Jo’s School for Boys: Where Learning and Love Meet

Niina Pekantytär
4 min readMay 19, 2023

Louisa’s sister May had asked Louisa not to write so much about Amy in the sequels because she received lots of hate mail from people who wanted Jo and Laurie together.

It’s really sad, especially because A. May didn’t write the book, and B, she knew the real-life Laurie, but she didn’t marry them. I have always liked Amy’s character, but she’s still very much hated. In the 2019 Little Women this competition between Jo and Amy, some people felt that they were fighting with Laurie because Timothee Chalamet said that Laurie only loved Jo, which is not the case in the book and Greta Gerwig erased Laurie’s character. For example, in that scene where Jo loses the trip to Europe, Marmee is like “oh my poor Jo. You are the one who should have got the trip”, and Amy’s like, “why? Nobody’s happy for me!”

I don’t see that as a good portrayal of either Jo or Amy and Marmee does not take Jo’s side in the book. In the chapter Calls, Jo was mean to the aunts and that is why she lost the trip Marmee says to her it was all her fault and Amy feels bad for Jo in the book. In the film…

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Niina Pekantytär

Niina is an Illustrator, writer and folklorist. Likes cats, tea, 19th century books and period dramas. Host of the Little Women Podcast.