What happens when Jo March’s temper collides with her love for her sisters? In Little Women, her fiercest lessons don’t come from ambition or writing; they come from being a sister. Her relationship to Meg is tinged with both tenderness and impatience. Jo teases Meg’s vanity and warns her against shallow pursuits, yet she admires her steadiness. With Beth, Jo’s protectiveness is fierce and unselfish, the place where her hot temper gives way to reverence.
Jo’s devotion to Beth is at its height in Chapter 36, “Beth’s Secret”, when she begins to understand the depth of Beth’s illness. Jo’s quick temper finds in Beth its counterbalance. Beth’s fragility makes Jo fiercely protective, but also vulnerable. She cannot imagine herself without Beth’s gentle presence to steady her.
Alcott shows that Jo’s identity is bound up not only in her ambition but also in her relationships. But it is with Amy, the youngest, the most willful, that Jo’s flaws and growth are most vividly revealed.
In Chapter 8, “Jo Meets Apollyon”, Jo’s manuscript — her most treasured work — is burned by Amy in a fit of spite. Alcott describes Jo’s devastation:
“You wicked, wicked girl! I never can write it again, and I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.”
This was more than a childish quarrel. For Jo, Amy had destroyed her work, her voice, her independence. The act dramatizes how fragile women’s creative labor could be, easily dismissed even within the home. Alcott lingers over Jo’s fury.
“She had cherished her anger till it grew strong, and took possession of her, as evil thoughts and feelings always do unless cast out at once.”
Jo is tempted to let resentment harden into cruelty:
“Jo glanced over her shoulder, and the little demon she was harboring said in her ear, ‘No matter whether she hurt or not; let her take care of herself.’”
That choice nearly costs Amy her life. When she crashes through the “rotten ice,” it is Laurie, not Jo, who reacts quickly enough to save her. Jo, stricken and frozen in fear, can only watch. Back at home, Jo’s bravado crumbles into anguish:
“Are you sure she is safe?” whispered Jo, looking remorsefully at the golden head, which might have been swept away from her sight forever under the treacherous ice.
“Quite safe, dear; she is not hurt and won’t even take cold. I think you were so sensible in covering and getting her home quickly,” replied her mother cheerfully.
“Laurie did it all. I only let her go, mother. If she should die, it would be my fault.” And Jo dropped down beside the bed in a passion of penitent tears, telling all that happened, bitterly condemning her hardness of heart and sobbing out her gratitude for being spared the heavy punishment which might have come upon her. “It’s my dreadful temper! I try to cure it; I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. Oh, mother, what shall I do? what shall I do?” cried poor Jo in despair.”
This moment reframes Jo’s anger: not as an admirable resistance to constraint, but as a force that can fracture love. Alcott refuses to paint Jo as either saint or monster; instead, she reveals anger’s double edge. Jo’s temper is the fuel of her ambition but also the fault line in her intimacy.
Marmee counsels her not with condemnation but with steady resolve, “watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying”, offering Jo a lifelong framework for grappling with herself.
Through Amy, Jo learns what her role as a sister demands: forgiveness, responsibility, and the ability to check her own impulses. And through Meg and Beth, she learns the other dimensions of sisterhood: critique, loyalty, and reverence. Jo’s fire is never extinguished, but in the daily frictions of sisterhood, it is tempered into something more enduring: a love that makes room for both passion and humility.
