ABSTRACT
The newly famous author Jo Bhaer, who flees the "admiring public [that] took possession of her and all her affairs, past, present, and to come," doubtless would be as appalled by the "wearisome attentions"! of her contemporary critical devotees. The fascination for Alcott's readers, as well as Bhaer's, is an adolescent hoyden at the center of her novels: Jo, with whom so many readers identify in Little Women.2 My own belief is that the younger and more bookish the girl, the more passionate and entire the identification. And my guess is that many of us who write about and teach Little Women were such girls.
