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Who's Who

Journey Map of the Characters (The Musical Story)

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Jo March is of course Louisa May Alcott, so please refer back to her bio.

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Meg March was based off of Anna Alcott, born on March 16, 1831, the eldest of the Alcott sisters. As a child and young adult she and Louisa wrote melodramatic plays and acted together. A great joy on stage but lacked Alcott's drive to succeed. She married John Bridge Pratt, and had two children. Fun fact: Played by Janet Leigh. 

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Beth March was based off of Alcott’s younger sister, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, who died on March 14, 1858, at the age of 22, just 2 years after recovering from scarlet fever, and 10 years before her sister published the book. Beloved by Alcott, she is probably accurately portrayed as loving and dutiful in the novel. Note on illness from Harvard Medicine: after her bout with scarlet fever both Beth and Elizabeth were left with severe rheumatic heart disease, and though the book doesn’t explicitly make the connection, her frailty and progressive weakness were in fact related to the group A strep that caused her initial acute illness and resulted in her death.

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Amy is based off of Alcott's youngest sister, Abigail May (named after their mother) She actually became quite a well regarded painter at the time. She married in 1877 and died in Paris in 1879 at the age of 39 giving birth to her daughter.

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Marmee March is based off of Alcott's own mother, Abby Alcott. She was described by Alcott as a pure soul and saint. She also wrote letters to her husband while he was away on business that reflect in tone the letters in the musical . They appeared to have a working marriage, even though the real father, Bronson, plunged the family into debt multiple times, could be quite mean spirited, and possibly had an affair.

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Laurie is based off of an acquaintance that Alcott met while abroad. He never existed in the world that Alcott creates, nor does he resemble at all any of the men that Alcott's sisters married.

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Professor Bhaer was created out of her longtime icons, writers that she had grown up with, making him "learned and German like Goethe; older and wiser like Emerson; short, hirsute and clever with his hands like Thoreau; and in his moral certainty, poverty and dreamy scholarship, he was pure Bronson."

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John Brooke is mostly based off of John Pratt, Meg's actual husband. He was a minor actor in the area of Concord and often helped with the local plays. He is most likely accurately portrayed in the novel. One major difference is that he did not fight in the Civil War.

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Mr. Laurence is based off of Alcott's own grandfather, Joseph May. He was a merchant but had also served in the Army either during the War of 1812 or in one of the many Indian Wars in the early 18th Century. His children were religious and education reformers.

A painting by Abigail May, displayed at the Paris Salon.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Facts in the stories that are true, though often changed as to time and place: —“Little Women” — The early plays and experiences; Beth’s death; Jo’s literary and Amy’s artistic experiences; Meg’s happy marriage to John Brooke. Mr. March did not go to the war, but Jo did.  

 

"Mrs. March is all true, only not half good enough. Laurie is not an American boy, though every lad I ever knew claims the character. He was a Polish boy, met abroad in 1865. Mr. Lawrence is my grandfather, Colonel Joseph May. Aunt March is no one." -Louisa May Alcott, Journal and Letters, pg. 193

Meet the Characters

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