Meg's marriage to John Brooke was a genuine love match made without thought for social or financial advantage.
In the years that followed the wedding, the reality of limited resources and domestic difficulty became very clear.
They could not afford the things that Meg's wealthier friends had and this sometimes created real tension between them.
There were arguments about money and about the children and about the division of labor inside their modest home.
But Meg and John had made a commitment that was stronger than the frustrations of ordinary married life together.
Each difficulty they navigated together added something to the foundation of their relationship rather than eroding it.
They were not the same people at forty that they had been at twenty — they were more patient, more understanding, more themselves.
True love means growing better together through hardship.

The portrayal of Meg's marriage in Little Women is one of the novel's most underappreciated and most realistic achievements.
Alcott does not present marriage as a conclusion — the wedding is not the end of Meg's story but the beginning of a new chapter.
She shows the actual texture of a modest domestic life with considerable honesty and without sentimentality or false comfort.
There is insufficient money, there are sick children, there are arguments, there are moments of genuine doubt and frustration.
What makes the marriage work is not the absence of these difficulties but the quality of attention that Meg and John bring to them.
They treat each difficulty as something to be worked through together rather than something to be endured individually in silence.
This collaborative approach to hardship is what Alcott presents as the distinguishing feature of love that genuinely matures.
The marriage at forty is different from the marriage at twenty not in spite of its difficulties but substantially because of them.
True love means growing better together through hardship.