01
"Girls have to meet the world to decide what kind of life they want to live." This is Joe's inner monologue in the novel Little Women.
In that era, it was difficult for women to find a job, it was difficult to have a way to make money, and the only way out was to marry a rich man and become dependent on each other from then on. But Joe doesn't share these values, and her goal is to be a writer and earn money to support her family.
To this end, she has worked tirelessly and not hesitated to meet the requirements of readers and editors, writing some "suitable" manuscripts. When her seriously ill sister Beth encouraged her to write what she wanted to write most, Joe was touched.
Joe is the embodiment of the pursuit of female independence and freedom, she fiercely rejected the Laurie who loved her for many years, sacrificed love, focused on writing, and finally realized the dream of a writer, and thus realized the wish of supporting the whole family by writing. She had no regrets about such a choice.
Similarly, Joe's eldest sister, Meg, chose love without fear of a poor life; the younger sister Amy traveled to Europe to find a satisfactory marriage, and eventually married Laurie, whom she had always had a crush on. Beth was seriously ill, but it brought warmth and hope to others.
The four sisters in the book are all "sober in the world", they firmly "love what I love, do what I do", and laugh at life and live out their own wonderfulness.
It can be seen that sober women are the best and most blessed.
Instead of complaining about others, it is better to ask your own heart: What kind of life do you really want?
02
A woman who lives soberly, relies on herself for everything.
A passage in "Sometimes There Is a Woman" that speaks the voice of many women:
I long to be collected, properly placed, and carefully preserved for the rest of my life. Lest I be frightened, lest I be bitter, lest I be displaced, lest I have no branches to rely on. But the man, I know, I have always known, he will never come.
Women are naturally delicate, so that many women find reasons not to go all out. I always fantasize that Heaven will definitely send someone to "carry the weight forward" for himself and protect himself for a lifetime.
They choose to "go with the flow" early, giving up the opportunity to achieve self-transformation and the pursuit of achieving better themselves. Marry at the age at which you should marry, marry at the time of marriage ... Everything seemed to be "in order" and couldn't fault anything. But what is lost is his original intention and dream.
This can't help but remind me of the female college student reported on the Internet who was admitted to a key university, but married back to the countryside and became a poor household. The proud son of heaven, under the blow of life, blindly evaded and fled, and in the end there was no way to escape, so he had to retreat again and again to seek the second place, and secretly live.
Heaven did not give her the opportunity to turn her fate upside down, but she did not seize it once, which really made people "mourn her misfortune and anger her indisputable." ”
In stark contrast, Harry Potter author JK Rowling said she was a true version of Joe in Little Women. When a woman is trapped at the bottom of life, she can rely on herself to achieve the counterattack of life.
As Joe said, "I don't like to owe people affection, it will force me and make me feel like a slave." I'd rather be able to handle my own affairs without relying on others and be completely independent.
03
A woman who lives soberly knows how to make trade-offs.
At present, people are accustomed to using "up the hall, down to the kitchen" to describe a woman's ability. But almost every woman has this dilemma, how to find a balance between work and family, how to choose between worldly happiness and spiritual satisfaction.
In the novel "Little Women", the life problems encountered by the four sisters of the March family are the problems that everyone will encounter. Especially love and marriage, which can be put in any era, can make people unclear and confused.
In the novel, Joe's eldest sister Meg marries John, a poor governess, and originally, she is the most promising of the four sisters to marry into the rich.
Even Joe was so worried about the marriage that she persuaded Meg to give up the marriage on the eve of her marriage and make money to support her. But Meg said, "Although my dream is not as great as yours, it is also worthy of respect." ”
Because they love each other deeply, Meg and John are still as loving as ever, although their lives are stretched. Joe also finally understands that Meg is not a love of wealth, but she chose love, and that is what she values most.
Any choice means giving up something and paying some price. Women who live soberly know how to follow their own hearts to choose, even if they are wrong, they do not have regrets.
04
A woman who lives soberly knows how to change.
The only constant in this world is constant change.
No one will stand where they are and wait, and the people and things that have passed have really passed, and they can never go back to the past, and they can no longer start from that time.
So, when Joe changes his mind and wants to renew his frontier with Laurie, but learns that Laurie is engaged to Amy, she immediately hides her hot feelings, sends sincere wishes to Laurie and Amy, and tears up the confession letter she wrote to Laurie and throws it into the river.
Life does not stop, when everything is no longer the way it was before, it is better to turn around, leave, and start again.
Only by knowing how to change, can we not be trapped in the heart, will not be chaotic, can we always have good memories, and run to a new future with emotion and warmth.
05
Conclusion:
Woman, how to spend this life? Perhaps, there will be a million answers.
But the only constant is to keep the heart awake, to keep the will firm, to maintain the independence of the self. Only in this way can we go steady and far, and can we be full of happiness.
Author: Like the wind is light as a cloud.
Your happiness, my blessings.
Images are from the web.