Little Women
Marmee
The girls' mother
The March girls' wise, patient mother, who keeps the household going while her husband is at war. She teaches her daughters to be good without being preachy.
Marmee, whose name is Margaret March, is the moral center of the family. She is warm, patient and strong-willed, and she holds the household together while her husband serves as a chaplain in the war. All four daughters confide in her.
She believes in kindness over comfort. She asks her girls to give their Christmas breakfast to a starving family, and she tells them she would rather see them poor men's wives, if happy and beloved, than queens on thrones without self-respect and peace. She is honest about her own faults, too. The girls bring her their troubles and trust her answers, and she stays calm when everyone around her is frightened.
“I get angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it.”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Marmee reads her husband's letter to the girls and urges each of them to be a little woman. When Jo is overcome with guilt after the ice accident, Marmee admits that she gets angry nearly every day and has learned not to show it. She hears Meg's confession after the Moffat ball and removes Amy from her cruel school.
When a telegram says Father is dangerously ill, she leaves for Washington with Mr. Brooke's help, paid for by Jo's hair. She returns at dawn after Beth's fever breaks. She sees her husband come home and her daughters marry and settle, and at her sixtieth birthday she is surrounded by her children and grandchildren.
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