Maggie as a Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Maggie is the main character in so far as the title of the drama is concerned. She is the 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. She calls herself a 'cat' in the sense that she is "catty" or spiteful. She is living on a 'hot tin roof' in the sense that her married life with a homosexual is very unpleasant.

Maggie is 'catty' in the sense that she is nervous, easily irritated, and even aggressive. She upsets Brick, her husband; and she is jealous of Gooper and his wife Mae who is equally spiteful. But, there is no other way for her. She says that she is catty because "she is consumed with envy (most probably of Mae's sexual happiness and her children) and eaten up with longing", longing for the healthy sexual relationship with her husband and perhaps for the same in the future.

Maggie becomes a 'catty' woman in the eyes of Brick because of her unceasing and uncompromising efforts to make him a normal, social and responsible person. She wants him to return into normal life and accept the reality and responsibility of living, like a family and social man. She is struggling to make him understand the necessity of some property with which to sustain in life, the necessity of having a child and pleasing Big Daddy, his father, and the necessity of avoiding the endless, insult of his brother and sister-in-law.

Maggie's life is like the life of a cat on a hot tin roof because of the problematic sexuality of her husband. Brick is a homosexual, or at least a bisexual, who has had a mental breakdown after the death of his homosexual partner named Skipper. Since Maggie tested Skipper in bed and he broke down and died, perhaps due to self-disgust and suicidal depression, Brick has also been doing nothing except drinking and passing his life. Her life is also like being on a hot tin roof because she is always insulted by Mae and Gooper for being childless. Brick refuses to sleep with her or even take much interest in her, and so her life has become miserable.

In one sense, Maggie is also sitting on the 'hot tin roof' of Big Daddy's land and property. This 'hot tin roof' is a hothouse of quarrel for the greed for land and property between the couple of Gooper and Maggie. In Act II, Brick tells his father to "sit tight and let them scratch each other's eyes out...", that is, not to let either the Gooper couple or even Maggie have it! Maggie is very catty because she knows that Gooper and Mae are all bent on driving her out of the old man's estate, or subdue her and her husband to the status of receiving limited remittance. Maggie is a tragic kind of character because she is the victim of her own mistake as well as her predicament as well as certain forces beyond her control. One is the nature of her husband; the homosexual won't easily yield to any proposal or pressure for becoming a normal man. The mistake she has made is that she was partly responsible for the collapse and death of Skipper; she cannot undo that. She is all the more catty because of these two reasons also.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Study Center

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