Deceased (1832–1888)

Louisa was too weak to protest; her career as a Civil War nurse was over. A combination of the rigours of Louisa’s nursing service, her serious illness, and the treatment she received, profoundly affected her health. She was never fully well thereafter.

1832 – 1888. When the Civil War broke out, Alcott was eager to aid the cause and at the age of thirty began service as a nurse at the Union Hospital at Georgetown in December, 1862. After six weeks of service, she fell ill with typhoid pneumonia, nearly dying, and was returned home.

The family moved to Boston in 1834, where Alcott’s father established an experimental school and joined the Transcendental Club with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Louisa

Its success, a big surprise to both Louisa and Thomas Niles, made Louisa a best-selling and best-earning author. It brought her wealth and fame. After Little Women, Louisa wrote mainly children’s stories.

Abigail May Alcott Nieriker became a well-respected painter. She studied at the School of the Fine Arts in Boston, and traveled to Paris. Later, her wealthy older sister financed three more trips to Europe. Lulu was sent to live with her aunt, Louisa May, in Boston. Alcott herself died nine years later, in 1888.

Unlike Jo, Alcott never married or had biological children (although she cared for her young niece, nicknamed “Lulu,” until the author’s death in 1888 at age 55). “Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life,” Alcott wrote in her journal.

7 Amy: Alcott Chose It Laurie ended up with Amy because Alcott decided to make Amy Laurie’s romantic partner. It could’ve been the way that Alcott, often a writer of more scandalous stories, wanted to bring in a little scandal to this otherwise moral story.

A lot of the relationship between Jo and Laurie was based on mutually reinforcing ideas of toxic masculinity. Eventually, this turned out against both of them. When Laurie proposes to Jo he says he loves her because Jo has always been so good to him. He doesn´t love her because of her personality or her ambitions.

At the end of Little Women, Jo doesn’t marry Laurie, her childhood friend. Instead, she marries Friedrich Bhaer, an older German professor she meets while living in New York.

Laurie is fifteen, almost sixteen, when the book opens, whereas Amy is twelve. This means there is a three year age difference between them.

Amy stayed with Aunt March because she needed to be quarantined while her sister Beth was ill. Even though Aunt March did not approve of Jo’s behavior and threatened to leave her nothing, in the end, Aunt March leaves property to Jo and this gives Jo a way to start a home-based business.

Alcott herself never married. One of the lines that Gerwig gives to Jo in the movie — “I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe” — is actually the author’s own.

March is all true, only not half good enough.” Jo, the second oldest sister, is based on Alcott herself. She is spirited, which 19th-century slang for a feminist with opinions, who dreams of becoming a writer. Her older sister Meg is a promising actress who gives up on that dream for a life of financial stability.

Wineapple mentions the unusual nickname — “ ‘Marmee,’ as her daughters called her” — but does not discuss its pronunciation. The Alcott (and March) girls, New Englanders all, would have pronounced the “r” as “ah” when they referred to their mother. In other words, they called her “Mahmee” — or “Mommy”!

What I took from it is that the man is homeless or at least not in a good home, the close ups on his hands were to show the fingertips turning black on the end to indicate frostbite. That is why she throws her scarf in the bag aswell she wants to provide everything she can to keep him warm.

Jo cuts her hair in order to sell it for twenty-five dollars. She gives the money to Marmee, who is going to Washington where Mr. March has taken ill. Jo considers the money her way of contributing to “making father comfortable, and bringing him home.”

Mother March – Marmee – works sewing Union Army uniforms. Her 16-year-old daughter Meg is a governess to a wealthy family and her 15-year-old sister Jo is a companion for a rich old relative. Beth, who is 13, has severe social anxiety and is home-schooled, while 12-year-old Amy attends a school of modern mean-girlness.

Jo sold her hair as a heroic gesture because she was too proud to beg Aunt March for money. She caught typhoid pneumonia while nursing solders during the Civil War, and while she was delirious doctors ordered her hair cut off.

The march began around dawn with Muslim prayers and religious speakers calling for unity and family renewal.

Margaret March

It turns out that they had scarlet fever, and Beth—then 13 years old in the book—gets it herself after being in contact with them. According to the Mayo Clinic, “scarlet fever is a bacterial illness that develops in some people who have strep throat.” Symptoms include a fever, bright-red body rash, and a sore throat.

Marmee and her daughters help the poor family, the Hummels, by bringing them breakfast on Christmas morning. Beth also tends to the Hummels alone when their baby has scarlet fever because her sisters are all busy. She contracts scarlet fever from them and dies.

Marme is a village in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

In Little Women, the four March daughters have a close relationship with their mother, whom they love and respect, as Marmee is a positive leader and role model throughout their lives.