Little Women
Jo March
The writer sister
The second March sister, a boyish, quick-tempered dreamer who wants to be a writer. She loves her family fiercely and has to learn to manage her temper.
Jo March is the second of the four March sisters, living in Concord, Massachusetts, during the Civil War. She is energetic, outspoken and independent, and she would rather write stories or climb a tree than sit in a parlor. She has a quick temper and a warm heart, and she says what she thinks. She loves her mother, protects her gentle sister Beth, and bickers and makes up with Amy.
Jo's great ambition is to write something splendid. Her first stories are fairy tales and adventures, and she is happiest in her garret with a pen. Other people see her as wild and rough, and her mother hopes she will become a little woman. Jo wants to be useful and free, and she is not at all sure that marriage is for her.
“I am an author, Laurie! An author in two columns!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Jo befriends the boy next door, Laurie, and sells her long hair to pay for Marmee's trip to Washington. When Amy burns her manuscript, Jo's anger nearly costs her sister's life on the thin ice. She later writes sensational stories for money, until Professor Bhaer tells her she can write something truer. She sees her first story published and reads it to her family without telling them it is hers.
She turns down Laurie's proposal because she knows they would make each other wretched. She nurses Beth through her last illness and writes about her. At last she lets Professor Bhaer know she loves him by running after him in the rain with an umbrella. Aunt March leaves her Plumfield, where she and Friedrich start a school for boys.
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