"The Cross of Snow"

Posted Saturday morning, March 19, 2021.

Saorise Ronan as Jo March in a scene from Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women".

Today’s Morning Song is a morning dirge.

Woke up early the other morning thinking about Greta Gewig’s adaptation of “Little Women''---deliberately. I was trying to cheer myself up and muster the mental energy to face the day. This isn’t a response to the political situation. I’ve never let that get to me to the point where I can’t think about anything else but my outrage and anger. By never I mean since I was a kid. Life in these United States has always been one damn thing after another. The difference this time out is a lot of white middle class, middle-aged intellectual types have been caught up in trials and tribulations that to them are as terrible as those suffered by the poor, the not-white, and other marginalized and less privileged Americans and have chosen to obsess over it on social media and make themselves feel worse in the process. With me, on mornings like this, of which there have been way too many lately, finding ways to cheer myself up is just something I’ve increasingly needed to do, as over the last several months my health has been flagging and with it my morale. Gerwig’s “Little Women'' has joined my list of favorite movies of the last ten years and Saorise Ronan’s Jo is one of my favorite movie heroines of all time, so thinking about it, whether deliberately or whether something reminds me of it or if it just pops into my head, lifts my spirits and gladdens my heart. It would cause my soul to sing out with joy and laughter, if I had one. It’s past time for me to rewatch it. I haven’t seen it since last February. But I don’t really need to. I can replay whole scenes in my head, maybe not shot for shot and line for line, the way I can with “Casablanca”, “His Girl Friday”, and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, but that’s because I haven’t seen it enough times. Like I just said, it’s past time. This morning the scene I replayed was the one in Jo’s New York City boarding house where she’s standing in front of the fireplace---too close to the fireplace---furiously scribbling down an idea for a story in her notebook and Frederich, her seemingly too stern and earnest would-be suitor, with whom she’s been arguing, suddenly calls out, “You’re on fire!”

“I know,” she replies, somewhat dismissively. She means it figuratively: Her mind is on fire, kindled by her talent and ambition. He means it literally. The hem of her skirt is glowing. But they get it put out before it flares up, and Jo is unfazed. Happens all the time, she says.

It’s a hilarious scene, perfectly staged, perfectly shot, perfectly designed, and so perfectly Jo. It sums up everything we love and admire about her---her focus, her devotion to her work and her art, her practicality, and her courage---and it predicts the future of her and Frederich’s romance and marriage: she’s going to blaze ahead, and he’s going to chase close behind, ready to put her out when she’s gotten too hot for her own good. It made me laugh to think about when I woke up and it’s making me laugh again now as I type. But it’s an example of Gerwig’s anachronistic approach to adapting the book. I don’t mean it’s anachronistic of the Shakespeare’s having the clocks chime in Julius Caesar’s sundialized Rome variety. I mean that Gerwig has pushed the story ahead of its time thematically and given it a spirit and a heroine more “modern” than Alcott’s own, as if Alcott was predicting the turn of the 20th Century instead of looking back nostalgically at the middle decades of the 19th.

“Little Women” was behind its times, in style and spirit. It was published in 1868 and 69, and by then George Eliot, whose writing Alcott admired and paid tribute to---something Gerwig acknowledges in the scene at the beach when Jo reads “The Mill on the Floss” to Beth---had already written, among other books, “Adam Bede”, “The Mill on the Floss”, and “Silas Marner.” But while the influence of “The Mill on the Floss” caused Alcott no anxiety, and Eliot’s heroine Maggie Tulliver is clearly a model for Jo, “Little Women” is a...nicer book: more accepting of people’s faults; less critical of the society the March sisters are a bumptious and rebellious part of; nearly apolitical, which is perplexing considering it’s set during the Civil War---both of Alcott’s parents were ardent and active abolitionists, Alcott herself served as a nurse in a hospital in Washington D.C.---religious, but not questioning---again perplexing, considering that Alcott’s father Bronson Alcott was notorious for his free-thinking views---not particularly philosophical---perplexing again, considering Ralph Waldo Emerson was a close family friend and benefactor and Henry David Thoreau was the young Louisa’s tutor---and not deeply psychological: Alcott’s characters are types, Dickensian in their lack of complexity; they are who they are and that’s pretty much all there is to them. “Little Women” is a domestic comedy with a traditionally comedic ending. The three surviving March sisters get married, start families, and live happily ever after.

Alcott’s novel is about the joys---and sorrows---of childhood and its inevitable end. Gerwig’s movie is about the joys---and sorrows---of achieving adulthood. Alcott’s story ends with Jo coming home. Gerwig’s story is all about Jo breaking away. I prefer Gerwig’s story, that’s all.

But something occurred to me this morning that made me stop laughing.

People did catch on fire in their homes regularly in the 1800s and died horribly from their burns. One of those who died that way was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife Fanny. In 1861, her dress caught on fire from a candle she was using to seal wax packets of keepsakes. Longfellow suffered severe burns trying to put the flames out. This would have been heart-rending news in the Alcott household. Longfellow and the Alcott's were members of the same literary and intellectual circle. But it’s not even subtext in the scene in the movie. Not that it should have been, it’s simply that what could have been a wholly fun post is about to have a sad ending. One of my favorites of Longfellow’s poems is one he wrote as a eulogy for Fanny. He wrote it in 1879, when he was 72. Eighteen years after she died, nearing the end of his life---he died in 1882---he was still grieving.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

   A gentle face — the face of one long dead —

   Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

   The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white

   Never through martyrdom of fire was led

   To its repose; nor can in books be read

   The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West

   That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

   Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

   These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

   And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

 

----"The Cross of Snow" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Comments

[Patty M.]

Very nicely written Lance - deep❤️🙏💟. I had to look up the meaning of 2 words - one of yours and one of Longfellow’s - thanks for broadening my vocabulary.
Laverne Mannion