Margaret March entered her home a after a long day and could hear her girls giggling and moving around upstairs. She knew that after school and chores were finished, they often retreated up to the attic to act out the adventurous stories that her Jo wrote for them. Taking off her boots and hanging up her coat, she heard them all chasing each other down the stairs to hug her and ask about her day.
“Marmee!” Joe cried, the first white face to emerge from around the corner, “We were so worried you wouldn’t make it home before the snow storm, we’ve made a warm broth for dinner.” My sweet girls, Marmee thought to herself. While enjoying dinner, Mrs. March tried unsuccessfully to orchestrate the girls into conducting a conversation while remembering to act like little women instead of a bunch of boisterous children, but she knew that society’s restrictions took a toll on her young ladies and she decided to allow them to feel at home in their own house.
The girls had all had very long days, but when the table was cleared and Marmee was settled by the fire with a pile of stockings and petty coats that needed mending, they climbed back up to the attic as if there had never been a break for dinner. Although Meg was the oldest, Jo had the responsibility of spending her day with Aunt March while Amy went to school, Beth was home schooled and Meg acted as governess for the King family. Therefore, it was up to Jo to pass on the training that she learned from the March matriarch.
Jo had always loved to write and the girls had always loved being able to entertain each other, this made the idea of the girls acting out Jo’s adventures to be the ideal cover story to tell their devoted and naïve mother. In fact, the young March women were involved in deep combat training. They were little women by day, and fierce soldiers by night. At the rate they were progressing, it would not be long before they could bring their beloved father home by wining his battles for him.
Meg was the sensible one; she kept her head clear and focused during battles. Jo was adventurous and creative; in her hands, anything was a deadly weapon. Beth was too shy, she was never comfortable talking in public, but you didn’t need to have a conversation with someone to kill them. Amy was the youngest, in another life she may have been a romantic artist, but her passion came out in her fighting.
The girls used to spend time playing with their neighbor Laurie, but as soon as Jo had begun to develop enough to fill out the bodice in her sister Meg’s hand-me-down dresses, he had begun to see her in a new light. When he proposed marriage as if Jo would be relieved to leaver her sisters and her stories behind in favor of being his wife; she had reacted the only way she knew how. Between blows to his head delivered with the broom she had been sweeping with, she ground out “I am nobody’s little woman! I am just as useful as a man and I don’t need you or society to hold me back and turn me into nothing but a breeder!”
Laurie had gone off to college and the girls had not heard from him since
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