#Professor Bhaer

[nerdyrevelries]

I have very strong opinions on what type of social media users all of the characters in Little Women would be.

Marmee runs the Facebook page for her neighborhood. You know, the one where people can post about lost pets, barbeques, and give people heads up that there's going to be some reno going on on their house.

Meg is the biggest social media user of the bunch. Prior to marriage, she has a Pinterest board full of fantasies for her someday wedding and she follows multiple cottagecore influencers. After she becomes a mother, Meg gets really into mommy bloggers to the point where her family has to have an intervention because she's wearing herself out trying to make baby food from scratch because she's been convinced it's the only way to make sure her kids grow up with every advantage. She will also cry over Marie Kondo videos on YouTube because she can't manage to have a perfect, uncluttered life with two active toddlers. She is unfortunately very susceptible to seeing the perfect life other people present on social media and assuming that the projected image is an achievable reality and she is failing when she doesn't measure up to it. Luckily, John is very kind and understanding and helpful about this. (He's not much of a social media user at all.)

Jo has a Substack for her writing and a Tumblr where she posts and talks about writing and follows other people who talk about writing.

Beth is a social media enigma. She has a Pinterest where she only has private boards for saving music, and she lurks but does not have an account on a forum for musicians. She otherwise has no social media presence.

Amy doesn't post a ton on her social media. She has an Instagram where she occasionally posts photos of her art or a pretty flower she saw that day. However, she is constantly getting tagged in other people's social media posts as she frequently shows up in pictures on other people's social media. She's very much of the opinion that she wants to be out there living life rather than just posting about it.

I regret to inform you that Laurie has a pranks channel on YouTube and TikTok. He eventually does stop running it after his character growth, at which point he switches to using his social media platform to highlight aspiring artists and musicians and provide philanthropy and outreach.

Professor Bhaer has a presence in academic publications. Outside of that, he enjoys writing reviews of obscure public domain media on the Internet Archive.

[cypanache]

Look it’s late and I just have to say this. The fact I live in a time where Daniel Bruhl exists and there have been two new versions of Little Women filmed in the last decade and neither of them cast him as Professor Bhaer is just proof there’s something deeply wrong with the world.

(Robbed. We were robbed I say!)

[phireads]

I don’t know why, after all of the Little Women adaptations that have been made, we’ve never got Daniel Brühl as Professor Bhaer. I guess he’s still too young yet. But my point stands (especially considering Greta Gerwig’s Bhaer, Louis Garrel, is in his thirties, and younger than Daniel Brühl).

He’s German, he’s a brilliant actor, he doesn’t necessarily have a knows-what-an-iphone-is face. He’s also very good at playing charming characters (charm being something a lot of Bhaers seem to lack).

[ID: Photo of Daniel Brühl as Dr Laszlo Kriezler in The Alienist, wearing a black top hat, a white shirt and black tie, black waistcoat and a black overcoat]

Look at him! That’s my Friedrich!

[qprsmackdown]

PROPAGANDA (under the readmore):

Camilla and Palamedes

They have the most relationship ever. They love each other. They are not complete without each other, necromancer and cavalier. Yet, Palamedes is infatuated with a living corpse who turns out to be a mega death saint that's turning on her god. It's not completely romantic. They've been together their whole lives. Their dynamic. I kind of want it. (if you find this propaganda compelling then feel free to share lol but I will not be checking the box)

You ever so scared of leaving someone that your souls become cosmically entangled and you end up creating a new person?

oh my god. listen. i'm sleepy and it's hard to explain however however. When [SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS] Palamedes dies, Camilla collects pieces of his skull, figures out where his soul is in the ghost river, and then tethers their souls together. And eventually they just collapse into being the same entity (Paul). QPR behavior. Plus they just talk so well to each other, check out their quotes

Jo and Bhaer

in the novel jo talks frequently about how even as an adult she doesn’t understand romance or why people get so weird about it. when laurie proposes to her and goes away to sulk after she rejects him she regrets not saying yes not because she loved him after all, but because she was SO FUCKING LONELY without him. she wouldn’t have married for love at all, she would’ve married her best friend for his company and to keep him close to her. queerplatonic behavior. also in the musical there is NO buildup on jo’s side to her loving bhaer. they are academic equals and they argue frequently, but they love being around each other so they get married. at least how I read the story Jo’s decision comes much more from a place of “if I have to get married and settle down because of the roles I’m prescribed by my society, even though I don’t agree with them, I’d much rather settle down with you than with anyone else. there’s no one I like to banter with more than you,” than it ever did love. jo and bhaers duet at the end of the show is literally not even explicitly romance centered. all of the verses are about how much they’re different. the chorus is just “you make me happy. you make me a better person. I love being around you. I’m lonely when you’re not around” which idk I get like that with my girlfriend yeah but I’m also like that with my other friends. however I get like that ESPECIALLY with my queerplatonic crush so. I diagnose these two queerplatonic. jo march is aromantic I will die on this hill.

[autospleen]

Jo and Fritz are in a qpr and you can't change my mind.

[jomarchswritingjacket]

forever gonna be wondering what sarah polley’s sapphic little women would’ve looked like and also if greta gerwig wanted professor bhaer to be younger and french then adèle haenel was right there

[sparklygraves]

ok y’all -- I’m guessing this is an unpopular opinion but... I love professor Bhaer!!!

I still think Jo is gay &/or trans & I’m not sure I see them as a couple, but I think he’s splendid! 

I feel like Louisa does such a good job at making characters likeable from the inside out. like she does with Jo! like, she basically describes Jo as having a pleasant but unattractive face (that “comical nose” & all), but Little Women readers are obsessed with Jo for her deeply delightful, complicated, fiery self!

I kinda feel like with Bhaer, Louisa kinda made an older, male Jo-- bookish, bright, generous, messy...! so I mean... of course I love him!

let me know your thoughts! love him, hate him, don’t care? 

love Laurie so much you hate all other Jo suitors (honestly I totally get it-- I love Laurie a stupid amount too!!!)?

p.s. my opinion might change cuz I only just met him a few pages ago & I’ve still got a chunk of the book to go!

[howifeltabouthim]

I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me—my nothingness.

Anthony Trollope, from Phineas Finn

[letteredlettered]

honestly when searching for romance I think it is great to have both Anne Shirley and Jo March as role models. Anne Shirley thinks love is something out-of-this-world and beyond her own reality and goes out searching for it, only to find that love is familiar and friendly and comfortable and kind. She goes out into the world and then says it's not what the world holds for you but what you can bring to it. Meanwhile Jo March already has a love that is familiar and friendly and comfortable and kind and says we would be like old crows, fighting all the time, and goes out to find someone who is new and different who can challenge her and help her forge a path to a new life that isn't what anyone expected.

I think the point is that love can be different for different people, and that no one can tell you who to love or how. You have to look within yourself to understand what can bring you happiness, and then you have to work for it.

[nerdyrevelries]

Jo March: The Pragmatist

One of the most common complaints I hear about Little Women is the way it ends. Many people think that Jo stifles her creativity and gives up on her writing in order to marry Professor Bhaer, which isn't true. Jo writes a very successful book in one of the sequels, Jo’s Boys, but let's set that to the side because what I really want to discuss is what Jo actually thinks of the writing she’s doing in the latter half of Little Women. 

In Part I of Little Women, we see the type of writing that Jo does prior to selling her work. In “A Merry Christmas,” the family puts on The Witch’s Curse, an Operatic Tragedy, which seems to be a Shakespearean melodrama. In “Jo Meets Apollyon,” the book Amy burns in anger is “half a dozen little fairy tales.” In “The P.C. and P.O.,” Jo writes a comedic poem and a lament for one of Beth’s cats. Finally, in “Secrets,” Jo submits a tragic romance to The Spread Eagle (one assumes that this name was less funny when Little Women was originally published in 1868.) The Spread Eagle doesn’t pay beginners, so we can assume that everything written up until this point is the type of writing Jo does for herself when there’s no pressure to make changes to please an editor in order to get a paycheck. 

Part II begins with the chapter “Gossip,” which catches us up on what’s been happening over the past three years. Jo is now a regular contributor to The Spread Eagle who receives a dollar for each story. She refers to them as “rubbish,” so she doesn’t seem particularly proud of the writing she’s doing, but she’s in the process of writing a novel she hopes will win her fame and prestige. 

In “Literary Lessons,” Jo observes a boy reading a newspaper story illustrated with a dramatic scene of “an Indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat” and two men stabbing each other while a terrified woman flees the scene. When the boy offers to share, Jo agrees more because she likes the boy than because of an interest in the story. The story is sensation fiction, which Jo privately thinks is trash anyone could have written. However, when she learns the author is making a good living from her stories, Jo decides to try her hand at this new style of writing. She submits the story to a contest the newspaper is running and wins $100. Jo uses the money to send Beth and Marmee to the seashore. She’s proud of her ability to earn money to help her family, so she continues to write these kinds of stories since they are lucrative. 

She later finishes her novel and sends it to multiple publishers, only one of whom is interested, and only if there are major cuts and revisions. After conflicting advice from her family, she decides to make the requested changes, which earns her $300 and some very mixed reviews that lead Jo to respond, “Some make fun of it, some over-praise, and nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only wrote it for the pleasure and the money. I wish I’d printed it whole or not at all, for I do hate to be so misjudged.” 

In “Calls,” Jo reluctantly joins Amy to return calls to their neighbors with generally disastrous results. One incident involves Jo receiving a compliment on her writing. 

Any mention of her “works” always had a bad effect upon Jo, who either grew rigid and looked offended, or changed the subject with a brusque remark, as now. “Sorry you could find nothing better to read. I write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it.”

This passage makes it very clear that Jo isn’t proud or fond of what she is writing. The reception to her novel combined with the money she can make from sensation fiction has changed Jo’s primary motivation for writing. She is no longer doing it for the love of writing or because she’s pursuing her dreams. She’s trying to make money to help out her family.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. We all have periods in our life when we take a job that we aren’t extremely excited about because it will allow us to achieve something that is more important to us. However, it’s a different narrative than is usually spun about Jo who is frequently depicted as continually working towards her dream. There is a role in Castles in the Air that fits that narrative. It’s called the Striver, but I don’t think that’s the role that Jo has. Instead, Jo is the Pragmatist, which is a role about setting aside your dreams for the moment because you have other responsibilities. Both are interesting conflicts, but they lead to very different conclusions when it comes to Jo’s story! 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at “Friend,” which follows Jo in New York. She’s now writing for a newspaper called the Weekly Volcano, which has required Jo to make so many changes to her stories that she decides to have her work published anonymously. That certainly wouldn’t be a good career move if she was truly trying for fame! She’s also come to greatly respect a man staying at her boarding house named Professor Bhaer. One day, he makes a comment about a newspaper that publishes sensation stories like the ones Jo is writing. Her response is telling:

Jo glanced at the sheet, and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic, a corpse, a villain, and a viper. She did not like it; but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure, but fear, because, for a minute, she fancied the paper was the “Volcano.” 

Professor Bhaer notices her look and guesses the truth, but instead of letting her know this, he decides to gently explain his reasoning. After this, Jo goes back to reread the stories she has been writing and decides to burn them. Far from stifling her creativity, Professor Bhaer is the one who sees that Jo is ashamed of her writing and reminds her that she is capable of more.

This is part of a series on the literary inspirations behind game elements for my upcoming tabletop RPG based on the novels of Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery, Castles in the Air. To see a complete list of the posts I’ve written thus far, check out the master post. If you would like more information, visit the game’s website!

[youareinlove]

i don't think anything will ever get me to see the ending of little women (2019) in any other way than jo and professor bhaer ending up together in real life but that not initially being a part of the book until her publishers ask for it to be

[jobethdalloway]

Which film adaptation of Little Women is your favorite and why? How do you feel about the musical version?

ah, anon! A question for the ages. It's 1994's for me.

That wasn't always my answer - for most my life, it would have been 1949. That was the first version of the story I encountered, on VHS at my grandmother's house. I got to know the sisterhood of Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy through those cozy, Technicolor hues with a surge of admiration and kinship for June Allyson's Jo, while also relating hard to the timidity of Margaret O'Brien's Beth. Elizabeth Taylor as Amy still cracks me up and Janet Leigh is a wonderful Meg. It's the most overlooked of the theatrical film adaptations, in large part I'm sure because it hews very closely to the 1933 OG. (I don't care for that one by comparison; Katharine Hepburn is a super cool person and all but I don't like her in the role of Jo and yet she is the only single actor in the cast with an ounce of charisma. imo. I did love seeing her in good drag tho) (People also don't like some of the liberties taken in 1949, ie switching Amy's and Beth's ages - a complaint I totally understand, but again given that it was my introduction to the story I had no idea this was "wrong")

I saw the '94 version a couple of times in high school and was so devoted to my childhood favorite that it took me a while to warm up to it. But by my twenties, it had become a favorite and it is now a go-to comfort movie for me. It has slightly edged out '49 as my personal favorite and in terms of recommending an adaptation to people I think it's the best one to go to. Part of that is yes nostalgia for '90s period pieces (Thomas Newman's score is unmatched in its comforting coziness) - but also its the way its deep, abiding love for the characters and text is manifested with warmth. The novel is warm, and to me, that feeling is somewhat lost in Gerwig's admirable take.

There is a lot I truly love about the 2019 version - chief among them is righting the one wrong of '94 and giving full dimension back to Amy. It's all there in Alcott's text and tries to be there in Armstrong's. The problem in '94 is not only that young Amy gets so much more screentime than adult Amy, but that Kirsten Dunst is SO memorably fantastic in the part and Samantha Mathis just leaves no impression. I see the vision, like, for the porcelain doll Amy but in the novel the still contained that same fire and drive as Jo. Gerwig and Florence Pugh bring that back into light in the most compelling, beautiful way. She manages what no other film adaptation had done before, which was to set up Amy and Laurie in a believable fashion. She does so much that is so wonderful and I am grateful her film has introduced the story to so many. It's such a beautiful one. (I have a few casting problems with '19; my biggest disappointment on a personal level is that I never felt warmed to Beth the way I have in other versions.)

I must admit that despite my love for Sutton Foster, I don't remember loving the Broadway version. I do remember liking the song "Some Things Are Meant to Be," and should listen to it again. I am however grateful for its existence because it was my Broadway-loving gf's introduction to "Little Women" and yay for that!!

tl;dr: it's 1994 for me, but I love something about every version!

[kiss2012]

rereading part ii of little women and the jo’s journal part is TESTING MY PATIENCE

[besotted-with-austen]

Professor Bhaer in the books: a man at least in his forties, not particularly handsome but so warm and kind that he is appreciated everywhere he goes, easy-going but with a Jove-like demeanour, he adores children and takes care of his beloved late sister's kids even with little to no money, he comments on the fact that he dislikes pulp-y stories but never says to Jo that she is wrong for writing them, they are both unconventional and find a way to be free to be who they are together-

Professor Bhaer in the 2019 movie: Generically Handsome Pretty Boy as the Designed Love Interest for Character!Jo because Louisa May Alcott! Jo was forced to give her an Appropriate Ending

[nikholascrow]

hear me out little women marauders au

Amy is regulus

Lourie is James

Jo is Sirius

Beth is Peter

Meg is Lily

Megs husband (forgot his name) is Mary

professor Bhaer is Remus

this is either my best or worst idea ever