How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and drink and wear, a good many comforts and pleasures, kind friends and parents who loved them dearly, and yet they were not contented." (4.60)
Love is an essential part of the family life of the March girls, but it's also not enough – at least, the love of parents and friends alone is not enough!
Quote #2
To others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a hard experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her before. (7.40)
Love is not just a fluffy feeling in the March household; it's also the center of morality. Amy has been "governed by love" instead of by the fear of physical punishment. Marmee (and, as we'll see later in the novel, Mr. March) uses love as a disciplinary tool.
Quote #3
"I gave my best to the country I love, and kept my tears till he was gone. Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end? If I don't seem to need help, it is because I have a better friend, even than Father, to comfort and sustain me. My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning and may be many, but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother." (8.88)
As Marmee explains to her daughters, she believes that one's love of God is the most important kind of love to feel, but that it has practical relationships to the love of one's country and one's family. By loving God more strongly than anything else, Marmee is able to sacrifice her love for her husband in order to further their loyalty to their country.
Quote #4
Then it was that Margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could buy—in love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of life. (18.3)
Many passages in Little Women are devoted to reminding us that love, even in the simplest and most unimpressive, everyday forms, is more important than worldly success or wealth.
Quote #5
"Mercy me! I don't know anything about love and such nonsense!" cried Jo, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. "In novels, the girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin, and acting like fools. Now Meg does not do anything of the sort. She eats and drinks and sleeps like a sensible creature, she looks straight in my face when I talk about that man, and only blushes a little bit when Teddy jokes about lovers." (20.23)
Jo admits that she really doesn't understand what love is like in a practical, everyday sense. She knows that the heroines in novels act silly when they fall in love, and that her sister doesn't act silly, so she assumes that Meg isn't in love. She's in for quite a surprise!
Quote #6
"He was perfectly open and honorable about Meg, for he told us he loved her, but would earn a comfortable home before he asked her to marry him. He only wanted our leave to love her and work for her, and the right to make her love him if he could. He is a truly excellent young man, and we could not refuse to listen to him, but I will not consent to Meg's engaging herself so young." (20.28)
John Brooke actually asks for Mr. and Mrs. March's permission, not just to court their daughter Meg, but even to have feelings about her! It's interesting to think about what he means by a "right" to make Meg love him if he can. Do you think you have a right to try and make someone that you're interested in fall in love with you in return?
Quote #7
"She'll see those handsome eyes that she talks about, and then it will be all up with her. She's got such a soft heart, it will melt like butter in the sun if anyone looks sentimentally at her. She read the short reports he sent more than she did your letters, and pinched me when I spoke of it, and likes brown eyes, and doesn't think John an ugly name, and she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cozy times together. I see it all! They'll go lovering around the house, and we shall have to dodge. Meg will be absorbed and no good to me any more. Brooke will scratch up a fortune somehow, carry her off, and make a hole in the family, and I shall break my heart, and everything will be abominably uncomfortable. Oh, dear me! Why weren't we all boys, then there wouldn't be any bother." (20.31)
For Jo, falling in love is dangerous because it will split her sisters apart. As each of them finds a love interest, she will be drawn away from the March family and into a new partnership that creates a different home.
Quote #8
"Mercy on me, Beth loves Laurie!" she said, sitting down in her own room, pale with the shock of the discovery which she believed she had just made. "I never dreamed of such a thing. What will Mother say? I wonder if her . . ." there Jo stopped and turned scarlet with a sudden thought. "If he shouldn't love back again, how dreadful it would be. He must. I'll make him!" and she shook her head threateningly at the picture of the mischievous-looking boy laughing at her from the wall. "Oh dear, we are growing up with a vengeance. Here's Meg married and a mamma, Amy flourishing away at Paris, and Beth in love. I'm the only one that has sense enough to keep out of mischief." (32.20)
Although Jo doesn't love Laurie, she seems to consider it her prerogative to match him up with her sisters. When her initial plan of marrying Meg to Laurie falls through, she develops a new plot involving Beth, and even convinces herself that Beth is already in love. Clearly, Jo hasn't really fallen in love with anyone herself yet, or she wouldn't think of it as a mechanical, controllable thing.
Quote #9
I think everything was said and settled then, for as they stood together quite silent for a moment, with the dark head bent down protectingly over the light one, Amy felt that no one could comfort and sustain her so well as Laurie, and Laurie decided that Amy was the only woman in the world who could fill Jo's place and make him happy. He did not tell her so, but she was not disappointed, for both felt the truth, were satisfied, and gladly left the rest to silence. (41.28)
Alcott has to employ every rhetorical trick in the book to convince us that Laurie and Amy really are in love. It just seems a bit creepy to have someone love one sister for two-thirds of the novel and then make a quick change and transfer his affections to another sister! Whether or not we believe in this new romance will depend on how convincing the narrator can be.
Quote #10
"Jo, dear, I want to say one thing, and then we'll put it by forever. As I told you in my letter when I wrote that Amy had been so kind to me, I never shall stop loving you, but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you changed places in my heart, that's all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me, but I never could be patient, and so I got a heartache. I was a boy then, headstrong and violent, and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it was one, Jo, as you said, and I found it out, after making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that I didn't know which I loved best, you or Amy, and tried to love you both alike. But I couldn't, and when I saw her in Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. You both got into your right places, and I felt sure that it was well off with the old love before it was on with the new, that I could honestly share my heart between sister Jo and wife Amy, and love them dearly." (43.47)
Laurie's explanation of how he came to fall in love with Amy and feel a more platonic, brotherly love for Jo is, well, convoluted. Do you buy it? Do you think that two people can "change places in...[your] heart" in that way? Well, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge. The only thing more complicated than romance is…OK, we can't think of anything. Maybe the United Nations. Or instructions from Ikea. What we're trying to say is, love isn't always what it seems to be at first.