The four March sisters lived in a modest house in New England with their mother while their father was away at war.
Though they shared the same home and the same parents they were four genuinely and fascinatingly different people.
Meg longed for the kind of settled domestic happiness that their poverty had so far prevented her from having.
Jo burned with ambition and frustration and a fierce desire to write stories that the world would actually read.
Beth asked for nothing except to stay at home, play her piano, and be surrounded by the people she loved most.
Amy planned her great artistic career with a confidence that her sisters found alternately impressive and slightly absurd.
Alcott presents these four different dreams not as competing but as equally valid expressions of who each girl truly was.
Each sister found her own path.

Little Women is structured around a question that Louisa May Alcott takes with complete and unusual seriousness.
The question is whether four different women can pursue four genuinely different kinds of lives and all be right.
Victorian society had a clear answer — there was essentially one acceptable path for women and it led to marriage and domestication.
Alcott challenges this answer not through argument but through the creation of four vivid and individuated characters.
Meg's path leads to marriage, and Alcott treats this as a genuine and respectable choice rather than a capitulation.
Jo's path leads to writing and an unconventional relationship, and Alcott treats this as equally genuine and valid.
Beth's path is tragically shortened but is treated with the same respect as any path that reflects an authentic self.
Amy's path leads to art and Europe and a marriage that integrates her ambitions rather than replacing them with domesticity.
Each sister found her own path.