Jo March’s Love For Stout Men (Video Essay)

When Friedrich becomes Jo’s sexual awakening in the book, she pays attention to his big hands and his big feet, and she’s lusty over him. In “Jo’s Boys” When Dan comes back to Plumfiled, he has grown a beard. For those of you who have not read Jo’s Boys, Dan was one of Jo’s and Friedrich’s students. When he comes back, he asks Jo if he should shave the beard off, and Jo is like “Don’t do that. It makes you look so manly and handsome” It is so funny because both Friedrich and Dan’s characters are based on Henry Thoreau. Mac’s character in Rose in Bloom also has the same body type. He’s blonde and he’s younger. In Eight Cousins where he’s a preteen, he’s described as a bit chubby, but then in “Rose in Bloom” Mac has a growth spurt and suddenly he’s taller and he got broad shoulders. Rose is surprised and she begins to see him more attractive.

All these men are described to have blue eyes, which is an interesting detail because Henry David Thoreau had blue eyes. In every Louisa May Alcott story that I have read, the leading male character, let’s call him the Friedrich Bhaer archetype is a plus-size man. There is a story called The” Queen of Hearts” The leading male character is a German gentleman called Augustus Bobb, and he is a large man, the female character who very much…