by Kate Bolick
It cannot be Meg, because her marriage must demonstrate Marmee’s thoughts about how ideal marriages work.
It cannot be Beth, because she is too sickly to take on marital responsibilities and because she must die.
Readers of part one—and there were lots of them since it was a huge success—wanted Laurie to marry Jo, but Alcott herself was not married, and did not want the character she based upon herself to betray her own sense of independence.
So the only one left was Amy, and Alcott’s narrative task was to make this marriage not only believable but interesting.
The fact that Amy has developed into “the flower of the family” does not spare her from having the same sort of humiliating experience in the third chapter of part two that she had in part one with the pickled limes. She has been diligently working on her art, and has been taking a drawing class with some other girls. At the end of the semester (as we would call it), she decides to invite the other girls to a “fête,” so elaborately planned that Jo, hard at work on her novel, is annoyed. She exclaims, “Why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don’t care a sixpence for you?” And in fact the fête does go wrong—only one of the girls shows up, but Amy and her family entertain her and the other girl has a good time in the end. Jo’s response to Amy’s failed plans is laughter, Marmee’s is regret at Amy’s disappointment, but this time, Amy is not disappointed—she says, “I am satisfied; I’ve done what I undertook, and it’s not my fault that it failed.” And she seems to have learned the same thing with regard to her strenuous artistic endeavors, described earlier in the chapter: she has made use of the materials at hand, including hand-me-down paints and palettes and local scenery; she has taught herself to keep trying—slow and steady, the tortoise rather than the hare. Could Amy, too, make money from her work and help support the family? Jo—now a successful writer—provides Amy with the model. Might Amy too have a publishing career? It is possible that she could illustrate books or draw cartoons for newspapers. But once again, Amy’s function as a character is to provide contrast with Jo, if only because the reader would turn away if both characters made the same choices, had the same ambitions. As a “political operative” rather than an “agitator,” Amy aims with her art to express her individuality, but also make use of the system, not wreck it. Artists who make use of the system, as I have done as a realistic novelist and as May did as a realistic painter, want to depict and critique what they observe, to pass it through their own consciousness and present it to the reader or the viewer. They find the world around themselves ever more interesting as they focus upon it. Jo, as a writer of fantasy stories, is more interested in making use of emotions like fear and dread to excite her readers.
In the sixth chapter of part two, Amy begins organizing Jo, something I have seen younger siblings do, and usually in the reasonable manner that a smaller and weaker person must adopt. Meg has attempted to do it by example, Marmee with good advice, Beth by sweetness, and Aunt March with impatience and sharp reproaches, but Jo continues to be outspoken, impulsive, and not especially feminine. Amy knows that social interaction is worthwhile and productive; she pushes Jo to fulfill a bargain she has made to accompany Amy on “half a dozen calls” (social visits to neighbors) in return for a sketch Amy made of Beth. Amy understands, as she did about the fête, that being well connected is valuable, whether or not all of the connections are pleasant (perhaps this is the lesson she learned from having to put up with Aunt March as well as from going to school). She also knows that Jo needs practice repaying her end of the bargain. Amy’s method of reforming Jo is debate—Jo uses several arguments in an attempt to weasel out of the calls—and then Amy’s response sounds like one a mother or an older sister might make, telling Jo how to dress, how to behave, why they are making this effort, but doing so with much patience and some flattery, keeping at it until Jo has been guided to the first call. Jo, of course, uses the first call to make fun of Amy’s assertions: she adopts a stylish demeanor but doesn’t say anything, leading the woman they have called upon, Mrs. Chester, to declare that she is “haughty” and “uninteresting”—the sisters overhear her remark as they leave the house (Jo has caused annoyance, as agitators do). But Amy keeps at it in spite of her own feelings of disappointment. The first benefit of their day of visits is that they have a long conversation as they walk from house to house, making progress in their understanding of one another, and the second, as it turns out, is that no matter how hard she tries, Amy cannot make Jo understand how to be agreeable, and so Amy unexpectedly profits by her contrast with her sister. Their last visit is to Aunt March and Aunt Carroll, who are discussing something that they set aside when the girls appear. The hint is when the two women ask Jo and Amy about their language skills. Jo says that she is “very stupid about studying anything” and that she “can’t bear French, it’s such a slippery, silly sort of language.” Amy says that she has learned a lot of French from Esther, Aunt March’s French maid, and that she is grateful for it. The die is cast.
As the only one of the girls whose job is to navigate the social world, Amy faces challenges that get larger and more complex. Having impressed Mrs. Chester during their social visit, she is invited to be part of a “fair” to support the freedmen after the end of the Civil War, an event where various tables are set up and staffed by well-dressed socially prominent young women about Amy’s age. Amy begins at one of the prominent tables, but is suddenly and unaccountably moved to the flower table, on the periphery. The first day doesn’t go well and Amy is disheartened, but when Marmee, Jo, and Laurie find out what has happened, Laurie comes to the rescue by having his gardener supply her the second day with “a wilderness of flowers.” The March family and Laurie and his friends surround her table, buy the flowers, make her spot the liveliest at the fair and the most profitable. Jo not only amuses people visiting the table, she also walks around, scouting for information, and discovers that May Chester, Mrs. Chester’s daughter, about Amy’s age, has betrayed her because she was jealous that Amy had been given the prominent table. May apologizes, apparently sincerely, and then Laurie’s friends go to her table and buy her goods, too. The result is not departure, as when Amy leaves the school after the limes incident, or quiet acceptance, as when Amy acknowledges the failure of her fête by being satisfied that she at least did her job, but general reconciliation, pleasure, and success. Amy has learned to navigate the specifically female social world by making the best of her assigned place, but also enlisting allies and putting on a good face. She ends up not only being accepted, but having an enjoyable day. The other girls all praise her; Marmee says nothing, and if I had been in the room, I wouldn’t have said anything either—Amy’s lesson has been learned by all of them.
Then Aunt Carroll sends a letter, inviting Amy along on a trip to Europe. Jo and Amy now have to work out whatever feelings of conflict or jealousy Jo feels about Amy’s fulfillment of a wish that Jo has also had for a long time. Jo asserts that Amy will have “all the fun” when she first finds out about the invitation. Amy tells Jo what she hopes to do—to practice her art and find out, once and for all, whether she has any “genius”—she is looking for inspiration and to understand herself and she plans to work hard at it. Like a modern young woman embarking on an independent life, she is also thinking about her other options, as she always does, as she has learned to do—if she has no genius, she is well aware that she can become an art teacher, or she can marry a wealthy man and fund artists who do have genius. Alcott uses their conversation to illustrate Amy’s and Jo’s different but reasonable approaches to making their lives. Their conversation goes directly to one of the major differences between them: money. Jo is the one who writes popular fiction for money, Amy is the one who scrapes together what materials she can find to pursue her artistic ambitions and makes no money, as yet. Jo’s moneymaking is seen as a necessity so that the Marches can get by.
But because Amy dresses well, behaves properly, and gets along with Aunt March, and because, unlike Jo, she does not dismiss the idea of marrying for money, readers may misunderstand Amy. Amy is not more selfish than Jo, she is more canny. By this point in part two, Amy has already demonstrated the value of reason, understanding, thoughtfulness, getting along. If we return to the spot in part one where Marmee tells Meg and Jo what she wants for her daughters, the first descriptive word out of her mouth is “beautiful.” It is Amy who has done what her mother wanted, who has used her looks, i.e., become beautiful in the eyes of society, to get ahead, but she has done so not out of vanity or greed but because, through her art, she has sought to understand the nature of beauty—in herself, in admiring Aunt March’s jewelry, in painting, in relationships.
Once she departs on her trip, even though Amy is accompanied by her aunt, her uncle, and her cousin Flo (who seems to be about the same age), Amy is on her own in a way she has never been before—even on the ship, she is healthy and active, exploring the decks and the views, while “Aunt and Flo were poorly all the way.” In the first letter she sends home, she remarks, “[G]entlemen really are very necessary aboard ship, to hold on to, or to wait upon one; and as they have nothing to do, it’s a mercy to make them useful, otherwise they would smoke themselves to death, I’m afraid.” Amy’s trip is a whirlwind tour of what it means to be worldly, and she makes use of the opportunity. In general, her letters are amusing and high-spirited. She becomes involved in a practice romance, with one of Laurie’s English friends, Fred Vaughn, but she understands that although Fred is strongly attracted to her, he is “rash,” while she is “prudent” (well aware of all the lessons she has learned).
In the meantime, Jo gets away, too, though not as far as Europe. Alcott’s principal task for the rest of part two is to marry off Jo and Amy, and to do so in a way that her readers will accept, and that illustrates her theories about love, marriage, and money. I remember when I was reading Little Women as a girl, I sensed as soon as he entered that Professor Bhaer was to claim Jo, and I was put off—he was too old, too exotic. When I read it as an adult, I understand his appeal to Jo—he is witty and good-natured, easygoing, apparently able to calm her and advise her. Laurie, the handsome, youthful, energetic, talented, wayward young man, charges Jo up and triggers her pleasure in conflict, as is evident in the chapter “Heartache” when he proposes to her, over her own objections, and is argumentatively rejected. We all knew this was coming, but it is a sign of his passion that even though he knew it, too, he’s willing to try. After she turns Laurie down, it is not implausible that Mr. Laurence might take him to Europe to forget Jo—Mr. Laurence has been the example of a wealthy American cosmopolitan all along. The difficult task is to get Amy and Laurie together in a believable and sympathetic manner, and Alcott begins by portraying the freshly minted grown-up Amy that Laurie encounters in Nice:
As she stood at the distant window with her head half turned, and one hand gathering up her dress, the slender, white figure against the red curtains was as effective as a well-placed statue.
Amy is not attempting to woo Laurie—she is attempting to show him that the girl he thought he knew is now a woman who both fits in in Europe and does not—she continues to possess certain American traits, such as a love of physical activity, which she shows when they go to a ball, and she “neither romped nor sauntered, but danced with spirit and grace, making the delightsome pastime what it should be.” She doesn’t dance with him at first, but does something more effective: lets him watch her and gauge her qualities from a distance as she dances with other men. Then she sits with him and demonstrates her new self-knowledge when they have a straightforward and amusing conversation. In other words, they are made for each other—they both can operate skillfully in society and still manage to enjoy themselves in the presence of others (because unlike Jo, Amy minds her manners), but they can also have an honest connection in which Amy, unlike many women of her era, can speak and be heard, not in spite of her poverty, but because she has learned how to make the most of that very poverty. Laurie then monopolizes her for the rest of the evening.
Alcott is clear that Amy has not set her cap for Laurie, nor is she attempting to entrap him. After an interlude with Meg and John, we go back to Nice and observe how their relationship develops. They spend a lot of time together, and the more time they spend, the more Laurie is impressed, but Amy is not—she comes to have the same opinion of him that Jo and his grandfather have, that he is idling his youth away, has no purpose in life, always takes the easy way out. They go for a ride and then a walk, and she does again what she tried to do with Jo—to use reasoned argument to convince him to do what he should: to visit his grandfather, and thereby meet his obligations. She makes use of her talent for conversation and banter (even telling him “I despise you”) to keep Laurie talking until he hears her true opinion, “Because with every chance for being good, useful and happy, you are faulty, lazy and miserable.” He knows, having observed her for a month, that Amy herself is the example of someone who has chosen to make use of her chances to be good, useful, and happy, that she has put up with him and not pushed him away, as Jo did, and her “calm, cool voice” is more convincing than the frustrated appeals of others who have tried to reform him. And patience isn’t her only weapon. Some time later, he looks at a sketch she has made of him lying in the grass. He sees his own idleness, but he also sees her artistic skill, and admires the way that her hard work has borne fruit. When he goes off to make use of his time and opportunities, she says she is glad he is gone, but she knows, maybe not as well as the reader knows, that she “shall miss him.” Her attempt to argue Jo into reforming did not work, but her attempt with Laurie does.
After Beth’s death, the question is not whether Amy and Laurie will marry—the reader already expects them to—but how they will get there, and so Alcott delves into their inner lives as they go about their business. Amy turns down Fred Vaughn, not angrily, but decidedly; Laurie tries pursuing art and music; when he composes an opera he wants Jo to be the female lead, but he can’t put her in—she is too unappealing. He puts someone in, and that someone turns out, he realizes, to be based on his thoughts and feelings about Amy. She sends him pleasant letters and sketches and vows to be agreeable. Because they are traveling, the letters about Beth’s illness never reach them, and when they separately get the news of her death, they rush to console each other. When Amy reunites with Laurie, she sees both their shared grief and his kindness, generosity, and love in coming from Germany to Switzerland to comfort her (and himself). In this way, Alcott defines their love as specifically theirs, made up of their psychological quirks and predispositions (let’s say “nature” and “nurture,” or “temperament” and “history”), and a contrast to the love Meg and John share, and the love Jo and Professor Bhaer share.
Jo accepts Professor Bhaer (they later go on to establish a progressive school rather like the schools that Alcott’s father, Bronson, was known for). Jo must evolve, too, and she does, especially after she meets Professor Bhaer and understands that he offers her an opportunity that she never thought she would have: love. Laurie and Jo realize they are better as friends and brother and sister than they might have been as husband and wife—another definition of love—and Amy accepts that she might not have realized all her artistic ambitions, but she loves her life, her husband, and her frail baby daughter named after Beth—“the dread of losing her was the shadow over Amy’s sunshine.” Self-aware to the end, Amy tells her mother what she has learned. She says, “I never ought to [despair], while I have you to cheer me up, Marmee, and Laurie to take more than half of every burden . . . in spite of my one cross, I can say with Meg, ‘Thank God, I’m a happy woman.’” Yes, Amy is the one to get the classic happy ending—true love, ideal mate, plenty of money, happiness, but from the beginning to the end of Little Women, Alcott has made sure that the reader knows that such an ending was earned through constant
self-awareness and observation.
And here is the poignant postscript—May Alcott did make her name in the art world—a painting of hers, La Négresse, was exhibited at the 1879 Paris Salon, the most prestigious show in France, or, some say, in the world, at the time. Her painting was the only one by an American woman artist in the exhibition. And she did have a daughter, Lulu, whom she gave birth to at the age of thirty-nine. But May died when the baby was seven weeks old, and for the next eight years, Louisa raised Lulu until she herself died at the age of fifty-four.