Amy's Dark Night

When I first read Little Women, no chapter left a more powerful mark on me than "Jo Meets Apollyon." While it was ostensibly about Jo's anger, the episode was really about the burning of Jo's book. In retaliation for being left behind while the older girls went to the theater, Amy destroys in a "bonfire" what was for Jo "the loving work of several years" (64). As this chapter moved forward, showing us how Jo learns to manage her temper, I could never move past my outrage. Every word thereafter seemed to belittle Jo's writing or minimize Amy's crime. I hated Amy.

Years later, after being taught various ways of appreciating the range of characters in the novel, I've forgiven Amy and come to understand what a complex figure she is. So much so that the chapter that now seems unforgettable is "Amy's Will." Exiled to Aunt March's house during Beth's illness, Amy endures her own parallel, spiritual suffering: a purgatory of "rules and orders, . . . prim ways, and long prosy talks" (152), with no sisters, no kids to play with, just chores and lessons, Aunt March's "unutterably dull" (152) sermons and stories, a mean dog, and an obnoxious parrot. The tedium is exhausting, and Amy wants to weep but cannot: "Amy was always ready to go to bed, intending to cry over her hard fate, but usually going to sleep before she had squeezed out more than a tear or two" (152). In the midst of this drab agony, Amy confides in Estelle, Aunt March's maid, who arranges for Amy a tiny chapel with a New Testament and a portrait of the Virgin. In this closet, Amy prays. She seeks out "the strong and tender Friend" (155), pleads with God to heal her sick sister, tries "to forget herself" (155), and confronts her own death, drawing up the hilarious will for which the chapter is named.

The chapter is funny. Amy's fathomless struggles with spelling continue. The Protestant Amy awkwardly embraces Catholic ritual and images without genuine understanding. Wrapped in Aunt's March's luxury, Amy bemoans her existential pain, while Beth is in mortal pain. And Amy's awe with material things, such as the "turkquoise ring" (156), generate her piety and spiritual enlightenment. But, as I laugh, I recall that contradiction and irony are Alcott's dominant modes. In Alcott's topsy-turvy world, why wouldn't the material lead to the spiritual, or selfishness to self-denial? In the end, Amy's preoccupation with her own death enables her to realize her sister is dying: "she went to her little chapel, and . . . prayed for Beth with streaming tears and an aching heart, feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the loss of her gentle little sister" (157). The tears finally come. In a quiet epiphany, twelve-year-old Amy grasps death and the utter separation it brings. In a chapter that is supposed to provide comic relief, Amy's religious struggles seem both profound and dark.