Age Gap Marriages In Little Women (Historical Origins) Part 5
In part two of Little Women, Laurie pretty often tries to make moves on Jo. There is this moment where Jo is like, Amy is so ridiculous when she is flirting with the young men”
Laurie says, ” Maybe you should take lessons from her”
Alcott biographer Harriot Reisen writes that it is possible that Ladislas Wisniewski was preying on wealthy women. He was an exceptionally good-looking young man and could gain people’s sympathies.
We can only imagine what it was like for Louisa to find out that Laddie was flirting with another woman at the same time when he was flirting with her. If any of the Polish listeners have Wisniewskis in the family, feel free to contact me if you know anything about this mysterious real-life Laurie. When it comes to Ladislas, I don’t think there is enough fact-based information about him and his relationship with Louisa. I think the most likely scenario is that Laddie developed a crush on her because she was nursing him. Florence Nightingale syndrome.
Laddie asked her to call him with the nickname Varjo, which his mother used to call him. In Little Women one of the reasons why Laurie wants to marry Jo is that Jo can take care of him, and be a maternal figure for him, someone who tells him what to do in his life. Perhaps he had a crush on Louisa because she took such a mother-like interest in him.
Louisa liked to take care of people. She worked as a nurse in the war and she loved young boys. Jo in Little Women loves boys so much that she wants to start a whole school for them.
Another real-life Laurie was Louisa’s dear friend Alf Whitman, who was also 10 years younger than Louisa, and they met through their shared theatre hobby. There never was anything romantic between Louisa and Alf, but some of the brother-sister moments between Jo and Laurie in the novel come from Alf Whitman, especially the theatre sequences.
Because of this relationship between Wisniewski and Louisa, I don’t believe any public statements that Louisa has made in any interview, because there are times when she outright lies to the press.
She was often asked who was the real-life Laurie and then she would say, it was this nice young man I met in Europe. Then in the letters between Louisa and her sister, May, they call him boring and at some point, they had both borrowed money from him, that he had not paid back. Louisa did keep in touch with Ladislas, it seems that at some point he returned to Poland and started a family, but I haven’t been able to find anything else about his movements, only some diary marks from Louisa.
Why did Greta Gerwig say that Laurie wants Jo to step into adulthood when in the book Jo is so tired of Laurie because he’s so immature? That I believe, also explains why Louisa rejected Ladislas.
Louisa lived during a time when modern celebrity worship culture was starting to take shape. She never really liked Little Women that much, and I think I know why. Every day Louisa would get tons of mail from children and adults from all over the world, which all said, please marry Jo to Laurie.
And Laurie was based on Louisa’s ex, but the world could never know that because the money that she received from Little Women supported her entire extended family. Just like today, the yellow press wanted to know everything about celebrities’ love life. If they had found out that Louisa had a fling with a man so much younger,
and a foreigner, she could have lost her publishing deals and her entire reputation. Reisen also points out the possibility that she paid him money to shut him down. There are some banknotes that show that Louisa had sent him money and also May Alcott writes about, quote, Laddie’s debts.
Louisa always called Laddie as my boy, same way as Jo calls Laurie as my boy in Little Women.
I don’t know if Louisa had romantic feelings for him at some point, but he turned out to be a disappointment and at the same time, it also sounds very much like a mother-son relationship.
My personal opinion is that he was too immature for her, because Louisa was someone who very much enjoyed intellectual conversations and learning new things and Louisa has a quote that marriage requires a lot more than just physical looks, it requires an emotional and intellectual connection.
