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Jo March never again feels as free as she did at sixteen, hair shorn jagged and short, chasing Teddy through the fields surrounding their homes, footfalls heard only by them and a few birds.
New York City, of course, is in and of itself its own type of freedom. There she doesn’t have to be Jo March, devoted daughter and sister. There her slate is as clean as the blackboards John, who was Mr. Brooks then and not yet brother-in-law, used to make Laurie wipe before they went off to play. There her future and past are what she decides, as malleable as clay, as moldable as one of the characters she writes.
But New York City is restricting in its own way. There’s rules here, there, everywhere on what a girl, especially an unmarried girl, can do and say and write. It’s not the progressive oasis cities are supposed to be, Jo thinks as she turns in the final manuscript for her book, complete with an ending in which all the girls are married. She walks home alone, cold air and dirty snow swirling around her, because unlike the heroine of her book, she did not wed.
Looking at the couples gathering in the gaslight, Jo feels alone and judged, always the odd one out, always the one who doesn’t belong. She is brave though, so she holds her head up high and meets their eyes, face resolute and confident, even if she doesn’t feel that way inside.
The fields of her childhood never made her feel funny and different like the city did. They accepted her as she was, nothing more, nothing less. The grasses whistled in the breeze as she and Laurie ran through them, some animals darting away at the noise and others watching silently as two half grown children ran through. Two girls or two boys or some combination, somewhere in between, it didn’t matter to them who they were.
And, Laurie, well, he’d never judge her, not when Jo was mostly certain he was the same as her.
Of course, she’d never asked, because how could she? For all her writing, all her verbosity, her way with words, she had never been able to verbalize what made her different then her sisters, then her mother, much less ask Laurie what his experiences were. It was just a feeling deep in her gut, an unsettling, uncomfortable feeling that she couldn’t begin to put into words.
Even if there was never any explicit confirmation, Jo had eyes and she could see a million little things.
She remembers how Laurie had stared at the March girls when they dressed up in gowns, all lacy and frilly and everything Jo never wanted. She’d thought at first it was because he was a boy and they were girls and boys tended to look inappropriately at girls, or so her mother had warned her.
“Be wary of boys,” Marmee had told her once, eyes gentle, but serious. Jo had nodded at her mother and agreed, patting her hand across the table. She hadn’t told her mother that, her father and Laurie notwithstanding, she had no interest whatsoever in men.
But, Jo realized when she caught him staring at the clothing rack, it wasn’t their bodies that Laurie was enamored with, it was their dresses. The way they swished and swooshed, the layers of lace and film and colors that combined to make the entire appearance. Everything Jo found itchy and uncomfortable, he found breathtaking and beautiful and mesmerizing.
He realized she was watching him once, looked up with the fear of a little boy getting caught with his hand down a cookie jar. Jo just looked at him and nodded, trying to keep any expression off her face. It’s okay, she wished she could tell him, but didn’t know how. Instead, she grabbed his hand and pulled him down the stairs, outside to run with her in the sun.
It’s other things too.
She remembers how she used to remark, lying next to him, far off from the war, far off from the real world, how much she wished she were born a boy, how much easier that would be.
Laurie would shake his head sometimes, dark curls bouncing everywhere. “It isn’t, Jo, not always,” he would say, though he meant not ever. “Boys can be horrible.”
He’d say it as if he weren’t a boy himself.
“Oh Teddy,” Jo would say and fluff him off dismissively.
He’d frown at her and lead into an account of his time in boarding schools in far flung locations, of the dastardly evils boys away from parents could commit. It would be dramatic and likely exaggerated, but, well, that was her Teddy, take it or leave it (and in those days, she took it).
She remembers how later on he used to come home from college a bit thinner, a bit more sickly looking, bruises occasionally dotting his arms, his sides, and more than once his eye. She would ask, but he wouldn’t answer, just cling to the girls for those few weeks, following them around like a baby bird, lost and a little lonely.
He wouldn’t answer, but she would know.
Laurie had never been particularly strong, maybe in personality, but never physically, not the way other boys were. She knew, even then, that the other boys made fun of him, called him names, though which she’s not sure.
So Jo knows, then and now, that Laurie’s a bit like her. That he fits in with other boys about as well as she fits in with other girls, which is to say not at all. That there’s some level of discomfort always there regarding what’s expected of their respective genders.
But, in the end he’s not like her because he makes his choice and she makes hers and they aren’t the same, not even close.
They were still so young when he asked her to marry him, still so young but already the world was closing in. It was a knife to the stomach when he proposed to her because he had to know that that life, that one of simplicity and domesticity and femininity, was never, ever what she wanted. Jo hadn’t thought he’d wanted it either, had known him and known he’d never wanted to be a husband, the head of a household, the provider, the protector.
But he proposed all the same and all she could think was that he’d betrayed her, betrayed the implicit unspoken promises they made as children, the people who they once were.
Later, when she’s a bit older and her emotions aren’t running quite so high, when Laurie’s long married to Amy, Bess already half grown, Jo will realize that he hadn’t meant to hurt her. Maybe he wasn’t so brave to defy society, maybe he gave in to what was expected, but he had never been cruel, just maybe not as brave as her.
The proposal had been a compromise, she’ll realize, somewhere between here and there, but she’d turned it down, hoping for him to go all one way and he hadn’t, he’d went all the other way. Laurie has fled to Amy, that annoying brat who grew up into the perfect women, the perfect bride.
Jo, she’d never have made that choice if she were in his shoes, as evidenced by her solitary, spinster life, but years on, she won’t begrudge him his decision anymore.
Presently, however, Jo doesn’t yet realize all that, thoughts clouded by sadness and loneliness.
So for now she walks back to her small room at the boarding house, dark and cold and stark with none of the comforts of home, and begins a new story.
She’d never thought she’d miss her noisy house, but she does as she tries to focus in the too quiet night. Misses the sounds of Marmee and her sisters cooking downstairs, the bustling of them running down the hallway and occasionally bursting in. She didn’t know then how good she had it, not when family and support and more freedom than most girls are afforded was right at her fingertips.
Still she perseveres, alone and afraid (though she’d never admit it), working to some end she’s not even quite sure of because she didn’t take the conventional path, the one her sisters and Laurie chose.