Laurie

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”!

After Louisa died, Lulu returned to Switzerland to live with her father. She married, had children, eventually settled in Germany and died in 1975 at 95.

Though Alcott never married, she did take in May’s daughter, Louisa, after May’s untimely death in 1879, caring for little “Lulu” for the next eight years.

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.

17 Years Old

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.

When we first meet Amy, she’s 12 years old and mostly stays in the background as her older sisters go out and explore the world.

Amy, though, has long been maligned by Little Women readers. Amy becomes the family’s golden child, heading to Europe to study art and eventually becoming wife to Laurie, Jo’s best friend and the man everyone—the characters in the novel and readers poring over the text—thought Jo would marry.

In the film — based on Louisa May Alcott’s debut novel — the third March daughter Beth catches scarlet fever when she goes to care for the impoverished Hummel family, whose baby is sick from the disease (also called scarlatina).

If you want to get specific, and we know you do, she’s a paternal aunt by marriage – their father’s sister-in-law. For a while, Jo works as Aunt March’s companion, reading to her and taking care of her spoiled little dog.

This book, Good Wives, came about after her original work did really well. Good Wives was published in 1869, according to Book Riot, and that is the portion of the book in which Beth’s death from scarlet fever occurs.

Jo, the second-oldest sister, was the character everyone wanted to be. She’s fun and smart and so determined to be independent and become a writer that she rejects a marriage offer from her best friend Laurie, the rich boy who lives next door.

Meg is 16, Jo is 15, Beth is 13, and Amy is 12. Part 1 is exactly a year, from Christmas to Christmas. Part 2 covers roughly a decade, from Meg’s marriage at age 21 to Beth dying to Amy and Jo marrying and starting families of their own.

Meg