Jo and Meg are going to a play with Laurie, and Amy wants to go too. Jo tells her, a bit harshly, that she cannot go because she was not invited. Angered, Amy tells Jo that Jo will be sorry. During the play, Jo feels some remorse for her bad treatment of her little sister. When the older girls arrive home, Amy gives Jo the cold shoulder. The next day, Jo finds her manuscript missing, and discovers that Amy has burned it. Jo says she will never forgive Amy, because that book was her pride and joy. Amy apologizes, and Marmee warns Jo not to "let the sun go down upon [her] anger," but Jo is not ready to forgive Amy. The next afternoon, Jo and Laurie go skating, and Amy tries to follow. Laurie warns Jo that the ice is thin in the middle, but Jo does not pass on the message to Amy. Amy falls through the ice, and Jo hesitates for a moment, paralyzed with fear. Finally, Laurie comes to Amy's rescue. At home, Jo confesses to Marmee that her anger overwhelms her. Marmee admits that she too struggles with controlling a quick temper. Jo is amazed and bolstered by this revelation, for she has always seen Marmee as a perfectly calm person. Amy and Jo end their quarrel and make up.
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Little Women
General FictionLittle Women is prefaced by an excerpt from John Bunyan's seventeenth-century novel The Pilgrim's Progress, an allegorical, or symbolic, novel about living a Christian life. The excerpt concerns the novel's female character, Mercy, not its main male...
