Date of Award
Spring 2022
Thesis Type
Open Access
Degree Name
Honors Bachelor of Arts
Department
English
Sponsor
Dr. Jill Jones
Committee Member
Dr. Jana Mathews
Committee Member
Dr. Sarah Parsloe
Abstract
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) has an extensive lineage of film adaptations. The classic novel’s most recent film adaptation was written for the screen and directed by Greta Gerwig (2019). This thesis employs adaptation theory as well as visual and verbal close reading and critical analysis of the film, source novel, and popular film reviews. Gerwig’s adaptation looks, sounds, and feels like the Little Women that has been cherished for decades. The director fulfills these aesthetic expectations to subvert our understandings of sentimentalism, domesticity, individuality, and the relinquishment of childhood. An examination of art’s imitation of life, the epistolary and intertextuality, and cinematography and storytelling reveal how Gerwig’s transformative film is both faithful and radical to Alcott’s text. In doing so, Gerwig offers adult women agency, power, and freedom in a way that most film adaptations, and even the original novel, never have.
Recommended Citation
Cooney, Siobhan, "Owning Your Story: Agency, Power, and Freedom in Greta Gerwig’s Faithful and Radical Little Women Adaptation" (2022). Honors Program Theses. 174.
https://scholarship.rollins.edu/honors/174
Rights Holder
Siobhan Cooney