Jo "marrying off her heroine"
Alright, let's have it out. The ending has Jo and Friedrich reconciling, Aunt March dying, and Jo opening a school on the property (all taken straight from the book and providing the
Sequel Hook for
Little Men). Then we see her apparently adding the relationship to her manuscript on the advice of her editor, who said at the start that a book with a female lead must end with her "married or dead". Jo adds the romance scene with great reluctance. So it seems that the options are...
- Friedrich never existed. Jo made him up for the story and lived single the rest of her days (as Louisa May Alcott actually did)
- Friedrich existed but they were never a couple
- Friedrich existed and everything up until the reconciliation at the train station happened
- Friedrich existed and they became a couple, but Jo felt their romance was too personal and included it in their novel only under duress
- I would kind of favor 2, that he existed but they were never a couple. Probably it would have been easier to use a real person in a story that's based on her life than making up one from whole cloth. Given the way Jo's spoken of marriage too, plus their earlier interactions, I don't think they would really get together. Bhaer in the film seems too mild to interest Jo that much (I don't know how the book version is).
- I'm thinking a mixture of 3 and 4. They seemed interested in one another at the beginning of the movie and Jo was downcast at the thought of losing him after she blew up at him (plus she did want to get married at that point, if only so she wouldn't be alone), so I think they did get together, but she may have invented the classic Hollywood Race for Your Love to the train station for her book, and the way they actually got together was much more prosaic (and thus less entertaining), like the way it happens in the novel — where they coincidentally meet on a muddy road in the rain, and more or less stumble into admitting that they want to marry each other.
- Here's another interpretation. Jo's character was an Author Avatar for herself yes, but Jo may be slightly ashamed of herself for wanting to have love after all - as she's spent most of her life wanting to remain unmarried and seems to hate the idea of marriage in general (she even tries to get Meg to run away on her wedding day). I think some of Jo's development is realising that dreams and ambitions can change as you get older (Meg giving up on her acting dreams in favor of marriage and family, Amy choosing to marry for love rather than money) so she does want someone to love but has that stubborn streak inside of her that makes her feel a little ashamed of this - so the heroine in her book is written as unmarried because that's how she wishes she felt in real life. So I think they did get together but Jo left it out of the manuscript until she was told by the publisher that it didn't seem to match her character.
- Friedrich was already in the book when she presented it so that makes it very unlikely that he was made out of whole cloth when the book was written, and Jo says that "she doesn't marry either of them". Given how all other characters are based on pretty important people in her life, it seems unlikely she'd add a person in such a big role to merit that disclaimer if he was little more than a footnote. It's probable that there were initially very different plans for the character (like also being inspired by her actual life) but she ultimately changed it as a literary choice. The businesslike way she accepts that edit shows that she doesn't really object to the idea, making it more likely that she really just chose not to marry them because that was the story she wanted to tell and not out of any personal reservations. The book is deeply, wholly personal to her; she'd have a bigger qualm against such a huge change on how her life was presented unless it actually wasn't a huge change all things considered. Jo might even have considered it disrespectful to the real Friedrich, unless it wasn't.
- I’d lean towards option 2. She probably appreciated his critique of her writing and respected him but didn’t “like” him. In her mind, she probably saw him as the type of person who she’d end up with in theory.
