The Amy March Shirt Of Justice: Coming Soon!
No sooner had the guest bowed himself out than Jenny, under the pretense of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pickled limes in her desk. …
“Bring the rest immediately.” With a despairing glance at her set, she obeyed. “You are sure there are no more?”
“I never lie, sir.”
“So I see. Now take these disgusting things two by two, and throw them out the window.”
One of the most satisfying moments in children’s literature, in my personal opinion. I’ve always hated Amy March, and when that little brat has to huck all her limes out the window and gets whacked across the palm with a ruler to boot, reader, I smirk every time. Of course, it totally ruins it that she gets to storm home from school in the middle of the day and stay home forever because Marmee is a pinko who doesn’t believe in capital punishment, and then she destroys Jo’s shit and the whole family’s all “she feels terrible, let’s forgive her in five minutes” LIKE HOW ABOUT LET’S MAKE HER LIVE ON THE ROOF, AND THEN Captain Hormone Pianopants Laurie has to go and marry her, like, oh, she does sketches and will french me in a rowboat on the Continent, well la dee fucking da.
But for that brief shining moment, as the dreaded Irish children scuffle over the pickled limes, we older siblings could feel like we’d seen some justice. And now you can commemorate that moment in t-shirt form. Wear it, give it as a gift, buy two and throw ’em out the window, whatever you want. Just don’t borrow Sallie’s and then burn a hole in it. (…Right? That happened? To Meg, not Amy, but still.)
I’ve got some work to do still on getting the price down to a reasonable level, and when I do, I’ll put up pre-ordering instructions — so watch this space! Or…use it to rant about stupid Amy.
Tags: books brats of literature retail shut up Amy March
@Kriesa – LMM’s anti-Gilbert was Roy Gardiner, who was portrayed as basically being a living but empty fantasy man, one whose sister even admits would have bored Anne silly in the long run. At least Prof Bhaer had an interesting accent.
Another Anne-Jo suitor similarity? Major scenes with both Roy Gardiner & Prof Bhaer take place in pouring rain where rescue is offered to Anne/Jo with a giant umbrella. Talk about plagiarism. Is this a romantic trope across all late 19th/early 20th century literature? I didn’t read a ton of it, but don’t recall it anywhere else.
I always thought it was odd that Jo refused to marry Laurie not just because she didn’t love him “like that”, but also because she wouldn’t fit into his world (higher society). LW represented them as moving in the same circles most of the time. In the latter books, they are also always together; in Jo’s Boys everyone lives on the same college campus! Who are these dreadful rich people that Jo couldn’t see herself being around?
“Europed me out of a Laurie” Hee!
Add me to the Amy haters. Marmee’s lowest moment for me was when she wanted Jo to forgive Amy for the completely unforgivable book burning. And why she didn’t insist Jo get to go to Europe is beyond me. Jo worked for that trip for years with that hateful woman. Fairness thy name is NOT Marmee. And I was so depressed when Jo ended up with some old funny looking dude. I didn’t necessarily want her to end up with Laurie but why was Bhaer so old and fuddy-duddy-ish?
And Little Vampire Women is a hoot and would make a good read along, either with or without the original.
Okay, this might betray me as a total sap, and is actually beside the point, but was anyone else sort of charmed when Clare Danes, during her Golden Globes speech, gave a shout out to her fellow “little women”, Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon? Awww…
@ ct: “If my sister Europed me out of a Laurie, I would NEVER FORGIVE.”
‘Europed me out of a Laurie’ is possibly the best thing I’ve read this month so far.
As a side note, I’ve started LW more times than I can count, and I can never finish it. Why?
AMY. Marries. Laurie.
I get there, and think “Oh, right, it’s ALL WRONG NOW.” and close the book, thinking I’ll go back when the rage subsides. By the time it does, I have to restart, since it’s been so long since I’ve picked it up.
Suck it, Amy March. And I don’t mean a pickled lime.
@cayenne: I remember Roy Gardiner (well, I didn’t remember his name until you mentioned it, but I remembered that Anne dated some good looking boring guy in college). He wasn’t a good alternative to Gilbert, though! I think LMM had a hard time with characters who were not single women (or girls).
Alcott makes it out like her saintliness just overwhelmed her immune system.
I had a Victorian novel professor who called this phenomenon “too good to live disease.” There is no cure.
Little Women is a book I’d actually advise someone to quit reading before the last third or so. The adventures-in-girlhood part is fun (even Amy’s obnoxiousness is fun — most of me wants to throw her in the fire, but a smaller part of me identifies with her, with her pathetic vocabulary words and such, always trying to impress). But the journey-into-adulthood part I find entirely unconvincing and deeply disappointing. Nothing worse than a novel with a bad love match that wants desperately to convince you it’s actually a GOOD love match. I think the concluding chapters should all be titled “Jo Continues to Sublimate Her Lesbianism.”
@ct – “Europed me out of a Laurie.” Thank you for that bit of genius. So evocative, so true.
I did not remember Annoying Amy, but the one thing that struck me the most in LW was the “dressing up in fashionable clothes” scene that @Tracy and @Rachel mentioned. It always annoyed me to no end, I mean, why on earth would you not dress up in a lovely 19th century ball gown when you have the chance, and enjoy every minute? I would probably have put on the rouge too.
Am I remembering some totally different book, or does LW or one of the sequels have a similar scene, where a protagonist gets to choose between two outfits, a super-fashionable one and a modest and practical one (which I remember featured a sealskin coat, urgh)? I remember being so pissed at the girl for choosing the modest, practical, age-appropriate outfit.
And if I were Jo, I would totally have married Laurie, because come on, he’s good-looking, has a nice personality and he’s rich!
Apparently if I had lived in the 1800’s, I would have been considered a shameless harlot.
And don’t forget The Silk Incident, also with Meg. I’m not a Meg fan by any means, and this was the basis of my Free John Brooke party platform — if I’m not mistaken, she says something pretty twatty to him about how he made her be poor or whatever goddamn thing, which I would have let her think about by herself, with two screaming babies, forever — but I didn’t like how the book seemed to liken wanting nice things to devil worship, and yet when she was a self-absorbed little bitch to her husband, that was fine as long as she cried in his lap and said she was sorry afterward. SHUT UP, MEG.
Also, shut up, whoever reacted to Jo selling her hair with “Oh no, YOUR ONE BEAUTY!” At least she went and did something about the problem, and also, don’t say that shit out loud! God! With sisters like these, who needs frostbite?
@Sars: That was, appropriately, AMY MARCH THE BITCH, who told Jo that she was now a terror to behold since she cut off her hair. At least, it was in the movie.
I lovelovelove Rose in “Eight Cousins” (not so much the saintly, preachy Rose of “Rose in Bloom”), and am quite fond of Polly from “An Old-Fashioned Girl”, but could never make myself like anybody in “Little Women”.
I am pretty sure I never even finished the book, which is saying something for a kid who pretty much read every single printed word in the house, from dictionary to toothpaste tube.
“I see the casting of Gabriel Byrne as Bhaer as a way of giving Jo a well-deserved break.”
Word. I don’t know if I actually finished the book, or if I just saw an older version of the movie, but I remember being totally pissed as a kid that Jo did not end up with Laurie. Then I grew up, saw the Wynona Ryder version, and had an “Ohhhh, it all makes sense now” moment. It wasn’t the book that got it wrong – it was my imagination in being unable to envision Laurie as a smug, immature twat and Bhaer as Gabriel Byrne. Casting is everything with May/December romances. See also, Alan Rickman/Colonel Brandon in Sense & Sensibility.
Oh, and thanks to all for the Eight Cousins spoilers. I had to stop reading after the only acceptable cousin died, because that meant her only option was the dweeby, unattractive cousin. Though I always felt there was some sort of weirdly inappropriate attraction between Rose and her uncle Alec. Either way, it wasn’t going to end well, so I gave it up and never looked back.
As far as Alcott’s works go, give me A Long and Fatal Love Chase any day.
Wow, crazy timing … I just finished re-reading “Little Women” last week on vacation, simply because B&N sent me a free version when I bought a Nook Color. As the oldest of 4 kids, I thought Jo should have slapped Amy into next week for burning her manuscript and that Marmee should have done a wee bit more parenting than looking concerned and telling Amy that she’d “done wrong” or whatever the hell wishy-washy phrase she used. Hmmm, yeah, I guess I do still have baggage about younger siblings getting off scott-free …
I have never, ever been able to get through Little Women. I always stall out around where St. Bethy Of The Overloved Dollies gets to go next door to play the piano before dying of Virgin’s Cough. So I think LW being the next read along is a great idea (after Zinn’s Your America Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad! I could sure use the break.)
But from what I remember, I hated Amy but understood her too. LMA wrote, conciously or not, a really finely drawn portrait of Typical American Girl. She’s vain but insecure, a slave to trends and peer pressure, tries to be good but when a trip to Europe is waved in front of her she’s not THAT good. Marries a guy for complicated reasons that may or may not have to do with jealousy over how her sister is allowed the artistic freedom she never got…well, she’s a little too much like a lot of people I know, and maybe even myself sometimes.
[…] This made me laugh, not so much for the shirt (I lime Amy March? wut?) but for the concept and the comments–such strong feelings! […]
I got angry when Dan, who killed a man only because of SELF DEFENSE while trying to help a kid had to go to jail? Why? …and then was too “sin-stained” to marry Perfect Bess. I always thought he would be good for her.
The cousin thing. Ashley & Melanie were cousins too. It’s a shame they didn’t know about inbreeding in those days. Poor Melly might have survived pregnancy. (I love Melanie)
@CT: “if my sister Europed me out of a Laurie, I would NEVER FORGIVE.” Heh. Love! And Word. And this should be on the backside of the t-shirt. Just saying.
Growing up, I could never understand why Jo chose the professor over Laurie, because I was all “Look cute Christian Bale, hold on, who’s the old dude.” I agree with whoever that she should’ve pulled a Kelly Taylor and chosen herself, because one felt like the adorable but completely not compatible frying pan and the other felt awkward German bookish fire. She could’ve found anyone, and that was her alternative? Really?
Late to the Amy March bashing party, but I second everything. I still remember how upset I was when Laurie married the bitch face who ran off to do what she does best in Europe – nothing. My only condolence is that his life must have been a living hell from then on… served him right.
At least Jo inherited the house, which in the long run (and to my ever practical soul) was the better deal. I think she made out better in the end, even if she did end up exploring her own Electra complex with the wizened, blank German. And much like her father, Dr. B had no personality whatsoever – he was a shapeless lump of societal appeasement wax.
I love the “your one beauty!” line. It captures pretty much everything about Amy, whose outright selfishness is such a necessary antidote to the heavy moralizing all around her. And I have to say I thought Kirsten Dunst was perfect for the role — her delivery of that line in particular is just about the only thing I remember from that movie, aside from Christian Bale being cute and Claire Danes being an ugly cry-er. (There was a Little Women Broadway musical a few years ago, which could not have been worse — and the proof is that, when that scene came along, they rewrote the dialogue for no reason so that Amy said something bland like “Oh Jo, and you had such pretty hair!” At that point I realized they had managed to screw up every single thing possible.)
@Tracey – I’ll agree to that. I just so very much hated the fact that Meg was all dressed up in something that wasn’t horrible/dowdy and Laurie got all “tsk!” on her for that. Shut up, Laurie.
Word, people. Seriously. While I love the book and always will, I found exactly the same things wrong with it. If i had real it more often maybe I wouldn’t have found my own self in a nearly 20-year relationship (most of my life) with my own Laurie that only just recently ended. But I don’t plan on working out my daddy issues with a Bhaer of my own these days (I did actually once date an “older” guy with “Bear” as part of his name….)
As an older sister, I never could understand why Jo didn’t bide her time and totally twist her baby sister into a knot while Marmee was out doing her charity work esp. after the book-burning. But then maybe that says more about the kind of sister I am. That being said, I was shocked — SHOCKED!! — that Marmee didn’t put at least the ‘gentle’ smackdown on Amy if not for the limes, definitely for the book-burning. I always imagined her as a more no-nonsense mother than that up to those points.
Speaking of which, my own youngest sister is in imminent danger of developing full-blown Amyitis, for which I would gladly bitchslap her with all the indignation of the Tomato Nation to save her from that fate.
Don’t forget that at the time she went to Europe, Amy’s big ambition was to marry for money. She spends most of her time abroad making eyes at Fred Vaughn and only changes her mind when Laurie shows up to remind her that…I don’t know? You can marry for money AND betray your sister?
Speaking of the Stolen Tour, did anyone else find it very strange that Amy didn’t come home when Beth died? I know everyone told her to stay put because she couldn’t do anything anyway, but her sister just died! Wouldn’t you want to go home and be with your family?
Oh my gosh, I had forgotten the book-burning! I must have blacked it out, it made me that angry. How could Marmee do nothing? UGH SUCK IT AMY MARCH. I did remember the “oh my gosh you’re so fug now you’ll never find a man. :( ” part, though. Shut the hell up.
@Mollie–there was a Little Women opera, too. It was horrible. And they changed a bunch of things. If Aunt March is not Aunt Josephine but Aunt Cecelia instead, it changes things! And their father was not away, and I’m pretty sure they cut the entire Pilgrim’s Progress thing.
@Jas–pretty sure that’s because Amy is a soulless, selfish bitch. There might be some other reason, but I think that’s the most likely.
PS, SHUT UP AMY MARCH DAMN.
I think the Nation should probably chip in and buy the shirt for poor Amy up there who was named after the loathsome Miss March.
I have not laughed this hard in ages. So hilarious, and so true! I always hated Amy too. I’d buy a shirt with @ct’s “Europed me out of a Laurie” quote in a heartbeat. You guys are brilliant.
“Europed me out of a Laurie”
Best new phrase I will overuse to the confusion of my officemates! Thanks @ct!
And I must have that shirt!
I was always ok with Bhaer. He was sweet, and wanted Jo to keep writing. And, you know, Gabriel Byrne!! That said, I would have slapped Amy on several occasions.
@Liz: Ho! For that one, I want to buy you one of these t-shirts!
I love the TN Impromptu Read-Along quality of these responses. I’ve been laughing so much. I know Little Men better than LW. (I’ve never read LW – shh. I mean, I haven’t YET.) Just from the various movie versions, though, I can’t help wondering, am I the only one who sees Laurie marrying Amy and thinks, “Dude. Not cool.” Not to get too Vine about this, or anything.
No! I saw the Winona Ryder movie in the theater, and after it my Mom said “well at least if she couldn’t have Christian Bale, she got Gabriel Byrne”, and I couldn’t believe she said that! GABRIEL BYRNE IS A GARGOYLE. No comparison to Christian Bale, back before we knew he was secretly a total fruitcake.
Some friends and I occasionally bring up the idea of a handsome, rich guy who proposes to you because he loves you, but you don’t love him… and you therefore turn him down. (Jo March, Elizabeth Bennett) We all agree we would have said yes without hesitation.
My people! I have found my people. I’ve always HATED Amy March and was chagrined to find that the handful of friends and family members that I could round up that even cared about this, were not on my side at all.
They were all forgiving Marnie types who defended Amy as being “young” and brushed off her behavior as being typical “jealous little sister” stuff. No! I would scream, Amy March is a horrible human.
Anyway, I can’t fawking wait to get my hands on one of these shirts.
@Jas
Amy probably didn’t come home when Beth died because no-one wanted to see her bitchface at the funeral… I mean, because fares to Europe were expensive and she probably would have gotten home about a week too late anyway.
What really drove me bats about the whole thing was that Amy effectively stole Laurie on the stolen tour! When Beth died Jo wrote a letter saying I am in mourning come home and Amy wrote a letter saying ‘I am bored and lonely come to Nice’ and what does Laurie do? HE GOES TO NICE!
Which is about where I lost all respect for him. If you can be taken in at this moment by a simpering twit like Amy March who was on the point of marrying Fred Vaughn until she figured out that Laurie was richer, as well as an excellent way to stick it to her sister forever more (I’m sorry but in the end bitch built a freaking mansion on the hill directly above Jo’s house, like way to rub it in a little more) well then, you deserve what you get.
I never read Little Women, but I did see it on TV, and I remember the book-burning scene. It is the only scene I remembered before reading this post. My subconscious hatred for Amy March is apparently that strong.
I doubt I will ever read the book. How I got away with not reading it as a kid, I don’t know — I had a big collection of classics as a kid — but Victorian literature now gives me hives, and I have to read Dickens this semester, so: no.
But I need the shirt, because: o hale naw.
By the way, if you google “amy march book burning” without the quotes, TN is the first result. Awesome.
If I had the coloring for white, I would so wear this. As it is, I may buy a dozen for my better-complexioned friends.
LMA books are both fun and exasperating, because…has any good thing, ever, come out of an author deciding to specifically not do what the fans want, because they want it, because that will Show Them, Ha Ha? Ever? Ugh. See also the EVILS of DRESSING WELL and ROUGE and OH MY GOD SLIGHTLY LOW-CUT SILK DRESSES…and then the SOUL-DESTROYING HORROR that is MILDLY SENSATIONAL FICTION.
1870s, granted. But…it’s the same problem I have with Jane Eyre, where I can intellectually get that yeah, social and moral standards blah blah blah, but really? Run off with Rochester! Have years of wild secretly-bigamous sex in Malta, or someplace! (Just…get him to give you easily-pawnable jewelry first.) Anything to spare yourself, and the reader, from the thirty-odd pages of blah that is St. John Rivers oh my GOD.
While there are some plot and theme similarities between Alcott’s and Montgomery’s works, a marked difference between them philosophically is that Montgomery believed in drinking in beauty, having pretty clothes, nourishing the soul through lovely surroundings; it’s a recurring theme in her works. Alcott seemed to believe that self-sacrifice was the key to higher living, and it comes out over and over again in scenes where Meg is punished for wanted to have pretty things, and where Jo gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Only Beth, who doesn’t desire earthly possesions, is given a piano with a full heart (with the knowledge that she’s going to have to die for it sooner or later).
@Isabel, the shirts aren’t white. Hope liveth! And OMG SERIOUSLY St. John Rivers. Go to India and shut up.
@Sarah D.: Huzzah! And thank you–seriously, being a pasty brunette chick in the era of Defaultly White T-Shirts has scarred me for life. Or something.
Also, yes. Do not care about St. John, do not care about random chick who has a crush on St. John but is “too frivolous” for him (…and once again, shut up, St. John), do not care about her…sister? Maybe? I don’t the hell know. Get back to Manor of Creepiness and Sex, please.
@Fiona: I’m re-reading the Anne series even now–Forever YA has been doing little reviews, and they are awesome–and you are absolutely on the money.
That’s one of the reasons I think they hold up better than the LW series, at least to me. There are some strange bits from a 2011 perspective–also the horror of “cursing”, heh, and also the one character later on who chooses not to have kids is a horrible materialistic woman of horror, ugh–but not nearly the crazy values dissonance I get from Alcott a lot of the time.
I wonder if the differences in the One Girl Who, of Course, Dies (Little Women: saintly Beth, pre-pubescent; Anne: flirty Ruby Gillis, college-age) are significant there?
I read Jane Eyre only a few years ago but I’m drawing a complete blank at this St. John Rivers person. Well, off to Wikipedia!
Heh, my people! I hated Amy March and for some reason other readers (that I knew) didn’t feel my haterade. I feel justified now. Hell, I may even pick up LW and give it another go, grinding my teeth every time everything is coming up
MilhouseAmy.Ack, St. John Rivers! One of the most loathsome men in literature. “You’re ugly and no one will ever love you, so you have to marry me and go to India, where I will make you work yourself to death!” I always thought it was stupid that he got the final words in the novel.
So nice to find that I’m not the only one who loathes Amy March. Aaaaaaaaaaaugh, the book burning! If my little sister had done that to me, there would have been blood.
@Wehaf — Me and my Gothic Literature professor can back you up on that! One of the books I saved from that class was “Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott” and it is amazingly fun to read. LMA called them her “blood & thunder” stories, and they were usually written either anonymously or under a pseudonym, so it’s harder to find information about them.
Probably no one is still reading this thread but I figured I’d ask anyway. Did Laurie and Amy not hook up in Little Women but instead in a later book? (Haven’t read them yet.) Because otherwise I have no idea how shippers could sway LMA against Laurie/Jo if Laurie and Amy did get together in LM; was the book released in bits and pieces then? I’m confused!
OK, so I don’t recommend re-reading LW in a pregnancy hormone stew. I used up a box of tissues sobbing–about Beth, at Meg’s wedding, at Jo’s rejection of Laurie, at Jo’s acceptance of Bhaer…I’m a pathetic, sodden pile & I’m having to hide from the rest of my children so they don’t think something is really wrong!!
@Sam – Laurie and Amy get married in the second part of “Little Women,” which was published after the success of the first part. The second part was called “Good Wives,” and, I believe, the book is still published that way in the U.K. In the U.S., both parts are published together as “Little Women.”
Sam, yes, LW was originally published in two volumes. It seems like pretty much every 19th-century novel was either published in volumes or serialized by chapter in magazines. The volumes or chapters of things that sold well would then be collected into a single volume for later editions.
Sometimes the multi-volume novel was printed in multiple volumes that were sold all at once, rather than being published singly as they were written (to make them easier to carry around, I suppose,) but sometimes, as with LW, the volumes were written and published separately over time, and so readers could write to the author while the story progressed.
Apologies for this very generalized summary off the top of my head.
[…] The Amy March Shirt of Justice! coming soon . . . You know I wouldn’t buy one, but you might. […]
Laurie was based on someone whom Alcott apparently had an affair with and so she did get the man but decided not to let Jo have him too – which was perverse of her, but yes, I did read somewhere that she thought she’d do the opposite of what her fans wanted.
If Laurie had returned before Jo decided to marry Bhaer, would she have decided to have him after all? I can’t say for sure. But I think her initital reasons for not marrying him were pretty lame – and too “sensible”.
A relationship with Laurie might have been stormy but it would have been the best thing for her creativity. Instead she ends up with an old man who belittles her work and tells her to do something worthwhile instead! What a PIG!
Ick, Amy, smarmy spoiled little cow. Noooooo. The silly little book-burner. And if Jo would have married Laurie it would be nothing but fighting, fighting, fighting and precious little scribbling as she called it. LMA DID write much darker stuff…check out Pauline’s Passion and Punishment, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8384, plus another short novel set in England, can’t remember the title, that must have been considered quite racy at the time. An eyeopener.
Love the shirt! Count me in, though I’m coming late to the ice pond….Wait for me, Jo, wait….
Besides, it always seemed to me that Laurie only married Amy to be able to hang around Jo. As I recall, in Little Men, he just keeps coming round. What, did he find out that Amy wasn’t putting on a front, and was truly vapid?
As far as St. John is concerned, ugh, go away, go far, far, away.
I really love this topic! read the books as a child and now 22 years old just saw the movie (been wanting to do it since last year but couldn’t). I’m fuming!! darn Amy, just counting on hell for book characters to ease my frustation.
BTW, loved “Laurie thief” and “Seriously, if my sister Europed me out of a Laurie, I would NEVER FORGIVE”!! perfectly phrased for the occasion :)!
Hope the shirt gets so popular that we can buy it here in south america too(guess this will explain my bad writing)
thanks again for catharsis!