'Little Women': Stephen King gets schooled on 19th-century feminism as he calls film too modern for its period
Stephen King, who will see a slew of adaptations of his own stories, turned reviewer for another adaptation that has just hit the screens, 'Little Women'.
Tweeting about the Greta Gerwig-directed holiday box-office hit, he said: "LITTLE WOMEN delivers big entertainment. It's involving, and quietly says, 'Kindness is no crime.' No sloppy sentimentality here, but several sharp banderillas planted in the patriarchy. Those thrusts struck me as a bit beyond the time, tho."
He probably wasn't expecting his Twitter feed to explode as users, some of whom were academicians, schooled him about 19th-century feminism. One user clapped back immediately, "Do you think women of that era did not realize they were oppressed?" while another pointed out, "And how would we know what women did to attack the patriarchy when the patriarchy keeps writing us out of history?"
Professor Manisha Sinha, a leading authority on the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction era and author of 'The Slave's Cause', tweeted: "There was an active women's rights movement then, it was in fact of its times, as I argue in #theslavescause".
Professor Mary Anna Evans, assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, remarked that some of the "thrusts" King had referred to were in the original book. "Some of the thrusts were not in the book, but some of the surprising ones were. And some of them, like Jo's line that she'd rather she wants to be a spinster paddling her own canoe, were not in the book but were taken from Alcott's personal papers." She added: "Amy's speech to Laurie about the economic reality of marriage for women of the time was in the book, but it was sharpened in the movie by referencing the laws of the time. Alcott's readers would have known them, but we needed that to understand the scene."
Nell Minow, an assistant editor at RogerEbert.com, replying to King's tweet, said the feminism expressed in the movie came from Alcott's writings. "All taken from Alcott. She has a whole chapter about women's independence in 'An Old Fashioned Girl'."
While King did not reply to any of the comments, he did retweet AwardDaily.com's founder Sasha Stone comment, who said Gerwig "was reinventing the wheel" with another remake. He added a comment of his own, saying: "I agree completely. Sequels can be brilliant (GODFATHER 2), but it’s still a sequel, dependent upon the original."