In the 2019 film, Jo is pregnant.
- Much discussion surrounding the 2019 film seems to be whether or not Jo ends up with Bhaer at the end. Perhaps she does, but has to fictionalize how they ended up marrying. She does not meet him in the rain and share a romantic kiss with him before he leaves for California. She marries him to prevent an unwanted scandal due to being pregnant with their child. Several pieces of evidence: it's known that Jo has a temper, but when Friedrich gives her some mild criticism along with encouragement (keep in mind that she asked him to review her writings, as being a literature professor is his job) she completely blows her top at him, telling him that they're not friends and that no one will ever remember him. He seems very passive and still encourages her even though her explosion is completely out of place and slightly jarring. Slightly before this exchange, there was some serious Ship Tease between the two, and they were shown dancing at what appears to be the 19th century equivalent of a club. It's possible that their relationship got an unexpected upgrade following some inebriation, and she doesn't know how to handle that. Her blowing up at him is her own attempt to make sense of her confusion following their night together. If she knows that she's pregnant, then that may also play into why she's so livid and insistent that no one will ever forget her. She's anxious about her career being put in jeopardy. His mild reaction may show that he understands her confusion (even if he doesn't know that she's pregnant)
- She definitely realizes that she's pregnant after Beth dies, and that is part of why she becomes desperate to marry Laurie. She believes that Friedrich won't want her, so she decides to marry her friend, who she knows will keep her secret. When this doesn't pan out, her desire to open a schoolhouse may be linked to growing maternal feelings, and wanting to find a way to raise her child without losing her family's respectability.
- Eventually, Friedrich comes back for her and finds out that she's expecting their child. He proposes to her, and she accepts. She can't put this down in her story, one because it wouldn't be suitable for the children that she is writing for, and two because it isn't how she planned her own story would pan out. So she wants her heroine to stay single, as she had planned to.
- Since in the books' continuity, she does have two children with Friedrich, the child she's pregnant with could be their first son. In addition to this, exposure to scarlet fever in the womb apparently does not harm fetuses.
Jo is aromantic
- A common fan theory is that Jo is lesbian, but what if she were aromantic instead? She never seems to have romantic feelings towards boys, and she doesn't even have fraternal feelings towards any girls other than her sisters. Is it possible she doesn't have romantic feelings toward anyone?
- I'm sorry, did you miss the entire last half of the book?? She definitely does have romantic feelings for someone — Fritz Bhaer!
Jo March isn't a tomboy, she's Transgender
Amy: "Don't Jo. It's so boyish!"
Jo: "That's why I do it."
Jo: "It's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy."
Beth: "Poor Jo! It's too bad, but it can't be helped. So you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls."
[Jo had] the uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a woman and didn't like it.
Jo: "I'm the man of the family now Papa is away."
Jo: "I'll try and be what he loves to call me, 'a little woman' and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else."
No gentlemen were admitted, so Jo played male parts to her heart's content.
...Jo, who didn't care much for girls or girlish gossip, stood about, with her back carefully against the wall, and felt as much out of place as a colt in a flower garden. Half a dozen jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the room, and she longed to go and join them...
Laurie: "There isn't anyone I'd like to see. Boys make such a row, and my head is weak."
Jo: "Isn't there some nice girl who'd read and amuse you? Girls are quiet and like to play nurse." (note how she almost seems to be responding to him as a boy, and talking about girls as "other")
Jo: "I'm a businessman - girl, I mean."
[Jo] seemed to understand the boy almost as well as if she had been one herself.
Laurie: John is going home with you, as I can't.
Jo: No need of that. I am not a young lady, and it's only a step.
Jo felt as if during that fortnight her sister had grown up amazingly, and was drifting away from her into a world where she could not follow. (world of womanhood)
- She changes her name, she says she wishes she was a boy, she's mostly friends with boys, she likes to play male parts....
- Uhhhh, no. Since that sort of defeats the entire point of her character, which is that you can be spirited and tomboyish and that does not make you any less of a woman. She's a nontraditional girl rebelling against the strictures of what is expected of women of her time, which is why she wishes she were a boy — she'd have more freedom that way. Her whole arc is about finding her own freedom (see: her career as a writer and resulting financial independence) as a woman in a Victorian society. You aren't less of a woman if you're a tomboy or don't otherwise conform to "ideal femininity", which is the entire point of Jo's existence as a character.
Jo March is a lesbian
- Much of the Transgender evidence could easily be put into proof as gayness.
- The character is known to be an avatar for the author, who once said in an interview with the writer Louise Chandler Moulton, ‘I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.’
In the musical version, Jo March is the Slayer.
- She cuts down a Christmas tree and drags it across the street in about four minutes
- Clarissa - tell me this doesn't sound like something a slayer would write. "There's no escape. She's but a child! And yet she turns to fight with eyes ablaze! This noble girl meets his gaze unafraid! She will not be defiled." Not to mention that Professor Bhaer, who's been calmly sitting and listening up until this point, doesn't object to her story until the male hero comes in to rescue Clarissa. When Jo rewrites it with a female Roderigo saving the day, Bhaer has no objections to the story, despite it still being a sensational story.
- This exchange with Aunt March:
Aunt March: You spend all your time writing senseless stories, constantly trying to save the world, when you can't even save yourself!
Jo: I don't need saving.
and later...
Aunt March: You'll marry! All girls marry.
Jo: I'm not all girls.
- The reason she's so reluctant to accept Laurie's friendship at first, despite taking to him immediately, is because she thinks he might be a vampire - when Mr. Laurence came by the house, Laurie just kind of hovered in the doorway, and he basically never leaves his house.
- Come to think of it, did the Marches ever specifically ask Laurie into their house? For a vampire can't enter into anyone's home without being invited. No exceptions. Ever.
- Another story she writes: "Carlotta, the madwoman in the attic, a creature of gall, hungry for blood, rose from the darkness. Her skin a ghastly white, her eyes a beady red, her fingers clutched with rage as she went out into the wretched night..."
Beth is somewhere on the autism spectrum.
- She is afraid of talking to strangers, clearly struggles in company and was unable to cope with school to the point her mother decided to educate her at home after seeing the meltdown just one day caused - social anxiety. She has set routines, particular activities she loves (her piano playing and the dolls she takes care of), and generally seems slower to mature than her sisters.
In the version of Little Women that Jo writes, the four sisters are named Anna, Lou (short for Louisa), Lizzie and May.
- Those were the names of their Real Life counterparts, so in Jo's novel, the reverse is true.
