Respond and Engage!
TALK TO PAUL ON-AIR: 313.272.5600
Dr. Joel Beeke on ‘Blessed New Year’ vs. ‘Happy New Year’
BREAKING: The Pope is human
In viral video, Pope Francis slaps a woman on the hand after he grabbed him and jerked him toward her.
REUTERS: Pope apologizes for ‘bad example’ of slapping arm of pilgrim who tugged him
Richard Bennett: History of the Early Church Invalidates Papal Claim of Apostolic Succession
NPR: Don Larsen, Only Pitcher To Throw Perfect World Series Game, Dies At 90
Meryl Streep insists on a little feminism in the new film version of Little Women
Director Greta Gerwig: “We had a lunch and [Meryl Streep] said, ‘This is what you have to communicate to the audience about the position of women, that they don’t even own their own children. It’s not just that they couldn’t vote, it’s not just that they didn’t have jobs. They didn’t own anything. If you wanted to leave a marriage, you could leave but you would leave with nothing, not even your kids.”
The above exchange between Gerwig and Streep made its way into the movie when Amy says: ” I’m just a woman. And as a woman, there’s no way for me to make my own money. Not enough to earn a living or to support my family, and if I had my own money, which I don’t, that money would belong to my husband the moment we got married. And if we had children, they would be his, not mine. They would be his property, so don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition, because it is. It may not be for you, but it most certainly is for me.“
In the near final scene of the movie, when Jo is negotiating with a publisher over who will own the copyright to her book, she says: “I suppose marriage has always been an economic proposition, even in fiction.”
While Louisa May Alcott was most certainly a feminist, the words which Director Greta Gerwig puts into the mouth of Alcott’s protagonist about marriage being merely “an economic proposition” most certainly cannot be found in Alcott’s book.
Below is the ONLY dialogue about marriage in the actual book ‘Little Women.” This exchange takes place between the married and happily domesticated Meg and her wildly independent sister Jo:
As they sat sewing together, Jo discovered how much improved her sister Meg was, how well she could talk, how much she knew about good, womanly impulses, thoughts, and feelings, how happy she was in husband and children, and how much they were all doing for each other. “Marriage is an excellent thing, after all. I wonder if I should blossom out half as well as you have, if I tried it?” said Jo, as she constructed a kite for Demi in the topsy-turvy nursery. “It’s just what you need to bring out the tender womanly half of your nature, Jo. You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will fall off.”
From Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women: The Original Classic Novel Featuring Photos from the Film! (p. 415). Harry N. Abrams. Kindle Edition.
Jo’s feminist ideals are fully on display in one of the most oft-cited quotes from the film. “Women, they have minds, and they have souls as well as just hearts, and they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. And I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. But I’m so lonely,” Jo tells Marmee near the end of the movie, her voice breaking. [Jenni Miller: NBC NEWS]
Louisa May Alcott was a feminist who was attracted to women
WIKIPEDIA: In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine “Jo” on herself. But whereas Jo marries at the end of the story, Alcott remained single throughout her life. She explained her “spinsterhood” in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body. … because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.” [14] However, Alcott’s romance while in Europe with the young Polish man Ladislas “Laddie” Wisniewski was detailed in her journals but then deleted by Alcott herself before her death.[15][16] Alcott identified Laddie as the model for Laurie in Little Women.[17]
Greta Gerwig casts Jo and Laurie as ‘androgynous’ in new film ‘Little Women’
“There’s all this neat gender stuff about it, like Laurie is a boy with a girl’s name and Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is a girl with a boy’s name. I have them the whole movie swap clothing and they are each other’s androgynous twin,” Gerwig said. “He was always the person to play this part for me because has that — he’s beautiful. He’s handsome, but he’s also beautiful. And Saoirse is beautiful, but she’s also handsome. … To me, he was always the Laurie.”
Princeton’s Robert P. George on the Reasons Why Most Evangelicals support President Trump
Judge in UK rules that those who oppose transgenderism are ‘not worthy of respect in a democratic society”
THE GUARDIAN: JK Rowling in row over court ruling on transgender issues
Robert P. George on Transgenderism:
“I have a friend who thinks that my critique of transgenderism misfires because I use the words “man” and “woman” (and “male” and “female”) to refer to biological facts, while believers in transgenderism use those words to refer to something else, namely, “one’s inner sense of gender.” For reasons I and others (e.g. Ryan Anderson, Paul McHugh) have set forth in various writings, I think no coherent account can be given of what the alleged reality (“gender”) is that people are supposed to have some sort of “inner sense” of. So Lincoln’s famous story applies: “If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer is four. That’s because a tail is a tail, not a leg, no matter what you call it.”