Josephine "Jo" March: The protagonist of the novel, Jo is an autobiographical depiction of Louisa May Alcott herself. A tomboy, Jo is the second daughter, aged fifteen at the beginning of the story. She is outspoken and has a passion for writing. Her nature often gets her into trouble, while her heart often pushes her into acts of kindness. She is very close to her younger sister, Beth, a quiet and compassionate character who offsets Jo's more outgoing nature. At the beginning of the book, Jo is unhappily employed as a companion by her Aunt March. When Beth comes down with scarlet fever, Amy replaces Jo as Aunt March's companion. Jo cuts off her long, chestnut brown hair—"her one beauty", as Amy once called it — and sells it to a wig shop to earn travel money for her mother to visit their father, a Civil War chaplain who is dangerously ill. Jo receives a marriage proposal from her childhood friend and neighbor Laurie, but she refuses him. Later, Jo moves to New York, where she meets Professor Friedrich "Fritz" Bhaer, whom she later marries. Regarding Jo's marriage, Alcott later wrote, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her".