What about Marmee?

After class I could not help but ask myself why most people favored Jo to the other characters, other than the obvious reason of Alcott writing her character to be favored over Meg, Amy, or even Beth. I feel that readers from my generation have little patience for Meg, who we may simply consider a spoiled girl, Amy who seems to ha an enormous social class complex, and then the underrated gentle and selfless Beth. Jo’s character is fully fleshed out, and in the beginning pages it is clear that Jo is very different from her sisters. She’s direct and very determined to being independent, especially from a man. Along with such determination, Jo shows a great intolerance towards materialism and lavish social events, and at times looses her temper. Although of the daughter I preferred Jo, I had an immense amount of respect for Marmee. She is a character with whom I felt most compelled with and at times wished that Alcott would have explored with her a bit more. She is a very tolerant and even progressive for women in the nineteenth century. She allows her daughter to each explore with their own identities and doesn’t oppress any of her daughter to simply be themselves, though it is clear that se is attentive and worried about them, yet let’s them be for the most part. She also stresses the importance of being self-sufficient and not to get married just to be financially secured. Instead she regularly reminds her daughters that it would be better to be alone and happy rather than be miserable and wealthy. (The most developed example of this, when Amy goes to the elegant party and feels terribly out of place and confesses to her mother that she doesn’t want to be part of that social class event scene.) Again, I found that throughout most of the book she allowed her girls to grow up in their own way and had little “rules” opposed on them, and is tolerant of each of the girls’ experiments to coming into their own. I believe that her character is very strong and is a fresh character sketch in comparison to other literary mothers of the 19th century. (i.e. the weak and dependent Mrs. Montgomery from Wide Wide World.)