A personal reflection on Little Women, Jo March, and the sixth-grade girl who secretly dreamed of becoming a writer.
When I was in the sixth grade, I hid in my closet to write a book. I didn’t tell people I was doing it. In fact, I really didn’t want anyone to know. There was something about writing that felt intensely personal to me even then. So I’d disappear into my little hiding place and work on this story that existed only in my imagination.
I never finished that first book. I certainly never published it. And somewhere along the way, those pages disappeared. I wish more than anything that I’d kept them. I’d give a lot to sit down today and read what sixth-grade me thought a novel was supposed to sound like.
The book didn’t survive. But the writer did.
It was also around the sixth grade that I discovered Little Women. I was one of three sisters, so I already understood something about growing up in a house full of girls. But there was one March sister in particular who captured my imagination.
Jo. Of course it was Jo.
The creative one. The writer. The girl with the ink-stained fingers and stories in her head, trying to figure out who she was and where she belonged. I wanted to be like her.
I don’t know which came first that year—Jo March or the book I was secretly writing in my closet. But somehow the two are forever tangled together in my memory.
And Jo stayed with me.
I grew up. I married. And in one of those wonderful little twists life sometimes gives us, this girl who grew up as one of three sisters went on to have four daughters of her own.
My Girls Loved Little Women, too.
When they were teenagers, I even had the opportunity to direct a production of the play, and all four of my daughters had roles in it. There I was, surrounded by my own houseful of girls, watching a story I’d loved since childhood come alive in an entirely new way.
And all those years later, I still understood Jo. I understood the writer in her. The creative. The woman trying to find her place and use the gifts she’d been given.
I also understood the romantic in her.
Near the end of Little Women is a chapter called “Under the Umbrella.” I’ve always thought the scene between Jo and Professor Bhaer was one of the sweetest, most romantic scenes in literature. There’s nothing flashy about it. It’s simple and tender and innocent.
And maybe that’s another reason Jo’s story stayed with me. She didn’t have to stop being Jo to have a love story. She could have the ink-stained fingers and the romance. Maybe I loved that idea before I was even old enough to understand why.
That sixth-grade girl hiding in the closet couldn’t possibly have imagined where all those secret stories would eventually lead. She certainly couldn’t have imagined publishing a book.
Much less publishing more than 170 of them.
But sometimes I think about her. And I think about Jo. And I smile at the realization that we ended up having something else in common after all.
Now I’d love to hear your story. Was there a book you read when you were young that became part of who you grew up to be? Maybe you wanted to be like a particular character—or perhaps a story planted a dream you didn’t recognize until years later. Hit reply and tell me about it. I’d truly love to know.
Check out my Little Women Literary Party Ideas!
