Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s book, Little Women, tells the coming of age story of the four March sisters. Taking place primarily in Concord, Massachusetts in the late 1800s, the story examines the lives of each of the sisters and their relation to one another. After growing up and leaving the nest, the driving force to bring the family back together is unfortunately a devastating illness that falls upon the quiet, gentle sister that is Beth March. Having contracted scarlet fever from performing charitable actions for the even more impoverished family down the street, Beth’s compassionate nature makes her worsening illness and imminent death even more saddening.
In Alcott’s original novel, the doctor which tends to her ailments is referred to as ‘Dr. Bangs’, and is depicted as encouraging the sisters to retrieve their mother, Mrs. March, from her travels to return to her sick daughter. In the 2019 film, however, the doctor is only briefly depicted leaving the room after examining Beth and diagnosing her condition as Scarlet Fever. He announces this with a sense of nonchalance, but proceeds to whisper to Mr. Lawrence that the Hummel’s baby has just died of the same condition (the same family who passed the sickness along to Beth).
As described by Dr. Joceline Andersen in her lecture “Types, Stock characters, and Minor Characters in I Love Lucy”, a stock character can be described as “one whose character space is small, flat & underdeveloped”, and a type character as one “whose motivation and function are already established, often linked to ethnicity or class.” (Andersen). The doctor is a clear archetype for a type character: he is unnamed, given mere seconds of screen time, and does not stand out in any particular fashion, but his distinct profession and role as a physician serves as the primary motivation and understanding of the character. As Christian Keathley explains in “Pass the Salt … and Other Bits of Business”, “Too much abstraction and reality loses concreteness; as a result, the work, or elements of it, can become heavyhanded, ponderously significant. Or too much concreteness and there is not enough of a sense that things are being shaped towards any meaningful purpose” (111). The doctor in Little Women is an excellent representation of this — his role is solely to convey the seriousness of the situation and storyline; with the whole family gathered in worry outside her door, awaiting answers and any good fortune, the doctor’s blunt demeanour strips away all hopes of a miracle occuring and presents the harsh reality.
Works Cited
Andersen, Joceline.“Types, Stock characters, and Minor Characters in I Love Lucy”, Moodle, Thompson Rivers University, 24 Jan. 2022, moodle.tru.ca. Video recording.
Keathley, Christian. “Pass the Salt … and Other Bits of Business.” Screen, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 105–113., https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjq065.
Little Women. Directed by Greta Gerwig, Sony Pictures, 2019.
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