Laurie and Amy?

What most readers may find unacceptable or wished had been different in Little Women, I was able to take pretty well. I didn’t mind Jo’s refusal of Laurie’s proposal. Her marriage to the professor seemed arbitrary, but I wasn’t outraged that she wasn’t with Laurie. Beth’s death was heart breaking but it was possible to move on. However, one thing that I could not understand was the connection Alcott created between Laurie and Amy.

It was strange to me that Laurie’s love for Jo easily turned to brotherly love as he began to love Amy. Laurie and Jo’s relationship was drawn out throughout the novel. The romantic relationship between Laurie and Amy only developed for a few chapters. However, it wasn’t the time frame that made me think the relationship shouldn’t have been dealt with. It was actually believable that people can become close in a short amount of time. What bothered me was that Laurie had chosen one of the other March girls, one of Jo’s sisters. I couldn’t get it out of my head that he was merely compensating for his loss of Jo as a partner. As much as he must have loved Jo, he loves the March family as well which made me think that on some level, his proposal to Jo also reflected his hope to become a member of the March family. I guess that’s what bothered me about Laurie’s marriage to Amy, aside from the fact that he married the sister of someone he used to love.

Alcott’s main reason for not marrying Jo and Laurie was that she didn’t want Jo to conform to the conventional female roles. However, as a result, the outcomes that it led to—Jo and the professor, Laurie and Amy—seemed unnatural to me. Was Amy the only choice left for Laurie because Meg was taken and Beth was ill? Why couldn’t he have been married to an entirely different character?

Amy and Laurie’s relationship seems just as forced and rushed as Jo and Professor Bhaer’s is and I wish Alcott had chosen a different route for them.