Jo Kauffman

The novel's protagonist, Jo Kauffman, longs for the personal and professional autonomy leaders in the women's movement hope to achieve through their activism. Though Jo's mother, Sarah, wishes her daughter would conform to feminine gender norms, Jo assists Sarah by replacing Sarah's husband, Ken, as a provider for the family. She is arguably the most independent woman in the novel, but she also puts her family's needs before her own more often than either Bethie or Sarah. When Jo fails to achieve her professional aspirations, it is because she devotes her life to her husband and her children.

However, Jo's heteronormative choice to become a wife and mother is not an expression of her own romantic desires. Jo is a homosexual woman. In the early twentieth century, the domestic life with a woman she envisions for herself would leave her without sociocultural influence and socioeconomic security. Her...