'Little Women' Clip: Meryl Streep Is Saoirse Ronan's Rich, Meddling Aunt

It's a conversation that plenty of people will have just heard from their relatives coming off the Thanksgiving holidays, and can probably look forward to hearing come Christmas: when will you get married? Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women may have been published in 1868, but it continues to prove itself timeless, especially in its depiction of meddling aunts. Meryl Streep plays the aunt in question in Greta Gerwig's upcoming film adaptation of Little Women, needling Saoirse Ronan's headstrong writer Jo March about her future in the latest Little Women clip.

In Little Women, Jo March gets employed by her rich great-aunt March, a wealthy widow, to read to her and help her take care of her affairs, though the arrangement is mainly a scheme by Aunt March to tame Jo's infamous temper. But in the latest Little Women clip, Jo shows no signs of curbing her goal of independence, telling Aunt March that she plans to be a writer, which Aunt March immediately dismisses and argues that everyone must marry — except for the rich.

It's a short scene between the two, but a great showcase for both Ronan and Streep's talents: Ronan barely holding back her irritation, and Streep becoming the personification of a "tsk." The overlapping dialogue is becoming a hallmark of Gerwig's work too, with the delightful moment bookended by Streep interrupting Ronan to exclaim, "Well, that's because I'm rich!" I like the film's emphasis on the poverty of the March family and the girls' struggles with their economic situation, which has been glossed over in earlier adaptations in favor of the story's sentimental coming-of-age narrative.

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.