho, once she's a young lady, Amy steals Jo’s trip to Europe.  Granted, Alcott tries to assure us that it’s because of Jo’s temper towards Aunt March, the girls' rich relative, that costs her the trip, but Amy doesn’t really put much of a fight up does she?  Tra-la-la, Aunt March just happened to do it.  Tra-la-la, what am I supposed to do?  As if familial loyalty didn't matter.  It's not like she should feel bad over something, like burning some of Jo's best work at an early--hang on!

Finally, and this put the feather in the cap, Amy steals Jo’s suitor and childhood friend Laurie.  Granted, when Laurie first proposed to Jo, Jo had to say no, because deep down she didn’t love him, and she's allowed to be honest.  He runs away to Europe where he finds Amy on Jo’s trip!  There Amy moralizes over him, lectures him, and even slips and calls him Teddy!  Only Jo does that!  Jo does all of those things!  What is she doing using the same tactics?

I put "The Scene" here so you too can be just as upset as I am.

Well, they get together and it's just--goodness, I can't even say!  I'd say read it, but once the hope for Jo and Laurie are gone halfway through, what is there to read for?

So what is Louisa May Alcott saying to those little girls reading this book?  That goodness and equality aren’t merits?  That essentially, selfishness and beauty wins over?  Granted, she could be going for realism, but that’s not what I need to hear at that age!  I wanted Jo and Laurie!  I wanted Jo to be able to see the world, and Amy to be mocked for her self-described unfortunate nose.  She spends the first part of the book with a clothes pin pinching the end, and I so wanted that to be an accident waiting to happen (in climbing the stairs perhaps).

Instead, Amy and Laurie get together and live in an artistic house where their daughter, Beth--yet another slight towards Jo, who was the closest sister to Beth!--is raised in ultimate artistry with music and painting.  Meanwhile, Jo marries an old professor, assumably because of father issues, and raises an entire mansion of boys!  What's with that Louisa May?

So, I decided that when I win the lottery, I'm using some of my winnings towards a remake, because while the book will live on in classic literature, I can at least play along with my movie version and make sure Jo goes on that tour of Europe, that she realizes her feelings for Laurie, and that Amy gets some sort of comeuppance proper for a girl who seemed to take it easy most of the book.  I guess, in a way, Louisa May, prepared me for future literature disappointments, but I honestly dropped the book when Jo turned Laurie down.  I don't know how I got through the rest, and now, when I feel so inclined to pick up my copy, I actually skim those sections on Amy, stop right before Jo apologetically turns Laurie down, and pretend that Jo and Laurie find a way to one another.  I've done such a good job of this that when I discussed the book with a friend recently, I was perplexed as to why she kept referring to Amy and Laurie.

"You mean Lamie?" I scoffed, taking a sip of my drink, and rolling my eyes to show my utter contempt.

"That's not their shipping name is it?" Another girl piped up with a laugh, and I took heart in her amusement as my friend spent the evening trying to win me over with the original pairing, like she could erase years of bitterness.  I told her of my plans when I win the lottery, and despite herself, she's truly looking forward to that hypothetical day.

Of course, if I won the lottery, I'd also donate some and use it to pay for school, but after that, I certainly am remaking this film.  I'm thinking on casting already.