'Little Women' Clip: Florence Pugh Schools Timothée Chalamet On Love

Amy March is probably one of the most hated characters in literary history. The youngest of the March sisters who come of age during the Civil War in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Amy was always a little bratty, a little spoiled, a little too typical of the kind of feminine girls that young female readers always abhorred. Everyone wanted to be strong-willed Jo, the "not like other girls" tomboy and protagonist of Little Women. So when Amy committed her infamous act of sabotage against Jo, she shot to the top of the list of most-hated literary characters of all time.

But could Greta Gerwig's upcoming Little Women give a more forgiving depiction of Amy March than she has received in the past? The new Little Women clip, which shows Florence Pugh as Amy giving Timothée Chalamet's Laurie an economics lesson, suggests as much.

What happens when a realist and a romantic collide? You get a scene like the above Little Women clip, which follows Pugh's Amy March as she defends her goal to marry rich.  "I believe we have some power over who we love, it isn't something that just happens to a person," Amy says.

"I think the poets might disagree," Laurie petulantly responds, ever the hopeless romantic. But Amy is not having that explanation, arguing that she may not be a poet but she is a woman who has fewer prospects and less power than men, thus leaving her no choice but to gain economic stability through marriage. "Don't sit there and tell me marriage isn't an economic proposition, because it is," she declares.

This scene alone gives more of a nuanced depiction of Amy March than most of the past Little Women adaptations, which have always gravitated more toward Jo's story. But it looks like Gerwig and Pugh are working to give the much-maligned character the richer depiction that she deserves. And as a Little Women fan who has long held a grudge against Amy, I'm willing to give her a chance.

Little Women, which also stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, and Meryl Streep, opens in theaters on December 25, 2019.

Following the lives of four sisters, Amy, Jo, Beth and Meg, as they come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War. Though all very different from each other, the March sisters stand by each other through difficult and changing times.