Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind 'Little Women', 2009

Director: Nancy Porter
Topic Louisa Alcott

sez says: I am not much taken to the documentary style used here. People in period costume reading lines from the works of people in the past...but it is a known style and I can put up with it. And it is done here as well as it is done anywhere. They do have some pretty impressive 'cast' members. New England in the mid-19th century must have been a grand place--full of people serious about ideas and trying to live life according to their own lights. One of my favorite lines is when Louisa says she was not allowed to wear clothing made of cotton--the product of slave labor, or silk because it was produced by degrading worms, or wool because it was robbed from sheep.  I appreciate the aim of harming no one and nothing,  I came away from this seeing Ms Alcott as a hard working, driven woman, who searched a long while to find a niche for herself that would save her and her family from poverty.  Once she found one she was not to be stopped.  Think whatever you want of her literary skill, she cannot be faulted when it comes to determination, perseverance and a manic work-ethic.  She because a very wealth woman with those attributes--and talent may not have been much involved at all.

mjc:  of interest was the look into early New England literary connections and the various ways in which folk tried to make something "new" in the New World, communes and towns alike. GRADE C