1. Theme
The theme in this novel is about women and femininity. This book insists that women have a great deal to contribute, certainly to the home and domestic sphere, but also to literature, art, and an ethical society.
2. Main Characters
Jo March
Jo is an outspoken tomboy with a passion for writing. Because she displays good and bad traits in equal measure, Jo is a very unusual character for nineteenth-century didactic fiction. Jo’s bad traits like her rebelliousness, anger, and outspoken ways do not make her unappealing, rather they suggest her humanity.
Beth March
The third March sister, Beth is very shy and quiet. Like Meg, she always tries to please other people, and like Jo, she is concerned with keeping the family together. Beth struggles with minor faults, such as her resentment for the housework she must do. Beth resembles an old-fashioned heroine like those in the novels of the nineteenth-century English author Charles Dickens. Beth is a good person, but she is also a shade too angelic to survive in Alcott’s more realistic fictional world. And she was died now.
Amy March
The youngest March sister, Amy is an artistic beauty who is good at manipulating other people. Unlike Jo, Amy acts as a perfect lady because it pleases her and those around her. She gets what she wants in the end that is popularity, the trip to Europe, and Laurie.
Meg March
The oldest March sister, Meg battles her girlish weakness for luxury and money, and ends up marrying a poor man she loves. Meg represents the conventional and good. She is similar to her mother, for whom she was named. Meg sometimes tries to alter who she is in order to please other people, a trait that comes forth when she allows other girls to dress her up like a rich girl at her friend Annie Moffat’s house. She becomes an agreeable housewife, pretending to like politics because her husband does, and forgoing luxury because her husband is poor.
Laurie Laurance
The Marches’ charming, fun, and intelligent next-door neighbor, Laurie becomes particularly close to Jo but ends up marrying Amy. In between the publication of Part One and Part Two, Alcott received many letters asking her to marry Jo to Laurie. Perhaps to simultaneously please her readers and teach them a lesson, Alcott had Jo get married, but not to Laurie. Laurie struggles with his grandfather’s expectations of him, in a similar manner to the way Jo struggles with becoming a lady. Laurie is not manly enough for his grandfather because he does not want to enter the business world.
Jo March
Jo is an outspoken tomboy with a passion for writing. Because she displays good and bad traits in equal measure, Jo is a very unusual character for nineteenth-century didactic fiction. Jo’s bad traits like her rebelliousness, anger, and outspoken ways do not make her unappealing, rather they suggest her humanity.
Beth March
The third March sister, Beth is very shy and quiet. Like Meg, she always tries to please other people, and like Jo, she is concerned with keeping the family together. Beth struggles with minor faults, such as her resentment for the housework she must do. Beth resembles an old-fashioned heroine like those in the novels of the nineteenth-century English author Charles Dickens. Beth is a good person, but she is also a shade too angelic to survive in Alcott’s more realistic fictional world. And she was died now.
Amy March
The youngest March sister, Amy is an artistic beauty who is good at manipulating other people. Unlike Jo, Amy acts as a perfect lady because it pleases her and those around her. She gets what she wants in the end that is popularity, the trip to Europe, and Laurie.
Meg March
The oldest March sister, Meg battles her girlish weakness for luxury and money, and ends up marrying a poor man she loves. Meg represents the conventional and good. She is similar to her mother, for whom she was named. Meg sometimes tries to alter who she is in order to please other people, a trait that comes forth when she allows other girls to dress her up like a rich girl at her friend Annie Moffat’s house. She becomes an agreeable housewife, pretending to like politics because her husband does, and forgoing luxury because her husband is poor.
Laurie Laurance
The Marches’ charming, fun, and intelligent next-door neighbor, Laurie becomes particularly close to Jo but ends up marrying Amy. In between the publication of Part One and Part Two, Alcott received many letters asking her to marry Jo to Laurie. Perhaps to simultaneously please her readers and teach them a lesson, Alcott had Jo get married, but not to Laurie. Laurie struggles with his grandfather’s expectations of him, in a similar manner to the way Jo struggles with becoming a lady. Laurie is not manly enough for his grandfather because he does not want to enter the business world.
3. Summary of the Story (plot)
The four March girls (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy) sitting in their living room, lamenting their poverty. The girls decide that they will each buy themselves a present in order to brighten their Christmas. Soon they change their minds and decide that instead of buying presents for themselves, they will buy presents for their mother, Marmee. Marmee comes home with a letter from their farther who is serving as a Union chaplain in the Civil War. The letter inspires the girls to bear their burdens more cheerfully and not to complain about their poverty.
On Christmas morning, the girls wake up to find books, probably copies of The Pilgrim’s Progress, under their pillows. Later that day, Marmee encourages them to give away their breakfast to a poor family, the Hummels. Their elderly neighbor, Mr. Laurence, whom the girls have never met, rewards their charitable activities by sending over a feast.
Meg and Jo are invited to attend a New Year’s Party at the home of Meg’s wealthy friend, Sally Gardiner. At the party, Jo retreats to an alcove, and there meets Laurie, the boy who lives with Mr. Laurence. While dancing, Meg sprains her ankle. Laurie escorts them home. Jo visits Laurie when he is sick, and meets his grandfather, Mr. Laurence. Soon, Mr. Laurence meets all the sisters, and Beth becomes his special favorite. Mr. Laurence gives her his deceased granddaughter’s piano.
The girls have various adventures. Amy is caught trading limes at school, and the teacher hits her as punishment. As a result, Mrs. March withdraws her daughter from school. Jo refuses to let Amy go with her to the theater. In retaliation, Amy burns Jo’s manuscript, and Jo, in her anger, nearly lets Amy drown while ice skating. Pretty Meg attends her friend Annie Moffat’s party and learns that appearances are not everything. While at the party, she hears that people think she intends to marry Laurie for his money.
In the spring, Jo smuggles Laurie into one of the club meetings, and he becomes a member, presenting his new circle with a postbox. At the beginning of June, the Marches decide to neglect their housework. At the end of a lazy week, Marmee takes a day off too. The girls spoil a dinner, but everyone ends up laughing over it. One day, Laurie has English friends over, and the Marches go on a picnic with them. Later, Jo gets a story published for the first time.
One dark day, the family receives a telegram saying that Mr. March is sick in the hospital in Washington. Marmee goes to tend to him, and Jo sells her hair to help finance the trip. Only Beth goes to visit the Hummels, and after one of her visits, she contracts scarlet fever from the Hummel baby. Beth teeters on the brink of death until Marmee returns. Meanwhile, Amy spends time at Aunt March’s house in order to escape the disease. Beth recovers and Mr. Brooke, Laurie’s tutor, falls in love with Meg. Mr. Brooke and Meg are engaged by the end of Part One, it make Jo’s dismay.
Three years pass, Mr. March is home from the war, and Laurie is nearly done with school. Soon, Meg marries and moves into a new home with Mr. Brooke. One day, Amy decides to have a lunch for her art school classmates, but poor weather ruins the festivities. Jo gets a novel published, but she must cut it down in order to please her publishers. Meanwhile, Meg struggles with the duties of keeping house, and she soon gives birth to twins, Demi and Daisy. Amy gets to go to Paris instead of Jo because their Aunt Carroll prefers Amy’s ladylike behavior in a companion.
Jo begins to think that Beth loves Laurie. In order to escape Laurie’s affections for her, Jo moves to New York so as to give Beth a chance to win his affections. There Jo meets Professor Bhaer, a poor German language instructor. Professor Bhaer discourages Jo from writing sensationalist stories, and she takes his advice and finds a simpler writing style. When Jo returns home, Laurie proposes to her, but she turns him down. And then Laurie go to Paris.
Beth soon dies because the disease not recovers completely. Amy and Laurie reunite in France, and they fall in love. And then they marry and return home. Jo begins to hope that Professor Bhaer will come for her. He does, and they marry a year later. Amy and Laurie have a daughter named Beth like her sister, who is sickly. Jo inherits Plum field, Aunt March’s house, and decides to turn it into a boarding school for boys. The novel ends with the family happily gathered together, each sister thankful for her blessings and for each other.
4. Setting and atmosphere
Setting
The town where the March and Laurence families live is never given a name in the novel, but it's clearly somewhere in New England. Although the March sisters will at times travel the globe, Jo goes to New York while her sister Amy embarks on a European tour, they always come back to the family home in the New England.
There are a lot of clues to the time frame in which the book takes place. The first chapter begins at Christmastime in the middle of the Civil War. It's not clear exactly what year, but sometime in the early 1860s.
The second volume of the novel starts three years later. Jo seems to be nineteen, and this part of the novel spans the events of about six years. Jo is almost 25 when she becomes engaged to Mr. Bhaer, and they marry a year later, when she's presumably almost 26. The novel ends with a birthday party for Marmee five years after Jo's wedding, so Jo is just about 30, going on 31.
Atmosphere
I think this novel have a happiness atmosphere, because the play is show about the marriage and the party.
Setting
The town where the March and Laurence families live is never given a name in the novel, but it's clearly somewhere in New England. Although the March sisters will at times travel the globe, Jo goes to New York while her sister Amy embarks on a European tour, they always come back to the family home in the New England.
There are a lot of clues to the time frame in which the book takes place. The first chapter begins at Christmastime in the middle of the Civil War. It's not clear exactly what year, but sometime in the early 1860s.
The second volume of the novel starts three years later. Jo seems to be nineteen, and this part of the novel spans the events of about six years. Jo is almost 25 when she becomes engaged to Mr. Bhaer, and they marry a year later, when she's presumably almost 26. The novel ends with a birthday party for Marmee five years after Jo's wedding, so Jo is just about 30, going on 31.
Atmosphere
I think this novel have a happiness atmosphere, because the play is show about the marriage and the party.
5. Symbol/ Allegory
Flower
Flowers remind us of the class differences between different families. The Laurences are wealthy enough to have their own greenhouse and grow exotic flowers that they frequently give to the neighboring Marches. But flowers also suggest poverty, such as when Amy uses flowers instead of jewelry to accessorize for a ball.
Dressed and clothes
The March sisters are often defined by their clothing and accessories. Jo's tom boyishness comes out in her burned dresses and dirty gloves. Meg and John Brooke's romance is symbolized by one of her gloves which he adopts as a keepsake. Amy's class aspirations are carried by her makeshift boots, which she painted instead of buying a new pair.
Flower
Flowers remind us of the class differences between different families. The Laurences are wealthy enough to have their own greenhouse and grow exotic flowers that they frequently give to the neighboring Marches. But flowers also suggest poverty, such as when Amy uses flowers instead of jewelry to accessorize for a ball.
Dressed and clothes
The March sisters are often defined by their clothing and accessories. Jo's tom boyishness comes out in her burned dresses and dirty gloves. Meg and John Brooke's romance is symbolized by one of her gloves which he adopts as a keepsake. Amy's class aspirations are carried by her makeshift boots, which she painted instead of buying a new pair.
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