Little Women
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Wikipedia-Article "Little Women"
Little Women is a novel by Louisa May Alcott published on September 30, 1868, concerning the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. It was based on her own experiences as a child in Concord, Massachusetts. After much demand, Louisa May Alcott wrote a sequel, Good Wives, which was published in 1869 and is often published together with Little Women as if it were a single work. Good Wives picks up three years after the events in the last chapter of Little Women ("Aunt March Settles The Question"), and includes characters and events often felt by fans to be essential to the Little Women story.
Alcott later wrote Little Men and Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out which followed the lives of the girls' children.
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Characters
- Josephine "Jo" March: the protagonist of the novel, is a tomboy and the second-oldest sister. She is very outspoken and has a passion for writing. Jo cut her hair and sold it to a wig shop for some money for her mother. She refused Laurie's proposal of marriage because she only saw him as a friend.
- Meg: the eldest sister. She is the most responsible and runs the household in her mother's absence. She falls in love with Mr. Brooke, a poor tutor of Laurie.
- Beth: the second youngest sister, is a quiet young woman and loves playing piano. She doesn't like arguing with her sisters, and prefers to keep everything to herself. Her health declined and she died young.
- Amy: the youngest sister and a talented artist, beautiful young girl. She cares about her family, but also cares what other people think. A spoiled girl, always given a tantrum when things doesn't get her way. She eventually married Laurie.
- Theodore "Laurie" Laurence: a charming and rich young man who lives next door to the March family. After Jo refused to marry him he fled to Europe to study art.
- Marmee March: the girls' mother and head of household when her husband is away during the civil war.
Notable adaptations
Film
- 1994 version: Susan Sarandon as Marmee, Winona Ryder as Jo, Kirsten Dunst as the younger Amy, Claire Danes as Beth, and Christian Bale as Laurie.
- 1978 version: Meredith Baxter as Meg, Susan Dey as Jo, Eve Plumb as Beth, William Shatner as Friedrich Bhaer, Greer Garson as Aunt March, and Robert Young as Grandpa James Lawrence.
- 1949 version: Elizabeth Taylor as Amy, June Allyson as Jo, Janet Leigh as Meg, Margaret O'Brien as Beth, Mary Astor as Marmee, and Peter Lawford as Laurie.
- 1933 version: Katharine Hepburn as Jo, Spring Byington as Marmee.
Additional versions appeared in 1917, 1918, 1946,1948, 1950, 1958, 1970, 1979, and 2001 [1].
Anime
In 1987, the Japanese animation studio Nippon Animation did an anime adaptation titled "Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari" (The Story of Love's Young Grass). The series was part of the studio's "World Masterpieces Theatre" series of animated adaptations of classic Western literary works. The series was directed by Fumio Kurokawa with character designs by Yoshifumi Kondo. Saban Entertainment produced an English dubbed version ("Tales of Little Women") which aired on HBO in the United States in 1990, and the series has also achieved immense popularity in Europe ("Una per tutte, tutte per una" in Italy, "Les quatre filles du Docteur March" in France).
This series changed the name of the town in which the series takes place from "Concord" to "Newcord" and also added episodes depicting scenes not from the novel at the beginning as a way of introducing the characters and educating the Japanese audience about the American Civil War, but is otherwise a faithful and highly regarded adaptation. Nippon Animation also produced an anime adaptation of "Jo's Boys" in 1993 for the "World Masterpieces Theatre," titled "Wakakusa monogatari: Nan to Jo sensei" (The Story of Young Grass: Nan and Mrs. Jo) and directed by Kozo Kusuba.
Two other anime adaptations of "Little Women" were made in the early 1980s: a 1980 TV special produced by Toei Animation and directed by Yugo Serikawa, and "Wakakusa Monogatari yori: Wakakusa no Yon Shimai" (From the Story of Young Grass: Four Sisters of Young Grass), a 1981 Toei/Kokusai Eigasha TV series directed by Kazuya Miyazaki and from the same animation team. The 1981 TV series was also released in the United States on video, courtesy of Sony. Still, Nippon Animation's 1987 version is the most successful and also widely regarded as the best of all anime adaptations of the story.
In addition, "Bakuretsu Tenshi" (Burst Angel), a 24-episode anime TV series which aired in 2004 on TV Asahi and is released in the U.S. by Funimation Productions, features main characters named Meg, Jo and Amy — which, although the series has nothing to do with Alcott's novel, attests to the popularity the story enjoys in Japan to this day.
Musical
In January 2005, a Broadway musical adapted from the book opened at the Virginia Theatre in New York City with book by Allan Knee, score by Jason Howland and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein. The musical starred pop singer Maureen McGovern, of "The Morning After" fame.
Opera
In 1998, on a commission from the Houston Grand Opera, the book was adapted as an opera by composer Mark Adamo; first performed in Houston in 1998, Little Women had its Manhattan premiere at the New York City Opera in 2003, and continues to be performed around the world.
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