Laura Dern Says the Set of "Little Women" Was Haunted by Louisa May Alcott
Little Women, now in theaters, was filmed in author Louisa May Alcott's hometown of Concord, MA.
Writer and director Greta Gerwig said she was "seized by the spirit of Louisa May Alcott" and compelled to write the script.
Cast members told OprahMag.com they felt Alcott's presence on set in Concord.
Concord, Massachusetts is a haunted place. Located half an hour outside of Boston, the historic town has become a tourist destination for brave souls hoping to brush against the border between realms.
Until recently, the ghosts that supposedly haunt Room 24 of the Colonial Inn were Concord's most prominent supernatural celebrities. When Colonial Inn was converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers during the Revolutionary War, Room 24 was used as the morgue. Ever since a guest first reported seeing a "greyish figure" lingering over her bed in 1966, Room 24 has been a pilgrimage for thrill-seekers and ghost-hunters alike.
But as of 2019, there's a new famous ghost in town. In an interview with OprahMag.com, the cast of the new Little Women revealed they felt the presence of Louisa May Alcott, the author of the seminal 1868 novel, while filming in Concord. Though Little Women has been adapted countless times, this is the first version (since a 1918 silent movie) to film in Alcott's hometown.
"What’s incredible about being in Concord, is that you’ll say in this shy way, 'I sort of feel the spirit of Louisa,’ and locals will say, ‘Oh yeah. That’s haunted. We see her all the time. She walks with the girls all the time," Laura Dern, who plays Little Women's soft-hearted but strong Marmee, told OprahMag.com at a press event in Concord.
Alcott based the four March sisters' triumphs and challenges in Little Women on her own experiences growing up in Concord. Today, Concord is like a living museum where landmarks to Little Women and American history co-exist with a population of 18,000 residents (and, briefly, the cast and crew of the film, who immersed themselves in the historic sites).
It's possible to take an impromptu stroll past Little Women's real-life parallels. For example, Orchard House, Alcott's childhood home, is now a museum containing paintings by Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, a well-respected artist and the inspiration for Amy March in Little Women. A mile away is the grave of Elizabeth "Lizzie" Alcott, the Alcotts' third daughter, who contracted scarlet fever from a poor German family and passed away the age of 22—just like Beth of Little Women.
In a very literal sense, Concord is a testament to the lived experiences behind Alcott's book. By setting the movie in Concord, Gerwig aligns Little Women less with the fictional rendering of Alcott's childhood and more with Alcott herself, a brilliant woman who wrote her and her family out of poverty and into lasting cultural prominence.
From the inception of the project on, Gerwig sensed a spiritual connection between her and the author. "I was seized by the spirit of Louisa May Alcott," Gerwig told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. The feeling of connection only increased once Gerwig got to Concord, the town where Alcott was born and buried, to film Little Women.
"I felt being in the presence of the place where she did the thing allowed me to do the thing that I wanted to do. It gave me the courage to do it. It was tremendously meaningful. I felt the weight of it every day," Gerwig told OprahMag.com, pointing out that she and Alcott were both 36 when they made their versions of Little Women.
The way Gerwig talks about Alcott, it sounds like she's on one end of a century-spanning relay race, where the finish line is fulfilling Jo March's destiny. Alcott wrote the bestseller in 1868. Gerwig, in the year 2019, had the chance to create the version of Little Women that Alcott, hemmed in by her era's strict Victorian sensibilities, could not.
"I wanted to give her an ending she might have liked. That's what I started with," Gerwig told OprahMag.com.
Alcott wanted Jo, her fictional alter-ego, to end up a "literary spinster" like she did. But economic independence and literary success didn't constitute an adequately happy ending for a woman in 1868. During the year-long gap between Little Women and its sequel, Good Wives, Alcott was forced by publishers and fans to find Jo March, the rebellious second-oldest sister, a husband. Alcott then invented Professor Bhaer, a prickly, older German professor, to deliberately rankle fans, and thwarted their overwhelming desire for Jo to marry Laurie, her childhood friend.
Gerwig bypasses the Bhaer vs. Laurie argument completely. Using a meta twist, Gerwig cleverly offers Jo (Saoirse Ronan) an off-ramp from the seemingly inescapable conveyer belt that leads to marriage. At the end of the film, Jo writes a book version of Little Women in which Jo—the character—marries Professor Bhaer (Louis Garrel). Meanwhile, the real Jo watches as the first copies of novel, Little Women, are printed, and she begins the journey toward literary superstardom—solo.
Essentially, Jo becomes Alcott herself—and Gerwig's Little Women becomes an ode to Alcott, a woman ahead of her time.
So, whatever the opposite of "rolling over her grave" is? That's certainly what Alcott was doing while she was benevolently haunting the set of Little Women—if you, like Laura Dern, believe in that kind of thing.
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