Little Women, Chapter 4 summary

What happens

1. After the holidays, the family begins a cold morning with complaints, quarrels, and hurried preparations for work.
2. Meg envies the Kings’ comforts, while Jo finds both irritation and pleasure in serving Aunt March.
3. Beth helps at home and longs for better music, while Amy struggles with vanity, schoolwork, and unwanted clothes.
4. At evening sewing, Jo describes winning Aunt March’s interest in a novel, and Meg describes distress in the Kings’ household.
5. Amy recounts Susie Perkins’s public punishment, and Beth describes Mr. Laurence giving a hungry woman a fish.
6. Mrs. March describes a soldier’s selfless father, then uses the girls’ experiences to teach gratitude.

In this chapter

What to notice

Mrs. March’s story turns the sisters’ own experiences into a rule for handling dissatisfaction. It draws together the morning’s complaints and the evening’s discoveries.

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