Evaluate whether Little Women's ending pays off its earlier setups, including Beth's fate and the marriages that do and do not happen.
A satisfying ending is not simply a happy one or a surprising one -- it is an EARNED one. Payoff means an ending fulfills something the story planted earlier, whether that fulfillment matches what the reader hoped for or overturns it. An ending that comes from nowhere, with no earlier setup, feels cheap no matter how dramatic it is; an ending that delivers on real setup feels satisfying even when it hurts.
Little Women pays off three major threads by its final chapters. Beth's death is heartbreaking, but it is earned: Alcott planted the weakened heart and lingering frailty chapters earlier, right after the scarlet fever, so the ending fulfills a promise rather than ambushing the reader. Laurie's proposal to Jo is refused, and he eventually marries Amy instead -- a turn many first-time readers do not expect, yet the text has quietly shown Jo and Laurie behaving like siblings for hundreds of pages, and shown Amy and Laurie growing genuinely close in Europe, so the "surprise" holds up under review. Finally, Jo's marriage to Professor Bhaer and the founding of the Plumfield school for boys pays off Jo's whole earlier search (Week 5) for a true, honest purpose beyond fame or a borrowed literary formula.
Mastery looks like: They can name a specific setup and its later payoff, and can argue with textual evidence whether a debated ending (like the Jo/Laurie/Amy triangle) is earned.
Common stumbles: Assuming "happy" automatically means "earned," or "sad" automatically means "unearned"; describing an ending as satisfying or not without pointing to any specific earlier setup as evidence.