Spoilers of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women ahead.

At the outset of Greta Gerwig’s new film adaptation of Little Women, a young Jo March (Saorsie Ronan) declares to her three sisters that she cannot “get over [her] disappointment in being a woman.” The line is nearly a direct lift from the original 1868 Louisa May Alcott novel, in which Jo’s characterization as a rambunctious tomboy has left readers wondering if she is actually queer (with some arguing that she's actually transgender) for over 150 years.

Throughout the original Little Women story and its many adaptations, the core of Jo’s narrative arc is how she negotiates the many expectations placed on her because of her gender. As she aspires to make her own name as a writer, she constantly wishes that she could be a man so she can enlist in the war, not worry about finding a husband, and not fuss over “girly” things like frilly dresses and extravagant balls — unlike her sisters Meg and Amy. And although Jo forms a special bond and friendship with her wealthy neighbor Theodore “Laurie” Laurence throughout their childhood, she rebuffs his proposal for marriage when they are adults. (For ages, readers have been perplexed and disappointed that after all of that, Jo ends up marrying a German intellectual named Professor Behr in Alcott’s sequel to the first novel.)

(L-R) Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth March (Eliza Scanlen) in Little Women Wilson Webb / Sony Pictures

As Gerwig has pointed out in interviews, the reason why Jo March has endured as a beloved pop culture heroine is not because she eventually marries Professor Behr. Rather, it’s because for most of the story, she tries her hardest to rebel against the trappings of heteronormativity that essentially forced women of the time to seek out a wealthy husband and to consider marriage “as an economic proposition.” In fact, Jo March was never intended to marry in the end, according to a letter that Louisa May Alcott wrote to a friend in 1869. Alcott, who also never married, felt pressured to give Jo a “funny match” because so many of her readers and fans insisted upon the character eventually settling down. Many think that Alcott could have been queer, too, because she once said in an 1883 interview: “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

Setting out to make a version that collapses Alcott’s story into Jo’s, Gerwig’s modern take on Little Women adds new, subtle details — and one grand meta ending — to give justice to the quiet queerness at the heart of the tale. Take, for instance, Gerwig’s construction of when Jo and Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) first meet at a ball. Jo is reluctant to dance with Laurie because she’s afraid of someone seeing her scorched dress, so the two youngsters decide that the most appropriate place to dance is outside on the porch. In stark contrast to the men and women seen reveling from the porch windows, Jo and Laurie decide to trot down the long outdoor hallway like they’re making fun of the typically courting ritual instead of participating in it. They scamper, stomp their feet, and pump their arms like they’re teenagers moshing at their very first concert. In their frenzied choreography, the duo seem like two children and two equals.