Dear ‘Little Women’ Fans, Stop Hating Amy March!

Amy March is the worst, or so I’ve heard from every single Little Women fan I know. She’s the annoying one, the baby one, and the one who burns Jo’s manuscript. There’s also something of an unrepentant gold digger in Amy, as she is the one March sister obsessed with material wealth and determined to marry money. However, I’ve always liked Amy March, and I think the littlest of the Little Women needs a reappraisal.

Amy’s biggest sin — besides the whole burnt manuscript episode — seems to be that she’s the vain one in the family. She wants to waste her money on limes to impress the kids at school and she obsesses over the shape of her nose. Worse, she eventually marries Laurie, and it seems that she only weds him for his family’s fortune.

It’s true that Amy March is upfront about her desire to be wealthy. It’s also true that she spent a good portion of her childhood steeped in traumatic experiences. Her father leaves to go fight and almost die in a war, and she has to be spirited out of her own home so as to not catch scarlet fever from her sister. Her family struggles to make ends meet, to the point that at the age of 12, she has to live off potatoes and scraps. (Remember that she was dazzled by the sight of butter on their table?) Amy’s determination to be rich can clearly be seen as her way of trying to protect herself and loved ones from the trials of poverty.

Amy’s so-called obsession with her looks, her interest in gossip, and overall lady-like demeanor might not make her as “cool” as tomboy sister Jo, but she is definitely a product of her time. Even though the March family espouses modern ideas, like gender equality, the world around Amy didn’t. A woman’s one route to success and security would be an advantageous marriage. To make that kind of match (as the youngest daughter in a poor family), Amy would have to present herself as the feminine ideal of her age — and she would need to be able to make high class connections.

Even though Jo and Amy are often pitted against each other, they’re ironically the two March sisters with the most in common. Like Jo, Amy has dreams beyond the scope of Concord, Massachusetts. She also has artistic talent, too, and is willing to study painting in Europe (in a time when women were just barely breaking through in the art scene). She and Jo are the most strong-willed, the most charismatic, and both have that thing with Laurie. So they’re going to be at odds more than the other sisters because neither of them are passive.

Which leads me to the whole “manuscript in the fire” thing. That episode is indeed inexplicably evil and awful. I still struggle intellectually to understand how anyone could breach that level of trust, but then the choice makes sense emotionally. Full disclosure time: one of the reasons I like Amy so much is because I’m the youngest for four sisters. The successes and failures of those closer, older sisters crunch down upon you and you feel like you have to be loud and pushy to be heard. Beyond that, the bond between sisters is as twisted as it is strong, and only a sister would or could do something as cruel as throw a manuscript into the flames.

Hate Amy all you want for tossing Jo’s book into the flames, but don’t hate her for wanting to be rich, curling her hair with rags, or caring about social status. The former is an actual sin, and the latter are all things women had to do to survive.

Where to stream Little Women (1994)