Every year, films sneak in at the very last minute to attract awards voters and crash the Oscars race. This year, that film is poised to be Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic work, “Little Women.” And though folks have likely seen an adaptation of the novel before, Gerwig is putting her own spin on “Little Women,” and in a new interview with Film Comment, that includes a drastic change to the ending.
For those not familiar with “Little Women,” the story follows the lives of the Marches, a group of sisters that are growing up in the 1800s, all with very different personalities and dreams. The focal point of the story, and the film, is Jo March. In the novel, the aspiring writer ends up getting married to a German Professor and puts away her writing forever. However, that ending has never sat well for Gerwig, not just because she didn’t care for it but also because she knows that’s not the ending that Alcott intended.
As she explained in the interview, Alcott only made Jo get married in the end because of demands from her publisher and readers. And when you consider that many believe that Jo March is based on Alcott, who never married and kept writing, the idea of the character settling down doesn’t ring true. So, Gerwig aimed to fix that.
“But in any case, I just knew I could not do the ending just as the book [did]—especially because Louisa didn’t really want to end it that way, and she really did think Jo’s true fate should’ve been as ‘a literary spinster with books for children,’” said Gerwig. “And so I thought, I can’t in good faith do this ending, number one because it’s not in me, number two because she didn’t like it, and if we can’t give her an ending she would like, 150 years later, then what have we done? We’ve made no progress.”
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You can read the full interview to see exactly what was changed and how Jo’s story comes to an end, but for those that don’t want the entire experience spoiled, suffice it to say that Gerwig deviates quite a bit from the classic “Little Women” ending.
Fans will get the chance to witness the new ending when “Little Women” arrives in theaters on December 25. You can also watch a clip from the film below: