Margaret "Meg" March

Margaret "Meg" Brooke was the first daughter of Robert and Margaret March, as well as the oldest of the four March sisters. As a young girl, Meg was susceptible to beautiful things, and longed for luxury. She was also particularly vain about her pretty white hands. In fact, she once confessed that her "castle in the air" was a lovely house full of all sorts of luxurious things: delicacies, fine clothes, fine furniture, pleasant people, and great wealth. Fortunately for Meg, as she matured, she grew to understand that true worth did not lie in money, and she even learned to release some of her vanity, as evidenced by her father observing (when he finally returned home) that her hands were no longer as fair and fine as he had remembered them before he had left. Later on, especially after she married John, she learned to tolerate being poor, and to wholeheartedly appreciate the blessings she had in life, as well as the truly admirable qualities of individuals. Hence, though Meg never truly lost her desire for beauty and luxury, the combination of maturity, marriage, and later motherhood helped her to grow into a sensible and intelligent woman who understood what really mattered in life. Her one constant feature was her care for her sisters, though her role as the oldest of them could lead her to be slightly bossy and overbearing at times.