Did Laurie really love Amy?

[sandes]

(Little Women)

In honour of me watching it on E4
This is a debate I've had with people multiple times. I'd like to see the views of MN

Hmm. I feel like everyone wants Jo to end up with Laurie because he is a catch and he's already there so why not just settle for him and settle down into happily ever after. Except what really happened is Jo broke away from society's expectations and went off to the big city to pursue her own creative endeavors. And fell in love. Yay for Jo.

Laurie and Amy had the same kind of erotic love. And were much more suited for one another.

I wanted Laurie and Jo to marry because they had such a deep close liking and friendship for each other.
And yes to the manuscript. Not only is May not punished but Jo receives a 4 page lecture from Marmee about not giving in to anger.

May = Amy

Alcott was a much more interesting person than those books demonstrate. She was the daughter of radicals and grew up in a sort of commune iirc? Was a nurse in the Civil War and quite feminist and even quite racially enlightened for the time. The books she is best known for are the ones which least reflect her - have a look at her short story collection 'Alternative Alcott' if you are interested.

And Laurie - even though my 10yo self was in love with him - was too lightweight for Jo. Sadly.

Also - linked to a pp's comment about Jo - Alcott never married and May have been a lesbian. Is this perhaps why Jo ends up with a much older, though kindly and intellectually equal man?

I loved the books SO much- read and reread them obsessively.

Did anyone else really dislike all of the boys/men? Including Laurie? I found him a bit shallow and fake and was very relieved when Jo rejected him. I didn't like Bhaer either- he also didn't ring true to me, and I had a sort of feeling he didn't smell good (not shallow, me).

Ah, this is my kind of thread!

A marriage between Laurie and Jo would have been an absolute disaster. They both have to go away from home, Jo to New York and Laurie to Europe, to grow up and grow into their ultimate marriages. I think Laurie begins to respect Amy a lot more when she scolds him and she tells him to go and make himself useful to his grandfather in London. Unlike a lot of people I enjoyed the Greta Gerwig LW adaptation but I didn't like how they framed their parting at this point, with Amy's speech about him being 'mean'.

No, Amy and Laurie do truly love each other (although Laurie does make a lot of comparisons between his love for Jo and for Amy in his internal monologue). It's always left out of the film adaptations but in the novel they fall in love over the course of a correspondence while she is in Nice and he is in London working for his grandfather.

I have always liked the significance of Laurie proposing while they both row a boat, with an oar each. It suggests a rather more equitable partnership than poor submissive Meg with her jelly that won't set.

Oh I love Professor Bhaer! Though strangely, I know what you mean about him smelling slightly, @Greenfinch7

Yes it was a different more grown up love not young infatuation

Prof Bhaer was so hideously old, possibly over 30.

Laurie liked Amy and understood her.

Amy liked 'nice things

Amy knew Laurie could give her that and he was a friend.

It was a practical and affectionate relationship.

Pshaw to love.

He did smoke a pipe when Jo and he first got engaged, but he'd given it up by the time the school started in Little Men, because he didn't want the boys to copy him. So at one stage he would have ponged of pipe tobacco!

There's a graphic novel modernization in which she is. And Meg dumps Brooks and starts training to be a campaigning lawyer instead of getting married, and Beth doesn't die although she comes close, and basically the author has had great fun writing a fix-it.

I was terribly put off by Professor Bhaer being older, fat and bearded with big clumpy boots. <also shallow> But also, he spends an awful lot of time lecturing Jo on how she should behave and tells her that her shilling shocker stories are not worthy of her. I do get that he's trying to encourage her to focus on doing her best work, but that's terribly high and mighty and doesn't necessarily pay the bills.

Amy absolutely loves Laurie - she sees his faults and wants to shake him up, nicknames him Lazy Lawrence, but he comforts her after Beth dies and they spend a summer in Nice together. Whether Laurie really loves Amy or whether she's his rebound after being rejected by Jo is a whole different ballgame, I think.

I love Jo and Laurie together, they have so much fun and get on so well.

I think Laurie loves Amy much more than Joe. He was sort of a lost boy and I think she filled a mother/sister role for him. I think their marriage would have been a disaster! He tries to become a better man for Amy, doesn't she break off her engagement with someone much richer because she realizes she loves him? I think people give her a hard time, it can't be easy to be the least saintly of the angelic March sisters.

I agree, John brooks is a pedantic dirtbag. I also find Bhaer very patronizing and I agree he seems like he smelled a bit!!!

I am going to defend Frederick Bhaer as he is my favourite character. This quote always makes me slightly ache with the love he has shown for Jo. She is not shallow to think about classic looks but rather someone who has shown kindness, intellectual mind and a common purpose.

"'It is not for me, I must not hope it now,’ he said to himself, with a sigh that was almost a groan. Then, as if reproaching himself for the longing that he could not repress, he went and kissed the two tousled heads upon the pillow, took down his seldom-used meerschaum, and opened his Plato."

I agree that Laurie loves Amy as much as his character will allow and think they are perfectly suited.

Love isn't just about romantic attraction and finding a soulmate. A happy lifelong relationship needs shared goals, and similar outlooks on things like money, social status, lifestyle, children (in fact when it comes to the success of a marriage these things are probably more important). This is as true today as it was in Alcott's time. Jo might have offered Laurie "true love" but they were mismatched when it came to the nuts and bolts and would have led an unhappy shared life together. Amy and Laurie were much better matches for each other when it came to what they both wanted from life - good social standing, material comfort, close family, respectability, culture.

No. Only Jo. But I've only read the books, and that was over fifty years ago.

I think what I find interesting is that in this, what Katy did and Anne of Green Gables, they all start out as wild, convention breaking free spirits and gradually as the books progress the authors all obviously come under strong pressure/social influence to make these girls into naice, kind, domesticated Angels of the Hearth.

As though Lee Child was forced/persuaded to make Jack Reacher slowly into a married accountant in suburbia who runs the Little League/kids football programme and runs for local office.

Jo and Laurie obviously should have ended up together, but Alcott couldn't allow them that ease and happiness. Amy always receives what Jo should have: the trip to Europe, marriage to Laurie. And Jo must make the best of it and learn a moral lesson

The triumph of the less talented little sister, I suppose. It was jarring but tbh portrayed a realistic sibling relationship

It is made really clear why Jo doesn't get to go to Europe - she basically messes up her own chances by being rude to all and sundry one afternoon in front of the aunt that takes Amy abroad. Also, just because Jo has always wanted to go to Europe doesn't mean no one else should ever get to go - it's not like Amy didn't want to go or was indifferent! And partly, Amy and their cousin Flo were proper friends whereas Jo was older and thought Flo was silly (I think).

Jo worked diligently for Aunt March and was supposed to accompany her to Europe. It was massively unfair for Aunt March to change her mind based on perceived rudeness during a single afternoon. Though at least she leaves Plumfield to Jo in her will.

It was specifically that Jo said 'favours burden her' and French was 'a silly, slippery language' - which didn't suggest she'd be grateful for the huge favour of a trip to Europe.

Amy had been working for Aunt March as least as long as Jo - Aunt March liked her when she stayed there when Beth had scarlet fever, and 'bribed' Amy to stay by offering her drawing lessons with one of the best teachers.

The only reason for it to be Jo rather than Amy was that Jo was older - in those days a more important factor than now.

Love isn't just about romantic attraction and finding a soulmate. A happy lifelong relationship needs shared goals, and similar outlooks on things like money, social status, lifestyle, children (in fact when it comes to the success of a marriage these things are probably more important). This is as true today as it was in Alcott's time. Jo might have offered Laurie "true love" but they were mismatched when it came to the nuts and bolts and would have led an unhappy shared life together. Amy and Laurie were much better matches for each other when it came to what they both wanted from life - good social standing, material comfort, close family, respectability, culture. Wow you certainly swallowed the books message hook line and sinker.