by Kate Bolick
What would I, a twentieth- and twenty-first-century mother, have done and said in similar circumstances? In the first place, Marmee never addresses the real crime, which was the envious reporting of the limes by the other student. She seems to believe that bullying and backstabbing are so much the norm that the only thing a bullied child can do is turn the other cheek. Jo does take a letter to the teacher and Amy does leave the school, but Marmee never talks to Amy about the injustice, except to suggest that maybe she deserved it. When my own children were bullied in school, I went to the teachers and the principal, and they attempted to rein in the bullies, not the bullied. In addition, perhaps because my eighth grade history teacher wrote on my report card, “She only does what she wants to do,” thinking that was a bad thing, I would also have told Marmee that focus, desire, determination, and resistance, qualities that Amy has, are what lead to accomplishment and self-realization.
We are now just under a third of the way into the novel, but even though Jo is the principal character, we have seen enough of Amy to understand that she has potential that the others, even Marmee, don’t yet perceive.
The next person to hurt Amy’s feelings is Jo, who, Amy discovers, is planning to go with Meg and Laurie to a play at a nearby theater. Amy knows of the show and wants to accompany the others, but the older girls don’t simply tell her that there aren’t enough tickets or that the seats have already been reserved, they disdain her—Jo says, “Little girls shouldn’t ask questions,” and Meg, though speaking more kindly, says, “be a good child.” Amy is enraged and calls out, “You’ll be sorry for this, Jo March, see if you ain’t.” Everything seems fine when they get home; Jo checks her things because Amy has a history of vengeful acts and a previous argument had ended in Amy pulling out the top drawer of Jo’s dresser and upending it. Alcott writes that both girls have “quick tempers.” What Amy has done this time is much more serious, though—she has burned the manuscript Jo has been working on. After confessing, she shows no immediate remorse and Jo grabs her and shakes her “till her teeth chattered in her head.” Amy then attempts to apologize but her apology is rejected. Marmee stays out of it, knowing that Jo has to back away from her anger on her own (and if I had discovered that one of my children shook the other one until her teeth chattered, I would have NOT stayed out of it). The next day, Jo and Laurie leave Amy behind once again, when they go skating on the nearby river. Amy wants to go along and Meg advises her to do so, thinking that Laurie and the exercise will put Jo in a better mood. When Amy follows them to the river, Jo ignores her. Because Amy is not very near the older kids and is concentrating on putting on her skates and catching up with Jo, she doesn’t hear Laurie warn about the fragile ice away from the banks. The worst thing that Jo does is ignore her own conscience, thinking, “No matter whether she heard or not, let her take care of herself.” Jo’s punishment is instantaneous: the ice breaks, Amy falls through into “the black water.” It is Laurie who saves Amy, with Jo’s help. After they get Amy home and she is safe in bed, Alcott devotes the rest of the chapter to Jo’s conversation with Marmee about what Jo needs to learn about controlling her temper. What seems to be overlooked is not only Amy’s pain and fear, but also that Amy never again acts out of rage or thoughtlessness—as usual, she learns her lesson on her own, and the lesson is that if anyone is going to take care of her, it must be herself. If these were my daughters, I would have postponed my conversation with Jo, spent time with Amy, comforting her and watching her for evidence of PTSD, brought them together for a conversation about both the burned manuscript and what Jo has done, and then explained very clearly to both of them that they must learn to control their tempers. I would have given them some advice: take a few deep breaths before you speak, walk away if you can’t control yourself, have a conversation, not a fight, come to me with a complaint so that I can help you negotiate.
A few pages later, Marmee details her hopes and dreams for her daughters to Meg and Jo—she wants them “to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected.” In other words, the first thing she wants—or the first thing she thinks of—is that she wants them to be seen by others in a positive way, to achieve social standing in a physical way, an intellectual way, and a moral way, in that order. Meg and Jo then draw her out, and the conversation turns to marriage—should it be for money, or not for money? All three of them recognize that a nineteenth-century woman’s economic comfort is not often in her own hands, that most women have to marry to support themselves, and Marmee is very specific when she says, “I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.” It is Jo who voices Alcott’s own choice: “Then we’ll be old maids.” Someone has to, because Alcott herself was an “old maid.” Meg is destined by her author to be the happy, beloved, and contented poor man’s wife, and so Jo and Amy have two choices between them. They must decide which one of them is to be the old maid, and which the rich man’s wife.
I do not remember receiving any advice from my mother, or giving any advice to my daughters, about overarching goals—what I wanted was for them to have goals of their own, and the way they were to discover them was through education. My mother read my report cards, made sure I did my homework, went to teacher-parent conferences, encouraged reading and going to the library; I did the same with my daughters. The path to womanhood was through the corridors at school and on the playground, where we learned to socialize with the other students and navigate the larger world. My job as a girl was to look around and decide what I wanted to do, what I was able to do, and how these two things might be combined. I thought that my job as a mother was not to think of beauty first, or even admiration, it was to think of effort, of proper behavior, of thought, of ambition. I did not think about my children growing up to be “good”—I knew that if they were good now, they would be good as adults. As her mother, I would not have taken Amy out of her school, or if I had, I would have found her another. Once Amy is removed from the school, her growing understanding of the social world must become more random, less productive. But she keeps at it because she is smart enough to understand that she has to in order to grow up and also to get what she wants.
In this way, too, Amy is more modern than her sisters. She goes about shaping her life in a conscious manner that seems calculated to the other girls. For example, as Little Women unfolds, a lot of attention is given to Jo’s literary efforts, because whatever they are, and Jo herself admits they are trashy, they help support the family. Amy is just as dedicated to her own artistic efforts—in chapter four, Alcott writes that her sisters call her “Little Raphael” and that she has “a decided talent for drawing, and was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art.” Let’s say that if I were her mother, I would not say “queer,” I would say “original,” but as time passes, her efforts come to be seen by the other members of her family as a demonstration of vanity, partly because she would rather make “mud pies” than do housework. Her taste improves—she moves on from mud pies to drawing, “poker art,” and painting. But the family needs money, and Jo’s popular magazine stories do make some, while Amy’s efforts make none. The “mud pies” reveal something about Amy, even though the words are a bit derogative—she knows that in order to learn, she has to make do with materials that the family can afford. The others might be amused at her efforts, but she knows what any artist would tell her—that practice of any kind is productive. Once again a modern woman in the making, she wants to find a way to express herself. We can compare her efforts to Jo’s literary ones—Jo writes her pulp fiction tales to make money, without thinking about whether she is expressing her own inner life. Since Amy is learning, and not making money, she focuses on developing her vision and her skills.
When the girls’ father is injured in the Civil War, and Marmee and Mr. Brooke must go to him, leaving the girls in
the care of the family maid and cook, Hannah, the girls discuss how they will handle their unease. Jo says, “‘Hope and keep busy;’ that’s the motto for us.” Meg is vexed about having to go to her child-care job; she would rather help around the house. Amy “with an important air” declares that she, Beth, and Hannah can take care of the house, and then, taking a bit of sugar, she adds what I consider to be one of her most revealing remarks, “I think anxiety is very interesting.” The other girls can’t help laughing in response. But what Amy is showing is a penchant for introspection, for weighing all aspects of her temperament—her feelings, her desires, her needs, her obligations—and sorting them out so that she can learn from them. As a youngest child who must observe her three older sisters, as well as Marmee, Hannah, and her other relatives, she has a large amount of data to sort through—youngest children may be dismissed, but they cannot dismiss. They are forced to contemplate the psychology of the others—what works, what doesn’t work, what they can or cannot get away with, and how they might push that envelope subtly and effectively. Amy already knows that bribery—that is, pickled limes—and revenge—the burned manuscript—don’t work. As she grows up, she recognizes that what does work is a combination of charm, determination, and self-knowledge. These qualities are demonstrated in her letter to Marmee in chapter sixteen. Alcott makes fun of her a bit by including her misspellings and vanities (one of which is signing a letter to her own mother with her formal name, “Amy Curtis March”), but as silly as the letter is intended to be (she writes, “Meg says my punchtuation and spelling are disgraceful and I am mortyfied but dear me I have so many things to do I can’t stop”), it is clear even in its single paragraph that Amy is interested in behaving properly, feeling calm and comforted, having an indulgence or two, not being teased (by Laurie), dressing correctly, taming her own feelings of dissatisfaction, organizing her activities, and expressing love for her parents. Amy is the only sister who comes to understand that anxiety can be enlightening if she is willing to examine its sources.
When Beth comes down with scarlet fever, Amy happens not to be nearby. Meg and Jo agree to care for Beth, and Amy, because she hasn’t had scarlet fever, is sent away, over her objections, to Aunt March, their father’s wealthy aunt. At first Amy is lonely and resentful—she realizes “how much she was beloved and petted at home.” Jo had been tending to Aunt March as a way of earning some money, but did not get along with her and was resentful of Aunt March’s rules and crotchets. Amy begins with the same attitude, but in fact, Aunt March likes Amy because she is “more docile and amiable” than Jo. I would say that Amy’s behavior is not so much docile and amiable—those words imply that Amy dissembles in order to get along with her great-aunt—as it is thoughtful and reserved, owing to her desire to learn from her new surroundings. She is now being exposed to a different, and more elegant, culture than the one she knows at home, in part because Aunt March has money, but also through Esther, Aunt March’s French maid. Esther not only tells Amy about France, Catholicism, and her own upbringing, she also shows her Aunt March’s treasures: her diamonds, her pearls, and her turquoise ring, which is the one Amy likes the most. Esther, in the true Balzac tradition, reveals to Amy that she has witnessed Aunt March’s will, and knows that the jewels are going to the March sisters after she dies. When, as a result of this, Amy becomes the “docile and amiable” attendant Aunt March desires, her new behavior is morally complex—Jo’s resistance to her aunt, by comparison, is presented as an honorable assertion that her aunt can’t buy her off. But if Amy were my daughter, forced to live with a disagreeable relative because of a family crisis, I would advise her to find ways to get along, to try to understand the complexities of her aunt’s psychology, to please her as a way of making her not only more agreeable, but happier. Family conflict is not merely a financial issue. If there really was an Aunt March in the Alcott family, perhaps it was she who was offended by Bronson Alcott’s peculiarities, and what she longed for was a relation she could like and care for. Amy is a realist—she thinks the ring is beautiful and would like to have it—her artistic endeavors show that she is attracted and moved by beauty. But she also knows that what she is learning by living with Aunt March and Esther is worthwhile because her sense of the world is being expanded and enriched.
Amy again internalizes her lesson, this time by writing her own will, which the others go along with as if it is a pleasant joke. But the will is a sign of Amy’s constantly growing understanding of how the world works—she knows, because of her father’s illness, the Hummel baby’s death, and Beth’s illness, that death is a constant threat that can strike suddenly. She knows that she has possessions that she values and that she wishes for her relatives to value, and she knows that being thoughtful and organized is the best option. When she decides how she is going to distribute her legacy, she also takes a stab at understanding the desires of her friends and relatives and leaves them, along with other things, what she thinks they would most desire. When she is discussing the will with Laurie, who is evidently humoring her, she adds what she calls “a postscript,” though Laurie corrects her, telling her it is a “codicil.” After she dies, she would like to have her hair cut and locks given to everyone—she not only knows that her hair, thick, curly, and golden, is her glory, she also knows that she would like to be remembered as a person, not merely as a producer of art. Her will shows that Amy has the wisdom and self-knowledge to plan for the possibility of death. Then, when Laurie tells her that Beth’s illness remains serious, she secretly goes into the chapel she and Esther have built, and prays, with tears, for Beth’s recovery, demonstrating that she has plenty of feelings that she is wary of revealing, unlike Jo, who habitually acts on impulse.
The day Marmee comes home, Beth recovers from her bout of scarlet fever, and Laurie is sent to Aunt March’s house to tell Amy the good news. Amy’s first thought is that her private prayers have paid off. Marmee appears and Amy takes her to her private “chapel” and explains how she has been making use of it. For once Marmee is approving, but her approval only lasts until she sees the turquoise ring that Aunt March has given her. She says, “I think you’re rather young for such ornaments, Amy.” By this time, perhaps because of those hours of introspection the chapel represents, Amy has enough self-knowledge to respond that the ring is not a display, but a reminder to not be selfish. Marmee is amused, though she hides her amusement. But what Amy says to her mother demonstrates that the arc of her particular plot has been accomplished. It is not exactly that she has learned not to be vain or selfish, but that she has figured out a way to coordinate all of her ambitions. The ring symbolizes not only what she knows, but also what she wants and how she can go about getting it. She understands that investigating her feelings and molding her fears and desires in private (the chapel) can lead to understanding and getting along with others, including others who are wealthy and powerful, namely Aunt March and Laurie.
How she contrasts with Jo in this is evident in the next requirement of the plot, which is getting Meg married off to Laurie’s tutor, John Brooke. Amy plays no part in the brouhaha between Aunt March and Meg that causes Meg to realize that she does love John and does wish to marry him (Aunt March is offended that Meg refuses to marry for money), but Amy’s final observation demonstrates her way of looking at things: “‘You can’t say “nothing pleasant ever happens now,” can you, Meg?’ said Amy, trying to decide how she would group the lovers in the sketch she was planning to make.” Her role is to observe, to weigh one event against the other, to figure out how to represent the events and the feelings in her chosen art form in a way that will make sense of them both for herself and others. By the end of part one, Meg has learned to love, Jo has learned to accept that her impulsive desires can’t always be fulfilled, Beth has learned to survive. Amy is now thirteen, and if she were my daughter, I would say that her mind works in a sophisticated way—she has learned the most subtle and perhaps the most important lesson, to pay attentio
n.
Part two begins three years later, when Meg is old enough to get married. Jo is now earning some money with her writing; Laurie has gone to college and has an active social life among the local privileged young men. Amy is sixteen, and has become “quite a belle” (which might be simultaneously a recognition of her beauty and a gentle mockery of her desires to fit into the social world). Alcott is straightforward about how Amy’s response to Laurie’s friends differs from Jo’s—Jo feels so much like one of them that it seems natural to her to behave as they do. They like her, but “never fell in love with her.” A few of them give Amy the sort of attention that young men of social standing in the nineteenth century accorded to attractive but well-protected young women, “paying the tribute of a sentimental sigh or two at Amy’s shrine” (another small joke). Amy knows her role is to be appealing but remote, to lure them with her looks and behavior but never allow them to think she can be claimed. A signal of her power is that she “dared to order them about,” which surprises Beth. The only things that give her this power, since the March family have very little money or social standing, are her self-possession, her looks, and her choice to be assertive.
In some ways, the central character of part two is Laurie. Now that he is out of school and launched into the social world of wealth, he is in danger of wasting his time, wasting his money, or becoming dissolute. Throughout the two parts, he demonstrates many good qualities—he is generous, affectionate, kind, exuberant, and willing to learn (though sometimes he has to be prodded to do so). His main problem is that he has no sense of purpose, unlike every one of the March girls. Alcott implies that this is the effect of too much money, but also the effect of losing his own parents, and therefore having no strong models of respectable choices. School does not give him a goal or a mission—and there are no passages in the novel about how Laurie experiences his schooling other than as a way to connect with other young men of his social class; college is more of a club than a library. His grandfather is not really in a position to save him, so his redemption falls to the Marches. Alcott’s somewhat implausible narrative task is to keep him in the family, because he is a main character in the novel and is charming—to marry him off to some random girl would mean that this young woman would have to be incorporated into a group of young women we know very well—would she be a source of conflict or estrangement? Would she have her own point of view, her own issues that would cause plot twists or digressions? If she did not fit in in a believable way, then Laurie would have to be abandoned as a principal character. But who must he marry to stay in the family?