Jo March Timeline and Summary

•  Back
• More 

• Jo, aged fifteen, is sitting with her sisters on Christmas Eve, lamenting the fact that they have no money.
• Jo's sisters perform a play that she has written.
• She meets her neighbor Laurie.
• Jo resolves to carry her "burdens" gracefully.
• Jo nurses Laurie while he is sick and they become even better friends.
• Jo goes to a play with Meg and Laurie.
• She discovers that Amy has burned her manuscript.
• Jo goes skating with Laurie and ignores Amy running after them.
• Jo feels guilty for Amy's accident on the ice and resolves to keep her temper.
• Jo convinces her sisters to let Laurie join their Pickwick Club.
• Jo experiments with doing whatever she wants and abandoning all her household duties. She doesn't like it very much.
• Jo takes part in "Camp Laurence," Laurie's picnic for his British guests, the Vaughns.
• She describes her "castle in the air" to Laurie and her sisters.
• Jo secretly publishes two of her short stories, then reveals her success to her family and friends.
• Jo is horrified when her family receives a telegram stating that Mr. March has been injured.
• Jo and Meg try to run the household while their mother is away nursing their father in Washington.
• Jo nurses Beth, who has scarlet fever.
• She is overjoyed when her mother returns home and Beth starts to get better.
• Jo is disgusted with Meg's growing affection for John Brooke.
• Jo is excited by her father's return.
• Jo is depressed by Meg's engagement to John Brooke.
• She devotes herself to writing and taking care of Beth.
• Jo attends Meg's wedding.
• Jo wins a $100 prize in a short story competition.
• Jo publishes her novel in a heavily edited form and receives mixed reviews.
• She and Amy pay calls on their neighbors, and Jo's erratic behavior horrifies her proper sister.
• Jo's bad behavior causes her aunts to send Amy to Europe instead of Jo.
• Jo tries to figure out what is upsetting Beth and decides that she must be in love with Laurie.
• Jo goes to New York as a governess to the Kirke children.
• Jo gets to know Mr. Bhaer, who becomes her good friend and advisor.
• She returns home and turns down Laurie's proposal of marriage.
• Jo discovers that Beth is dying.
• Jo nurses Beth through her illness and mourns her sister's death.
• Jo feels lonely and wishes that she could find happiness in marriage like her sisters Meg and Amy.
• She and Mr. Bhaer get engaged.
• Jo inherits Aunt March's mansion, Plumfield.
• Jo and Mr. Bhaer open a boarding school for boys.
• Jo lives happily, if busily, ever after!