That Winter Warmer

IF I HAD ONLY TAKEN NOTE OF THE STORY'S VIRTUES, I'd have come of age when I did, with much more ease than I had in doing so. From finding amidst lack of privilege, strength in character and a charitable heart, to Jo March's personal ordeal with writing courageously versus writing imaginatively, there is much from Little Women that myself as a middle class girl in her teens could have gained. In the book, as in the movie, both which I read and saw countless times, I was too fixated on the beautiful boy next door to care about the story's wisdom. I wished it were me, and not Amy March, that Christian Bale as Teddy Laurence promised to kiss. I wished it were me he proposed to and reformed himself in London for.

I'd love to go expounding on how each of the March sisters exhibit traits I saw in myself as an adolescent, and how their struggles felt especially familiar to me, growing up with far less wealth than my peers. But that's not what this post, or this season, is for. Instead, I turn attention to the March family's coldest winters; bitter and bare made warm with friendship, family, virtue, grace, kittens in bed and a fine young Christian Bale.

So as I completely abandon writing this post to warm up my winter with an indulgent google-image-search of the actor currently identified as Batman, allow me to wish the warmest and happiest of holidays to all!

Little Women, 1994. Directed by Gillian Armstrong.