Now imagine you are Laurie. Jo has just paid you a visit. Write a paragraph to descril
her. You may use these hints.
Where did you see her? What was she doing? - How did she look? (happy, energetic) - Whi
did she say? What did her voice sound like? (loud / quiet/shrill / Did she sound relaxed, o
cheerful?) - What did she seem like? (friendly, curious) - How did you feel when you spoke
her? (comfortable, happy) - What do you think she is really like? (funny, friendly, very kind
caring, loves books, helpful) - Would you want to meet her again? Why?
Answers
Answer:
When we first meet Jo March, she's a tomboyish, hot-tempered, geeky fifteen-year-old girl. She loves activity and can't bear to be left on the sidelines; it drives her crazy that she can't go and fight in the Civil War alongside her father, who has volunteered as a chaplain. Instead, Jo has to stay at home and try to reconcile herself to a nineteenth-century woman's place in the domestic sphere, which is extremely difficult for her. You can hear the trouble in her name – she's called Josephine, a feminine name, but she goes by the more masculine-sounding Jo. She's clumsy, blunt, opinionated, and jolly. Her behavior is often most unladylike – she swears (mildly), burns her dress while warming herself at the fire, spills things on her only gloves, and barely tolerates her cranky old Aunt March. She's so boyish that Mr. March has referred to her as his "son JO" in the past, and her best friend Laurie sometimes calls her "my dear fellow."
Jo also loves literature, both reading and writing it. She composes plays for her sisters to perform and writes stories that she eventually gets published. She imitates Dickens and Shakespeare and Scott, and whenever she's not doing chores she curls up in her room, in a corner of the attic, or outside, completely absorbed in a good book.
Jo hopes to do something great when she grows up, although she's not sure what that might be – perhaps writing a great novel. Whatever it is, it's not going to involve getting married; Jo hates the idea of romance, because marriage might break up her family and separate her from the sisters she adores.
As you might have guessed, Jo is being set up for a Meaningful Journey of Self-Discovery and Surprises (TM). By the end of the novel, her dreams and dislikes are going to be turned topsy-turvy; her desire to make her way in the world and her distaste for staying at home will be altered forever. She may not find romance in the places that readers expect, but she will find it. She'll also realize that romantic love has its place, even though it changes the relationships you already have. As Jo discovers her feminine side, she also figures out how to balance her ambitious nature with the constraints placed on nineteenth-century women. The question is: how much do these constraints reflect the contemporary situation of twenty-first-century women readers?
Explanation: