Age Gap Marriages In Little Women (Historical Origins) Part 1
To understand the age gaps in Little Women, we need to go to the very beginning. The year is 1796, that is when Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship was published. Wilhelm Meister was Louisa’s favorite novel.
She used to read it as a child and she borrowed it from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library. When Louisa turned 18, Emerson gave her a copy of Wilhelm Meister as a birthday gift, so she could study character. In Little Women, Friedrich gives Jo a copy of Shakespeare’s work, so she can study character.
Wilhelm Meister is considered to be world’s first coming-of-age novel. Little Women was one of the many novels that was inspired by it. Wilhelm is somewhat a Laurie type of character.
He is a young man and he longs to become an actor, but Wilhelm’s father wants him to become a businessman and it’s like what Laurie says in the book, quote, I want to go to Italy, play music and enjoy myself. Wilhelm is having an affair with a passionate actress, called Mariana, but Mariana doesn’t seem to be very serious about their relationship.
The book doesn’t mention Mariana’s age, but I imagined her to be a couple of years older than Wilhelm because at least at the beginning of the novel Wilhelm is written to be quite naive and then he grows as the novel progresses. There is a funny scene where Wilhelm is giving this long monologue about how he made a puppeteer play as a child and Mariana is pretending to be interested, but she’s half asleep. Then there is another scene, which I guess is supposed to be romantic, where he goes to Mariana’s house.
He wants to sing her a serenade, but she is not at home. Wilhelm kisses the doormat and the dog knob. Sometimes Goethe, criticises his characters when they are being overly romantic (LMA often does the same).
It did remind me of the scene in Little Women where Laurie wanted to compose the opera that would whirl Jo’s soul and melt her heart and when he starts he could only think of Jo’s unflattering features and that is something that happens to Wilhelm in the end. He remembers Mariana’s less-flattering features
and remember this was Louisa May Alcott’s favourite book that she read as a child. Wilhelm runs away and joins a traveling theatre company and on his journey, he saves a young girl called Mignon. Mignon is about 13 at the beginning of the novel.
Like Jo, she likes to dress as a boy. She also has a disability. Nobody knows where she is from, and she speaks with an accent and she has difficulties forming words and expressing herself. Mignon falls in love with Wilhelm. I don’t think the book ever mentions Wilhelm’s exact age, but I’d say he was in his early 20s when the novel began.
During his quote ”apprenticeship” Wilhelm gets involved in all kinds of drama. There are the love triangles between the actors and at one point he falls in love with a dangerous Countess and then he gets involved in a secret society. All kinds of crazy things happen to him.
Wilhelm is attracted to Mignon. He finds her funny and fascinating, but it is more of a father-daughter type of relationship. She cannot express her emotions to him and she’s upset when she sees Wilhelm with other women.
Mignon wants to be his lover, but she dies a tragic death before she reaches adulthood. Goethe captured Mignon’s passing in a song called Kennst du Das Land. Do you know the land? In Little Women, this song is always reprised in Jo’s and Friedrich’s encounters.
Do you know how some couples have their songs? Well, this is Jo’s and Friedrich’s love song. When Jo sees Friedrich for the first time in New York he’s singing Kennst Du Das Land and Jo knows this song because she’s a big fan of Goethe.
When they reunite in Concord Jo says, ”Now we must finish with Mignon’s song for Mr. Bhaer sings that, said Jo. Before the pause grew painful Mr. Bhaer cleared his throat with a gratified hum as he stepped into the corner where Jo stood saying ” You will sing with me? We go excellently well together”.
A pleasing fiction by the way, for Jo had no more idea of music than a grasshopper, but she would have consented if he had proposed to sing a whole opera and wobbled away peacefully regardless of the time and tune. It didn’t much matter, for Mr. Bhaer sang like a true German, heartily and well, and Jo soon subsided into a subdued hum, that she might listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone. Note ”to the land where the citron blooms”, used to be Professor’s favourite line, for das Land meant Germany to him, but now he seemed to dwell with peculiar warmth and melody upon the words, ”there, oh there, might with thee, oh my beloved go” and one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation that she longed to say, she did know the land and would joyfully depart tighter whenever he liked”. And peoplse say that Jo and Friedrich are not romantic.
In the end, Wilhelm falls in love with Natalia, who is the Amy archetype of the story. She inspires him to better himself and leave that toxic life of a drifter behind him. Louisa May Alcott was a transcendentalist, and the transcendentalist view on love was that love could help a person to grow or to evolve so that they could better themselves.
