"Amy March is a vacuous & amazingly, given her upbringing, entitled, little horror." She's the representation of their previous selves when they HAD money,
Surely Meg’s struggles with their reduced position in society (envying her more affluent peers, letting Sallie Gardiner & the Moffatt girls dress her up “like a doll”, drinking champagne, her level of concern with her appearance & Jo’s) is what fulfils that function; particularly as it’s heavily suggested that Meg, at 16, is the only one of the girls to really remember their having money. Amy is 12 at the start of the novel & though a date’s not given it’s probably about 1862/3 as the Civil War is established but the outcome seems uncertain; so she’d have been 9 or 10 when her father went away to become an army chaplain, presumably leaving them in the same circumstances we find them at the start of the novel. But more importantly, unless I missed something crucial, there isn’t actually any suggestion that the reduction in circumstances of the March family changed the parents’ worldview &/or the value system they raised the girls with/by - & we don’t learn how they lost their money.
As for the Alcotts, they were pretty much always poor, just sometimes poorer than others - you might be thinking of the school her father opened, planning to run it on his own [transcendentalist] lines. It failed spectacularly. He basically thought a lot of work was beneath him & Louisa started working in her early teens to help support the family as a result. There’s a quote of hers about philosophers being men in balloons - they’re safe as long as there are women holding the ropes on the ground. Her family moved over 20 times in 30 years - I’d guess a stable home like the March’s would have been something she wished for. Some of Little Women definitely reads like wish fulfillment if you read a wee bit about her life - then obviously other bits do reflect her life/values, from only being able to afford school fees for the youngest to the abolitionism (at one stage the Alcotts were conductors on the Underground Railroad).
@lottielady sorry 
but yes, @Pinchycrab was absolutely right... I’d meant to footnote it but got distracted by Rampaging Felines (honest to God though but she’s the most irritating character - she’s let boss everyone about & another character goes from interesting and sparky to a daydreaming wet lettuce on becoming her stepsister so she can herd her about & everyone call her marvellous for how she minds her... rawrgh...). She’s a rubber-necked, splay-footed, four-flushing SCARLET HIPPOPOTAMUS. The slang fine is worth it I tell you, worth it...
While I agree that Pollyanna is pretty impossible, am I really the only person who uses the Glad Game to deal with stuff a bit? I mean, clearly without telling anybody, because that would be weird. But, say, stenosis has progressed from C5 & C6 to C4 as well, because my spine is weirdy & apparently Full Of Doom. BUT the actual severity of Damage Throttling My Spinal Cord/Oh Hello Paralysis Looms isn’t actually any worse. So I can be EXCEPTIONALLY glad. So a bit Glad Game-ish, but not in a gaily skipping about way. Not least because I’d go base over apex if I tried that 
Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing might basically produce the title of the play with his idiocy, but he wants a slap. I suppose at least he doesn’t go full Othello, but that’s not the point. Men in Shakespeare with their CONSTANT leaping to “woman I love must have betrayed me - THIS VERY DODGY PERSON TOLD ME SO/GAVE ME SOME SUPERDODGY ‘PROOF’ SO IT MUST BE TRUE!” Mind you, they do seem to be very Cousins Before Jades - just look at Bassanio giving away his ring from Portia because Antonio said he should value his love more than an order from his wife. How about he value the symbol of their marriage & HER love & trust in him, Antonio; & we leave the ridiculous early modern concept of Only Men Can Really Have The Feelz our of it. (Though obviously we’ve now gone too far the other way...) Totally agree with the PP who finds Romeo irksome btw - I know he’s only 14, but I found him just as annoying when I was 13/14 & The Awesome Plan just as absurd & clearly doomed to failure as I do as an adult.
Looping back to the Family Meagles (in all their annoying awfulness) - can I just say “loads of Dickens characters who’re basically there as filler & frankly it just gets confusing”? (But not Tiny Tim as he, like Cousin Helen, is a victim of his context. And stupid ableist authors. PLEASE NOTE I DON’T THINK IT’S ABLEIST TO DISLIKE THEM &/or to want to yell at Cousin Helen that it’s fine & indeed healthy to be angry about a life-changing injury etc. --And obviously I don’t expect those authors to expect modern