Amy and Laurie come home with a surprise. They could not wait to get home, so they married while they were still in Europe. Another surprise arrives in the form of Professor Bhaer. Jo is taking a long walk and runs into him. He has been offered a job teaching in the West. Jo is visibly startled by this news. As the day progresses, they reveal their true feelings for one another. They decide to marry, in spite of the age difference. Jo feels that she has finally found true happiness.
Soon after, Aunt March dies and leaves her estate to Jo. She and Friedrich decide to turn it into a boy’s school and home. The novel closes as the March, Laurence, Brooke, and Bhaer families gather for a harvest with all the little ones running around (Alcott 1-643).
Alcott’s life related, in many ways, to her novel. Jo is Alcott’s image of herself at that age. “In the character of Jo March-impetuous, sharp-tongued, imaginative, and compassionate-Alcott would draw on her own adolescence to create a complex, unforgettable heroine” (Burke 14). Both Jo and Alcott were second daughters of impoverished New England families. Like Alcott, Jo aspires to be a writer. They both wrote and published sensational stories in effort to support their families. Jo is Louisa May Alcott.
Jo’s character is not the only element of Little Women that is reminiscent of Alcott’s own life. The Alcott sisters like the March sisters were extremely close. They loved spending time with one another; they were their own best friends. Both sets of siblings staged plays for their friends and families. They plays were, naturally, written by Jo and Alcott.
Alcott even incorporated the personalities of her sisters into her novel. Jo and Amy were not as close to one another as they were to Beth and Meg, respectively. Similarly, Alcott and May’s personalities never meshed well. Nonetheless they did love one another deeply; Jo expressed this underlying love when she took in Lulu. Alcott’s sisters were her life.
Two events that she later merged into her novel strongly affected Alcott’s life. In 1858, her favorite sister, Elizabeth died, just as Beth died in Little Women. A year later, Alcott’s older sister Anna married. Just as Jo was distressed by Meg’s marriage, so was Alcott.
The very method in which the Alcott’s home ran, she included in her novel. Throughout most of Little Women, Mr. March is absent from the home. In Alcott’s own life, her father was also gone much of the time. In both households, the mother was in control. Abba was the model for Marmee. Alcott once declared, “All true, only not half good enough” (Burke 97). The March family was an idealized interpretation of the Alcotts.
Differences, few as they are, do exist between the two families. Alcott never left home and started her own family. Jo, on the other hand, married and had children. Another discrepancy is that Alcott fulfilled her wish of traveling abroad whereas Jo never did. The Alcotts were constantly moving from one home to another. The Marches, however, remained in their beloved home.
Little Women is the story of a generous family living in poverty in Concord, Massachusetts. Not only was it a story, but it was also Alcott’s way of sharing her life and experiences with others. It is a novel of such familiarity and intimacy that the only way she could have written it is to have lived it. Of course, she did romanticize her life into what she wanted it to be; but the basic story line is her autobiography.
Alcott expressed herself and her family as the March family. She was Jo, the fiery, independent one. She incorporated her significant life events into the novel, such as the death of her sister and her friendship with Laurie (based on her friendship with Ladislas Winiewski). Almost every aspect of the novel is somehow linked to Alcott’s own life experience. Little Women is the idealized autobiography of both Louisa May Alcott and the entire Alcott family.
Works Cited
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. New York: Grosset&Dunlap, 1990.
Benet, Laura. “Louisa May Alcott”. Famous New England Authors. New
York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1970. 84-91.
Burke, Kathleen. Louisa May Alcott. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
Chesterton, G.K. “Louisa Alcott”. A Handful of Authors: Essays on
Books and Writers. Ed. Dorothy Collins. New York: Sheed &
Ward, 1953. 163-167.
Douglas, Ann. “Louisa May Alcott”. American Writers: A Collection of
Literary Biographies. Ed. Leonard Unger. New York: Scribner’s,
1979. 1:29-52.
Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”.
Temple University Press, 1984.
Meigs, Cornelia. Invincible Louisa. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company,
1968.
Wright, Reg. “Louisa May Alcott”. Great Writers of the English
Language: Women Writers. New York: Cavendish, 1989. 8: 29-52.