oh, to be a serpent-tongued harridan!

pulling inspiration from a recently read retelling of Little Women, and continuing my love affair with sssserpentine imagery

Jan 24, 2025

I recently read March, by Geraldine Brooks—a retelling of Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, from Mr. March’s perspective. This was our Dear Readers book club pick for January, kicking off a whole year of retellings.1 The book garnered polarizing critique from the book club—a few of us loved it, some of us hated it, only two of us gave it 10/10, and one gave a particularly scathing review of its plot—“supremely forgettable.” We did have consensus though—Brooks is masterful with the pen. Her writing is vivid and gorgeous, even if her handling of the subject matter is up for debate. (And, IMO, if you love Little Women, it’s worth a read.)

The part of the book that hit home for me was the few chapters written from Marmee’s perspective. Depending on your age and introduction to Little Women, you may envision the visage of one of the most beloved literary characters in the American canon (if I do say so myself) as some amalgamation of Susan Sarandon and Laura Dern. Marmee has always intrigued me, but as with many multicharacter stories, such curiosity isn’t always satiated. Needless to say, I was enchanted by the vivid account of Marmee’s fiery demeanor as a young lady and young wife to Mr. March. Geraldine Brooks captures the passionate essence of a 19th century idealist—Marmee’s hopes, dreams, opinions, and view of the world was quite evolved and revolutionary for her time.

I was particularly amused at the description of a rather heated exchange between Marmee, Mr. March, and Aunt March (Mr. March’s aunt)—we see Marmee stand up for herself and her family against a family member’s unfair judgement. And, then, she storms away. Aunt March’s response was pure drama and vitriol:

Aunt March’s lips thinned. She stood and limped past me, letting her silver-handled cane land heavily on floorboards laid bare by the sale of our Turkey carpet. At the door, she paused and turned. “Affection? From that serpent-tongued harridan? I wish you joy of her.” And with that, she left our home, and our lives, for ten long years.

As I read this the first time, it was as if the passage caused a record scratch—my brain screeched to a halt at the phrase “serpent-tongued harridan” and after a quick pause, I had a downpour of thoughts: SERPENT-TONGUED HARRIDAN! Haha! OMG to be called a serpent-tongued anything! LOL. Aunt March is so mean, but also kinda badass too. Also, what is a harridan???

I pulled this card April 2024—a foreshadowing of sorts. The ouroboros represents the great life cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

I read it again, and then one more time, before I grabbed my pen and underlined the phrase. I wanted to confirm my own assumption on the meaning of the word “harridan”—it’s an 1860s version of “brat” right? I quickly turned to Merriam-Webster, which gave me a simple one word definition: shrew. So, as I suspected: MARMEE IS BRAT.

Scrolling further down, the list of synonyms is like the roll call of a get together with my favorite girlfriends:

DRAGON-LADY? BATTLE-AX?? VIXEN??? Sign me up for this club, please. This list filled me with the unique joy of finding a word that encapsulated such a base and fundamental identity of myself that I almost started crying. (Somebody, quick! Tell me there is a Japanese or Swedish word for this feeling!)

In all seriousness, write it on my damn tombstone:

HERE LIES THAT SERPENT-TONGUED HARRIDAN FROM TEXAS.

Or, spell it out in my obit:

Cassie was survived by her partner Nik, her two sassy sisters, her bitch pack friends from the city, and five unruly nieces and nephews. She was a lawyer at one point in her life, but everyone who knows her would say her true loves were her English setters and the act of yapping. She well-actually’ed herself all the way to the grave, that serpent-tongued harridan! RIP, to our red-lipped dragon lady, she was a french-fry-loving, coffee-guzzling vixen if we’ve ever seen one! You can now find her haunting the enemies of her best friend with all her fury-filled OpIniOnSss, as she cackles by the light of every full moon.

Back to Marmee. As if to prove the point, a few moments after Aunt March does her own version of storming out, Marmee turns her own vitriolic attention to Mr. March, her ‘beloved’ husband:

“You stifle me! You crush me! You preach emancipation, and yet you enslave me, in the most fundamental way. Am I not to have the freedom to express myself, in my own home? In the face of such insult? You call our girls your ‘little women’; well, I am your belittled woman, and I’m tired of it. Tired of suppressing my true feelings, tired of schooling my heart to order, as if I were some errant pupil and you the schoolmaster. I will not be degraded in this way.”

*Snaps and cheers, Marmee! Get it, girl!* Talk about some dragon lady fire-breathing. Her serpent tongue certainly turned some phrases—the likes of which even Taylor Swift would be proud. “I am your belittled woman”!?! Hot damn, the venom! Aunt March was certainly right. Yet, what was levied against Marmee as an insult is actually a rather noble moniker. Or, at least, it’s noble in the eyes of yours truly—a sassy Millennial and aspiring serpent-tongued myself.

By now, my friend, you realize I love to glom onto a good word or phrase. Good writing does that to me. It attaches to me like a piece of sour candy adhering to my molars—sticky and sweet. Once I’m done saying it once, I just want more and more of it until I’m on a sugar high bouncing with energy. You should have seen me at our book club meeting—I was positively buzzing with the anticipation of sharing my new favorite phrase with the group. Here, have a piece of it, it’s chewy and delicious!

With the snake imagery so present this year, it’s no surprise that I was destined to obsess over this phrase the minute I opened this book. If my own rumination from a few weeks ago2 was any indication, the snake imagery is slithering beside me this year, like my own personal literary familiar. Isn’t she ssssso cute?

As with any literary repetition, I must keep poking at the meaning. I must test its viscosity, its strength in my vocabulary. And, of course, curiosity begets more curiosity. Ultimately, that post felt like Snake Musings, Chapter One, “The Shedding of Scales,” which left me with even more questions than I had when I set out with the initial prompt. I ended that missive with this:

Remember what remains. The new-baby-snake-skinned version of you. Of me. She is the core self. And, she is hissing, slithering, coiling. She can’t come to the phone right now because a new version of her is stepping forward, shining from within in all her iridescence, leaving the old dead scales behind.

After I hit publish, there was a moment of deafening silence in my head—a momentary void of noise only to be broken with a simple question: now what?

If we shed the skin of that which no longer serves us, what do we do in our new-found baby snake skin? What happens in Snake Musings, Chapter Two? Well, actually…the universe answer lies in this vocabulary lover’s dream of a phrase. If we are to embody a serpent-tongued harridan (the obvious choice), why, pray tell, should we? And, most importantly, what does it actually look like in practice?

One answer, it seems, sounds a lot like dignified impertinence3 in that Lizzie Bennett, another lit gal most likely to be called a serpent-tongued harridan, would approve speaking one’s mind, even if it shirks the societal expectations for a woman to be subservient, docile, and demure. We could also be a serpent-tongued harridan by using our voice as resistance to patriarchal systems, nay-sayers, bigots, racists, assholes, elected officials with callous policy positions, close-minded folks—the Aunt Marches of the world. Perhaps we hisssss at someone who punches down, spews hate, “Roman salutes” (we all know what that was, sir), gaslights—there is certainly no shortage of dunces for us to hiss at.

In my estimation, then, the serpent-tongued harridan uses her powers to promote, defend, advocate, and support on her platform, no matter the size, any person who is subjugated, discriminated against, demeaned, or oppressed.

And, above all else, she rests when she needs it because even a fire-breathing dragon lady needssss a le nap. Battle-axing is an exhausting businessss.