Hello friends! Well, I had originally planned on my Little Women annotation series being two posts (which you can read here — one, two), but to absolutely no one’s surprise — well, I guess to my surprise because I was being an absolute clown — I had so much to say and the series has now been split into three posts.
This post focuses on Laurie’s proposals to Jo and Amy, as well as how Amy and Laurie grow together while they’re in Europe. It, as always, is a long one because I have many thoughts and I have very strong opinions on these scenes. So, grab your cup of tea, get cozy and let’s get started!
When I first started developing this post series and deciding which scenes I wanted to focus on, I knew that I wanted to talk about Laurie’s proposals to Jo and Amy. During my most recent read of Little Women, one of the things that I found myself really focusing on was Laurie’s desperation to have a family and feel as though he belongs. It’s made clear that throughout his childhood, Laurie didn’t feel as though he belonged and initially, that is the thing that Jo and Laurie bond over — feeling as though they’re different than those around them, and that naturally turned into a very sweet and beautiful friendship.
While I do think that yes, Laurie loved Jo, I don’t think he understood the way that he loved Jo. In fact, I believe his love for Jo is the same as Éponine’s love for Marius in Les Misérables — he is more in love with the idea of Jo than he is actually in love with her. For Laurie, Jo (and by extension the March family) represents comfortability, safety, understanding, and stability, all of which are things that Laurie did not feel he had as a child and has become dependent on and is scared to lose. That’s what his proposal to Jo is. It is a desperate boy scared of losing his best friend and the only family he’s ever known.
Laurie isn’t stupid. He knows that deep down, Jo does not love him that way, but he’s going to try anyway. Throughout the book Jo makes it very clear that she does not have any romantic feelings towards Laurie — she shuts down any sort of romantic hints that he drops her, and in fact, she spends a fair chunk of the book trying to set him up with one of her sisters. However, just as it says at the beginning of the scene, they need to have this conversation. They need to address the giant elephant in the room otherwise they’ll be stuck at a standstill. Laurie is pushing to have the conversation because he just needs to speak the words that they both know, he has to get it out in the open. Jo, on the other hand, would rather they not have the conversation at all because she knows it’ll change them — and if there’s one thing we know about Jo, it’s that she’s scared of change.
She loves Laurie, she does love him, but she loves him as a brother and has since she first met him. It’s just as Marmee says, and Jo brings it up here, the two of them are far too similar. They wouldn’t work as a couple even if they both had romantic feelings toward one another. They’d buttheads and fight and argue (“we should quarrel – we can’t help it even now”) — they would not bring out the best in each other and would come to resent the other. Jo knows this, but Laurie isn’t ready to accept it.
As you can see through these post-it essays, I clearly had a lot of thoughts on this scene and Laurie’s mindset. I really think that the main motivator for Laurie in this scene is fear. The March family very quickly welcomed Laurie into their small and loving circle, because both Jo and Marmee could see that he was alone, and simply wanted to be loved. That’s not to say that his grandfather didn’t love him, because he very clearly does, but Laurie didn’t necessarily understand his grandfather and how he expressed his love. It was more subtle, and Laurie needed the overt, obvious, big showing of love that Marmee so freely gave her girls.
Once Laurie was welcomed into the March family, he felt like he belonged. He found his people — especially in Jo, as she’s so like him. I think that’s a huge part of why Laurie has such a hard time accepting Jo’s rejection. To him, if the person most like him, the person who knows his best and worst qualities, and has stuck by him through everything can’t love him after saying that she’s tried, who will love him? He has these deep and beautiful bonds with all the March girls, but he’s scared that if he loses Jo he’ll lose them as well, and that will break him. That is what this proposal is. He just doesn’t want to lose his best friend.
One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to Little Women is people acting as though Amy and Laurie came out of the blue, or that Amy “stole” Laurie from Jo (ugh, that’s a whole different conversation, we don’t have time to get into that here), when in reality, Amy and Laurie’s love story has been there the whole time.
I touched on this very briefly in part one of this series, but the foundation of Amy and Laurie’s relationship is trust and honesty. When she was a young girl and sent to live with Aunt March while Beth had scarlet fever, Laurie promised to visit her every day to cheer her up — and he did. She could rely on him during a difficult time for her, a time when she felt scared and alone and didn’t have the safety net of her family with her, and we see this again when they’re older in Europe.
The Europe trip really matured Amy, and Laurie sees that first hand, and fittingly, this chapter is titled ‘New Impressions’. Laurie is still pining over Jo — or the loss of what he had convinced himself was what he wanted — and he is definitely not the best version of himself. In contrast, Amy has a newfound sense of confidence and assuredness about her that, although it had been there previously, had matured from when she was a young girl, and Laurie is taking notice.
I think that Laurie is kind of using Jo’s rejection as an excuse to let off steam. Not to say that it hasn’t affected him, but you can tell that he’s already started to move on. As it says on page 419 — he’s not taking notice of the pretty girls around him, but if he sees a blonde girl or a lady in blue, he does look at them. He takes notice of any girl who looks like Amy, and when he does see her he “stared a minute, then his whole face woke” — it’s more than just excitement at seeing someone from home. It’s his excitement at seeing Amy.
I believe that deep down, Laurie has always had some feelings for Amy, but it’s not until this Europe trip that he allows himself to start to recognize what those feelings really mean. He spends so much of their time in Europe marveling at how Amy has really found herself and settled into the woman that she’s always meant to be. He simply is in awe of her, and multiple times says that he can’t find any fault in her and that she will make a “very charming woman”
While Laurie is completely taken by how Amy has changed, Amy is not as impressed with Laurie’s recent behavior. It’s clear that she’s happy that he’s with her — she’s always happy when she is with Laurie — but she does see that he is not living up to all that he is capable of. Personally, I love that Amy calls Laurie out on his crap. I love her strong will and her honesty, and she knows that she can tell Laurie these things because of how deeply they care for one another. She knows that Laurie is a good person; she knows that he is capable of greatness, and she hates to see him waste his potential.
The scene where Amy calls Laurie out (also one of my favorite scenes in the book, providing us with the iconic “I want to be great or nothing” line), is a huge turning point in their relationship, and a great moment for Laurie’s personal growth. This isn’t the first time one of the March sisters has called him out on behavior that they didn’t like (we have seen Jo call him out many times over the years), but this is the first time where it’s really stuck with him and motivated him to change. This conversation with Amy is the first time that he really listens. Amy has risen so highly in his eyes (and he already had quite a high opinion of her and all the March girls), so hearing that he has disappointed her hits him hard. This conversation wakes him up, and it motivates him to change. He does not change for Amy (which is what he tried to do for Jo, and we see that in his proposal scene “I gave up billiards and everything you didn’t like, and waited and never complained, for I hoped you’d love me”), she inspires him to make changes and become a better version of himself.
And now we can talk about what is probably my favorite chapter in the whole book, chapter eighteen of Good Wives ‘Learning to Forget’.
This chapter begins with Louisa May Alcott making it very clear that Laurie is already/has already moved on from Jo and that he’s opening himself up to the feelings that he’s had for Amy. She really shows this by linking Amy’s line “I despise you” which is in reference to how she was feeling at that moment about Laurie with her line “Go and do something splendid that will make her love you.”, which she says in reference to Jo. However, with all the things that Laurie does — namely working on his opera — it is not Jo that he is thinking about. He tries to write her as his heroine but is failing to do so as he’s only able to focus on her less positive qualities. On the other hand, when he’s trying to come up with a new heroine, the following is said,
“This phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind’s eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blue ribbons. He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he might – for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trails which would have annihilated any mortal woman”
Even before he’s ready to fully admit it, his subconscious has made it very clear that his heart belongs to Amy, and it has for a long time now.
It breaks my heart that Amy was alone in Europe when Beth died (I understand that not telling her was what Beth wanted. She didn’t want Amy to cut her trip short, Beth wanted her little sister to live out her dreams. I love Beth for that, how she always was thinking of everyone else, but it’s heartbreaking nonetheless), but I do love the parallel of Laurie going to her — just like he did when they were kids and Beth was sick. One of the consistencies in their relationship is that Laurie always keeps his promises to Amy. This is also referenced in chapter fourteen ‘New Impressions’ when Laurie meets her for Christmas and says, “I promised to spend Christmas with you, and here I am”. It’s not to say that Laurie doesn’t keep his promises in general, but it’s a recurring theme in their story that I really love.
That constant is something that Amy is able to count on while she’s grieving Beth. On page 472, it says,
“But her heart was very heavy — she longed to be at home, and every day looked wistfully across the lake, waiting for Laurie to come and comfort her”
And then when he arrives, she says, “Oh, Laurie, Laurie! I knew you’d come to me!” which is such a reflection of their relationship. They really remind me of the lyrics “I knew you’d come back to me” from Taylor Swift’s song cardigan from the folklore album. They also are very reminiscent of the title track of Taylor’s album evermore, specifically the line, “In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you” both of which I referenced in my notes.
Amy and Laurie’s love story truly is just…everything to me. I love them so much. I especially love the calm that they bring to one another, as well as the groundedness they provide to each other. The way they understand the other so well that most of the time they don’t even need to speak to know what the other person is thinking or feeling. That’s such a deep connection; it’s a connection that grows and builds over time.
So many people will say that their love story came “out of the blue”, and that’s not true. Louisa May Alcott built their relationship from the beginning — they have a strong and solid foundation, and that is so evident in this proposal scene.
“His second wooing, he resolved, should be as calm and simple as possible; there was no need of having a scene — hardly any need of telling Amy that he loved her; she knew it without words and had given him her answer long ago. It all came about so naturally that no one could complain, and he knew that everybody would be pleased”
How beautiful is that? It is so wonderful, beautiful, and rare for a love to be so understood, so known, so inevitable, that you don’t even have to speak the words. The other person just knows. That’s how well Amy and Laurie know one another. They know in their bones that the other loves them. They don’t need a big production or declaration — this is in direct contrast to his proposal to Jo which is just that. It’s big and loud, and it reeks of insecurity. This proposal is soft and quiet, private and serene, assured and gentle — it’s full of knowing and being known, and being loved for the person you are.
I could go on and on and on for hours about how much I love them and their love story (which, really is what I have done here), but I will stop myself here and leave you with my favorite proposal in all of literature.
“‘How well we pull together, don’t we?’ said Amy, who objected to silence just then.
‘So well that I wish we might always pull the same boat. Will you, Amy?’ very tenderly.
‘Yes, Laurie!’ very low.
Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake”
Thank you all so so so much for sticking with me on this Little Women themed Annotate with Me series. I had a wonderful time working on these posts and I sincerely hope that you enjoyed them. Until next time!