“Little Women” & the Martyr Complex

Why Jo Cuts Her Hair in “Little Women”

“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott, illustration by Harold Copping (1868)

The most famous scene in Little Women (readers seem to agree) is the one where Jo has her hair cut. Understanding this emblematic episode, you can understand much about Louisa May Alcott’s beloved book.

The circumstances are these. A telegram arrives from a Washington hospital: “Mrs. March: Your husband is very ill. Come at once.” While others fall into a frenzy of activity to ready Marmee for her departure, Jo goes to a shop where they buy hair. She offers her “mane,” her “one beauty,” and brings home twenty-five dollars as “my contribution towards making Father comfortable, and bringing him home.” As Madelon Bedell suggests, the scene is “too richly suggestive to yield up a single meaning.”

We can begin to understand the scene by noticing that Jo’s is 1) a dramatic act but serves no direct purpose. While her sisters ooh and aah over the shorn Jo, her mother tells her twice that “there was no need of this” and “it was not necessary.” And, in fact, the money is not used, and her father brings it back on his return. While touching, in other words, Jo’s sacrifice is, largely, an extravagant but gratuitous gesture.

Its extravagance is evident when, by means of hyperbole, Jo melodramatically likens her haircut to 2) mutilation. Jo seems to imagine…