Through the eyes of Jo March, a look at the universal phenomenon of Loneliness among growing adults. “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. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for. But I’m so lonely.” Jo March utters these words in front of her mother in a fit of discontentment in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. This monologue from the 2019 movie may sound very redundant at first, but it is already so popular in the public domain establishes its sentimental novelty. Among many things, it provides us with a perspective on this ever-present unresolved mystery of human need.
Jo states all these elements in her dialogue that our capitalistic society demands an individual to deem them “worthy”. But here, she claims, she is lonely despite fulfilling the criteria.
Where does this human need emerge from? Need for a certain kind of humane fulfilment. Furthermore, how intense does an absence have to be to fuel the individual to pursue things that can ultimately shift the focus away from that feeling of Loneliness?
Now, one does not have to take the character of Jo March as the representative of the universal phenomenon of growing Loneliness among growing adults. However, I picked her because of her academically driven mind, which she mainly absorbs in reading or writing, filling pages with stories or plays. If her heart is full of love for people in her life, her hands permanently get stained with ink for her dreams. Anyone who has ever had an experience of an emotional state of passion – towards any worldly purpose or ambition can relate to her.
At the same time, she places a substantial focus on the “love” she has in her life.
People often mistake that by ‘love’, she means romantic or sexual love. Those who do have probably not observed her character. She is a character who feels emotionally fulfilled with interpersonal relationships in her life. And for the most part, she is satisfied. She publishes small stories and takes joy in living her life with her sisters and Laurie’s best friend.
However, as time passes, her sisters move apart with their separate lives, and Jo also moves out of her home and works in London. It is on one of her visits to her hometown that Jo expresses her feelings. Jo, at this stage, is experiencing struggles both creatively and personally.
The loss of human connections with time is something inevitable, and we are all aware of it. Jo is, too. Her life or Childhood, as she calls it, is long gone. In those moments, she comes across that human emotion of Loneliness and the need to fill the void created by it.
There is also an element of bittersweetness to it. After forming a significant part of our identities, these interpersonal relationships, when moving away, leave this gaping hole. But that void also leaves us with a chance to run after another new element of our life. For Jo also, these incidents led her on the path towards getting her novel published.
However, this lesson is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it emphasises this need for having people and tells that no accomplishment can replace the warmth of humane proximity.
On the other hand, it also tells individuals to strive towards building a purpose and fulfil that at all costs because relationships are ultimately transient.
As a generation that looks at things in black and white, we are significantly prone to falling into this drive of pursuing worldly accomplishments to fill the absence.
Maybe that space sometimes does get filled, but at what cost?
