Jo is definitely a gender outlaw--but I agree, to call her chracter a lesbian is wishful thinking... 

Christmas? Christmas means dinner, dinner means death! Death means carnage; Christmas means carnage!
-Ferdinand the duck

I lOVE little Women! I've always indentified with Jo (being crazy about reading and having a bit of a temper, but a good soul underneath) and now I (maybe) have another reason to identify with her :)

 

Thanks for the info, browne :D

No wonder I loved this book when I was little (I keep finding more and more evidance to suggest that I was a very gay little kid).  I was a total tomboy from ages 4-11ish and I always identified a lot with Jo.  I think Beth was also my first liteary crush.  And yeah, that quote was so unambiguously gaaaaaayyyy.

I've read Little Women hundreds of times. I effing hate Professor Bhaer. HATE. Ugh. He was so nice and ... uninteresting and made absolutely no impression on me. On the other hand I LOVE Laurie, which is surprising. >_< Sometimes when I read/watch the movie I stop around the part where Laurie is proposing and pretend Jo accepted him. If she wasn't gay she might as well have married her best friend. >_< Sheesh....

Sometimes I skip the part where Beth dies too unless I'm ready for a good cry. ^_^

I appreciate your comment about not wanting to conflate LMA's life / character with Jo's, even though she is frequently looked upon as an alter-ego. That said, one need go no further than the text itself for lesbian subtext and all its chocolately goodness.

I know they're sisters, and I really don't think there was off-page canoodling in Little Women, but, at least some sort of possessive desire for Meg? Totally:

"I knew there was mischief brewing. I felt it, and now it's worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family."

Oh, and the June Allyson version was the first I saw as well and remains my favorite. And yay for "Jo's Boys," even if it does have Jo / Bhaer in happy domestic harmony.

 

"Little Women" is one of my favorite novels ever, so while I agree that Jo is lesbianish, to actually call her a dyke is a little bit of a rewrite, IMO. Bisexual, though? Yeah, that'd be fun. I say that mostly because I fell in love with Jo and Bhaer's romance, so to disregard that - it's kinda the same problem I have with Willow becoming a lesbian when she met Tara. What was Oz, a freak of nature?

I have always thought marrying Jo off was a concession Alcott had to make to her audience--her main purpose after all was to sell books and keep her family out of the poorhouse--so it's neat to find out that she later created a character who refused to marry. Repressed lesbian or not, it's so rare to have a character choose to live in single blessedness, as Alcott herself did all her life.

There's also the stuff Louisa May Alcott wrote under a pseudonym...racier than the stuff she signed her name to. I don't know if there's any lesbian subtext in it, but it'd be interesting to see.

Little Women is my all time fav. classic!, goodness, i'v always loved Jo March character. but who knew eh.

I wouldn't necesarily consider Jo's marriage to Professor Bhaer as a definitive sign that she is not gay, or that Alcott didn't envision her as being gay. When Alcott originally wrote Little Women, she ended the book with Jo still being single. The publishers then told her that they did not want to publish a book in which the heroine ended up alone. That's when she decided to introduce the character of Professor Bhaer. The idea was that, if she was going to have Jo get married, it would have to be to someone who challenged her intellectually, rather than a romantic marriage, like those that Amy and Meg have.

Even within the story, the marriage does not give a definitive answer regarding Jo's sexual orientation. The marriage itself is presented somewhat as a concession on Jo's part to the norms of the society that she is in. Her decision to marry him is essentially her acceptance of the notion that women are supposed to get married and be taken care of by their husbands. She only starts to think of him in any sort of affectionate way after the death of her sister, when she is left without any real companions. Also, her feelings coincide with her discovery of a different, less sensational writing style, which he had encouraged previously. Therefore, her feelings towards him are more based on intellectual growth than on romantic love.

So, um, that was my really long way of saying that I don't think Jo's marriage to Professor Bhaer rules out the possibility that she was actually a lesbian.

Certainly an androgenous name for her character.

Little Women was one of my favourite books as a kid. I totally related to Jo. So much, in fact, that when my friends and I played games like 'house' my pretend name was always Jo.

All this is making me realize how totally gay I've been my whole life...

My first literature crush! Because I totally fell in love with Jo March when I first read the Little Women. She's still my most memorable literature crush.

This blast from the past makes me wonder if there is any fanfiction based on Little Women out there. Does anyone know?

i watch the movie when i was 10(1949 version, i think this is the best), i just loved it, makes me laugh and cry. i identified a lot with Jo, i guess because i like to read and make things like jump, run and play soccer. i don`t know if she was gay but definitely maybe.

Talking about classics with subtext, how about Shirley by Charlotte Bronte? Shirley is a tomboy, Lord of her Manor (as she calls herself) and the closest relationship by far in the book is between Shirley and Caroline. At one point in the book, Shirley has gone around and met all the young ladies of the village, and it says "If she had had the bliss to be really Shirley Keeldar, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Briarfield, there was not a single fair one in this and the two neighbouring parishes, whom she would have felt disposed to request to become Mrs. Keeldar, lady of the manor." Shirley tells that to her governess, and her governess says "My dear, do not allow that habit of alluding to yourself as a gentleman to be confirmed: it is a strange one. Those who do not know you, hearing you speak thus, would think you affected masculine manners."

Baby-dyke, no? I mean, what straight girl upon meeting a bunch of other straight girls would immediately start wondering about which one she might marry?

I remember reading that in Freshman year in HS and being IN LOVE with Jo.  I even dreamed of her holding me in her arms (albeit not in the sisterly way) like she did to poor Bess.

Besides being a great actress, June Allyson was a wonderful person.  Got to meet her and speak with her a few times. As feisty in real life as she was on the screen.  Her brother was a surgeon we worked with in CA.

I just kinda always assumed she was without even stopping to think about it or without anyone suggesting to me that she was, I've recently wondered if there was a particular line in the movie or something that made me think this and kinda been puzzled over it, one day I was just like oh hold on, is Jo even a lesbian and why on earth do I think she is? I first saw the more recent version when I was like 8 years old and I'm not sure if at that age I'd have been perceptive enough to pick up on the dressing up hint as me and all my little friends would have been doing the exact same thing for fun. Makes this blog a seriously interesting read, nice to see it's obviously not just me lol.

Or rather, I remember being upset when she got married. Which was, in retrospect, my way of assuming people were gay when I was younger - getting upset when they were obviously shown to be at least, attracted to men.

Let's face it - even if she was a real person and she was gay, she would probably have gotten married in that time. So more recently, I can view that marriage as the best opportunity for a basically gay woman.

LOL - "That film also spawned a close friendship between Ryder and co-star Claire Danes; which I mention for no better reason than as an excuse to post these pictures:"

Must be a lesbian/bi thing to grow up loving Jo/wanting to be Jo/identifying with Jo...because I was totally like that too! It was (and still is) my favourite book...and Jo March is by far my favourite literary character.

As for the movies...I'm actually very partial to the latest version with Winona Ryder. Maybe because it was the first one I saw...or that despite my intense gay-ness I still have a thing for Christian Bale and the character of Laurie. How great is he as Laurie?? I think he encapsulated that character so well.

Added to all this I was always intensely sad that Laurie and Jo didn't end up together.

Anyway...good to see Alcott being cheeky and unambiguous.

~Renée

I read Little Women years ago and I knew Jo was a lesbian. I am so glad someone else has fineally realised the same thing.

Alcott said a few times that she wished she was a boy. Though, if one looks at her life they realize that she wanted to do the things men could do. Alcott wanted women to have rights, she wanted to vote, she wanted to keep her own money. She wanted to live her own life. She could never do that if she was married and had a family. She saw what having a family did to her mother. She experienced living in poverity. She wanted no part of it. However as a woman of the Victorian Era she would have to bow down to her husband, but that's not what she wanted. She wanted to write and earn her living.

 The fact that Jo is a based off of Alcott doesnt mean Jo or Alcott was gay. I just don't see it. The fact that Jo turned down Laurie(though while it contiunes to depress me) doesn't mean she was gay. The reason behind it was that they always fought and it was unwise to have two hot tempers under one roof. And I do agree that the professor was quite bad, and I hated him. Oringally, Alcott did want Jo to be single, but her publisher said no, so she had to marry Jo off to someone.

Maybe Jo didn't know what she was yet. Maybe she was just playing and hadn't really thought about it.

I say that because it is common for heterosexual girls to want to be boys, to relate to male characters, to find other girls attractive, and to have male friends they don't want to marry. And even to question our sexuality. Women aren't supposed to be complex because it makes people uncomfortable, but it's a fact.

And especially during that time when men had all the power ... it must have been very hard for women to respect other women (thus all the inventive ways there were for making women feel good about their powerlessness.)

It's kinda like the early Nancy Drew. When a female is the central character, and she is strong, creative, resourceful, independent and brave, she is an archetype hero as much as any male character and I personally as a reader like her.

As a kid, I loved the Jo character and didn't find her supposedly masculine traits all that unfamiliar. Sure, she wasn't like my Barbies, but she was still an effective central character that I could relate to.

Another character along those lines today is Helen Mirren's cop in the British TV show Prime Suspect. There is nothing particularly feminine about her except that she likes to have sex with men. (And she's beautiful because she's Helen Mirren). And like the typical hero archetype, Helen Mirren never gets the man.

And, as it seems Jo wasn't supposed to get the man (or woman) either, she is a hero archetype also. Their mission in life is bigger than personal relationships, although they do get tangled up in them because they are human.

I guess my point is that perhaps Jo's sexual ambiguity is more about Alcott's intelligence as a writer. The plot concessions reflect the necessity of the time (as someone already said above.) In spite of them, she wrote an honest story.

In that way, Little Women is reminding me of Jane Austin, her books not the movies ... who was also massively popular (although hated by the Bronte sisters?) She also never married, yet wrote characters similar to herself and conceded to the audience desire to see them marry...

The issue of gender roles and marriage was about power, and a huge problem for women at that time. I think these authors - both Alcott and Austin - were popular because they put characters in these power-oriented situations and had them react like real humans. Which if you think about it, must have been a pretty brave thing to do.