AS English
10 December 2024
Maggie, in A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, fully understands the relationship and difference between shame and guilt, her character exemplifying the Southern aristocracy's focus on fear of public humiliation over personal awareness of wrongdoing. She uses calculated actions and lies to optimize for her own needs: to secure herself a position in the Pollitt family. She is a representation of the Southern honor system, where "not conscience, but shame, not guilt, were the psychological and social underpinnings." Unlike Brick, who retreats into passivity, Maggie actively engages with the flawed system to secure her future. She acknowledges that "nobody's good. The rich or the well-to-do can afford to respect moral patterns...but I could never afford to" (Williams 61). Since she knows the terrors of poverty intimately, she uses her femininity and cunning to maneuver through the performative nature of Southern honor, where societal appearances outweigh personal morality. Her fabricated pregnancy, for example, is a strategic lie intended to ensure her and Brick's inheritance of Big Daddy's estate. This claim is not driven by guilt but rather by the need to avert the shame of failing to produce an heir that would ensure her place in the family. In a society where shame dominates, individuals like Maggie must adapt by embracing superficial morality. Her actions represent the corrupt moral code of the Southern aristocracy, where the fear of societal judgement trumps the sense of violating personal moral code.