Hi y’all! I’m back with the second part of my Annotate with Me post for Little Women — you can read part one here. Volume two of Little Women, also known as Good Wives, takes place three years after the conclusion of part one, and the second half of the book really does have some of my favorite scenes in the entire book, so I’m really excited to share my thoughts with you all.
This time around, I wanted to focus on Meg and Beth, as I feel like they don’t get enough appreciation and I just adore them! So, get cozy, grab a cup of tea, and let’s talk about the less appreciated March sisters.
I think that the true love story in Little Women is the love between the four March girls, and I think the best example of that is Beth’s death scene. If you’ve seen the TV show Friends, then you know that when Joey reads Little Women and gets to Beth’s death scene, he’s so overwhelmed with emotion that he puts the book in the freezer — which is what he does when a book becomes too much for him — and I definitely feel the same way, but I do really love the connection that we see between Jo and Beth in this scene.
I feel like Beth is often seen as weak because of her illness, but truthfully, I think that Beth is the strongest of the girls as she doesn’t fear her fate. Beth is a smart girl, she knows that she is going to die. She says it on page 414,
“I’ve known it for a good while, dear, and now I’m used to it, it isn’t hard to think of or to bear. Try to see it so, and don’t be troubled about me, because it’s best, indeed it is”
It’s not that Beth doesn’t want to live, of course she does, but she has accepted that she is not going to live a long life, and it’s something she’s known and felt for a long time. What I find so beautiful is that she’s not angered by it — she would be completely justified in being angry, but she’s not because that’s not who Beth is. Unlike her sisters, Beth didn’t have big dreams for her life, she was perfectly happy with a quiet and content life with her family, and that’s what she got. Her castle, her dream, came to fruition, how beautiful is that? How many of us can say that we have completed all of the things we wanted to in life? Beth is one of the lucky ones who can say that. Beth’s life being short does not diminish the meaningfulness of it; she had a life some people can only dream of having, one that is filled with comfort, lots of happiness, and the knowledge that she was loved fully and unconditionally.
A few months ago, I saw a post where someone called Meg and John’s marriage a “bright eyed optimistic trainwreck” and I just…I know we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but it may have been one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen, so I thought, “let’s talk about John and Meg’s marriage and how it’s actually the perfect ending for Meg” so, here we go!
Meg and John have a super sweet friends to lovers romance, and I’m not sure how that’s in any way disappointing? People seem to think that Meg wanted to marry rich, and that’s why her marriage to John is disappointing — because he’s not rich. I feel like that’s such a…surface level way to look at the situation. It wasn’t necessarily that Meg wanted to marry rich, it was more that she wanted to not have to live paycheck to paycheck and be comfortable. If money truly was what she was after, she would’ve listened to Aunt March and rejected John. Instead, she tells Aunt March that she doesn’t need her money, because she and John love each other and she says,
“My John wouldn’t marry for money, any more than I would. We are willing to work and we mean to wait. I’m not afraid of being poor, for I’ve been happy so far, and I know I shall be with him because he loves me”
Truthfully, I feel like if you don’t love Meg and John, you don’t understand Meg and her character arc.
So much of Meg’s storyline throughout the first part of the book is her trying to change herself to fit in with her highbrow friends, namely, the Moffats and the Gardiners (derogatory). Through her relationship with John, Meg learns to let go of these expectations that her friends have put on her, and she learns to love herself for who she is. The best example of this is actually on their wedding day.
In the first half of the book, Meg goes to a party at Annie Moffat’s and the girls dress her up as if she were a doll. Meg, feeling insecure goes along with it. She lets them dress her up, call her “Daisy” (the name Daisy means purity and innocence — in this case, the use of “Daisy is mocking, and I love that Meg reclaims the meaning of that name in her life when she gives that name to her daughter, anyway, that’s another discussion for another time), and she basically puts on a mask, or a character to fit the version of her that her friends want her to be.
We fast forward to her wedding, and Meg is a much more self-assured and confident woman. She makes it very clear that she wants to be herself at her wedding. She’s realized that she doesn’t need frills or anything fancy. She just needs those who love her — John and her family. As a young girl she always felt as though she needed to be something that others wanted her to be, but John loves her for exactly who she is, and in turn, she no longer feels the need to be anyone other than herself.
“John and Meg had found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy”
Of course, just like any other couple, they have their trials and struggle at times, but they work through everything because they communicate with one another. It takes a bit of prodding from Marmee, but once Meg and John really open up to one another, their troubles are much lighter because they’re able to get through them together. I also really love how supportive John is when Beth is dying, and it always warms my heart when we find out that he set aside a little money so that he could get her the fruit that she loved so much.
At the end of the book, Meg, Jo, and Amy reflect on their lives and what it was that they wished for when they were talking about their “castles in the air” and Meg herself says that her castle was, “the most nearly realized of all.” Meg got everything she wished for and more. Meg and John’s love story may be simple and quiet, but their lives are filled with laughter, love, and kindness which I think is absolutely beautiful.
Originally, I had planned on also sharing my thoughts on Laurie’s proposals to Jo and Amy, and how Amy and Laurie grow together during their time in Europe, and then I started writing the post and realized that it would probably be somewhere around 2,000 words, maybe longer if I did and so, I’ll be sharing those thoughts in another post! So, if you were worried that you wouldn’t get to hear more of my thoughts on Little Women, fear not! I’ll be back with an Amy/Laurie focused post next week!
Until next time!
