All About Amy (Little Women Analysis)

People often praise Jo for being a tomboy and how she rejects femininity, but Jo´s idealization of the masculine has very toxic elements. Amy is a character who is more governed by her brain, whereas Jo is in fact governed by her emotions, which is considered a feminine trait. In the novel, Jo struggles to show her feelings because she considers that weak and "feminine". When their father is wounded in the war she shouts to her sisters not to cry. A couple of years later Laurie says that she doesn't show emotions and calls her out about it. Because Jo tries to shut down an important human part of herself, simply because she considers it feminine, is actually something that slowly eats her inside and contributes to her loneliness. This is why the umbrella chapter is so important because Friedrich says to Jo that it is okay to be vulnerable.

Amy does the opposite. She considers rational marriage with Fred Vaughn because it allows her to secure her family´s financial future. When Laurie reminds Amy that she is her mother´s daughter, and she simultaneously inspires Laurie to become a productive member of society, Amy allows herself to listen to her heart and her own feelings and allowing herself to become more open and it is this inner work that the couples do in Little Women, that makes these relationships work.

Unfortunately, the adaptations rarely pay any attention to this. There are people who have not read the novel, have only seen the films, and don´t understand why the couples end up together. This is because the adaptations, never bother to show what actually happens between these people in the novel.

Maybe Louisa was more of a romantic than people sometimes give her credit for.

After reading about Louisa´s relationships with the real-life Friedrich and Laurie I´d say she definitely was. Louisa was a transcendentalist and one of the methods that the transcendentalists used was so-called self-scanning, which basically means trying to understand and analyze the feelings and the experiences that you are going through. Louisa practised this throughout her life, and she put lots of consideration into the true meaning of love. When Louisa grew most marriages that she saw were unhappy marriages because they were arranged marriages.

Louisa herself answers this question about equality within marriage rather beautifully and her own wishes for marriage seem to have remained the same throughout her life.

“You have given your idol a heart, but no head. … I would have her humble, though self-reliant, gentle, though strong; man’s companion, not his plaything; able and willing to face storms, as well as sun, shines, and share life’s burdens, as they come. Let me advise you to take head as a pilot, for you may find, as I have done, that the voyage of life is not quite a pleasant trip” “I would not be above you as I now am, nor yet below, like poor Amelia in the garden. But here is where every woman should be, at her husband’s side, walking together through life’s light and shadow".

Here she is actually echoing both Amy and Jo, in matters of the heart one should combine both head and the feelings.