Maggie O'Connell

Female

Margaret

Anti-Hero

21

Icy blue

Classic bob, falling to her neck in tightly coiffed waves, as was the fashion at the time.

Blonde

5"8

Defined, high cheekbones giving her a mature, sophisticated look.

Her figure is slender, womanly and attractive, which is all the more identifiable when contrasted with the plain, homely girls in her town.

Her legs are a frequent point of admiration, being long and smooth.

Slender and womanly, with a slight hourglass figure and long legs

120 lbs

The lack of sunlight in rural Ireland gives Maggie a smooth, pale complexion but she often rouges her cheeks which diminishes her pallor.

Human

Manipulation - Maggie's astounding intellect is not properly cultivated in her society, which forces her to repress her smarts and general outspokenness to appear demure, ladylike and to attract a man because no potential suitor wants to be outsmarted by a woman. This caused Maggie to act out with scheming, manipulative behaviour from quite an early age, making her quite the Chessmaster by 21, having a very tight grip on the populace of her hometown. Her talent for duplicity and cunning have an opportunity to really show themselves when she has to get away with murder.
Lying - Maggie's skill for lying goes hand in hand with her manipulative tendencies. Maggie likes to spin stories and little inventions to make life more interesting, another unfortunate symptom of being an intelligent woman in a stifling, misogynistic society. She was forced to lie to save her family's reputation after her father left her mother for a younger woman, causing her mother to spiral into depression and a hermit-like existence. In this world, little white lies and alterations to the truth are very important.
Tailoring/Dressmaking/Knitting/Crotchet - Maggie used to be wealthy from her father but when he left, she and her mother spiraled into genteel poverty, with a large and beautiful house that they could no longer afford. This meant that Maggie usually had to make her own clothes, and she got very good at it, effectively fooling her town into believing they weren't as poor as they actually were.
Singing/Piano - Maggie is a talented performer, having won the local Music Festival many years in a row which proves to be yet another contributor to the foundation of her fragile ego.
Cooking/Cleaning - Being raised by a woman like Maggie's mother meant that Maggie was taught to be a good homemaker and a large part of this was making good meals. Her culinary talents improved greatly when her mother became depressed and Maggie had to look after the house.

Maggie exhibits symptoms of many personality disorders, but, in a different time, she may have been perfectly normal. Her society encourages her to repress her intellect, anger and frustration and to instead, prize attributes like beauty and politeness, fostering negative traits like vanity, selfishness and numbness which seem to contribute to Maggie's symptoms of Narcissism and Machiavellianism. In addition, she seems to have a genetic predisposition for mental illness as her histrionic mother started to slip further and further into depression and hysteria when her good looks started to fade. Maggie is also quite surprised at her own capability for apathy, wickedness, and even murder without feelings of guilt, possibly indicating that Maggie may also have psychopathic tendencies as she doesn't seem to experience any great feelings of guilt after accidentally murdering another girl. Whether she actually is incapable of guilt or if she merely repressed it as a coping mechanism is left ambiguous.
When an American woman arrives to her town as a visitor, enchanting the inhabitants, Maggie's entire sense of self-esteem starts to crumble, pushing her into delusion, violence and insanity.

Maggie is almost always smiling.
She speaks in a higher, girlier voice when around people but naturally has a lower timbre.
She tends to swirl her right foot in circular motions when sitting down.
She has impeccable posture and always sits with her arms folded.
Sometimes she can hum little tunes to herself when distracted.
One may be able to catch Maggie muttering to herself while she entertains one of her fantasies or plots.
Her eyes generally dart around quite quickly, the cogs in her mind never ceasing.
When speaking to her, as a manipulative tactic, Maggie may look you up and down noticeably, fostering insecurity and self-consciousness.
She can often be found preening herself, either by touching her hair, her nose or her neck and she tends to look into any reflective surfaces.

Maggie, despite her unscrupulousness and proclivity for immorality, has very understandable motivations. Her father left her, and her mother, financially destitute. Therefore, like a true femme fatale, she is motivated by a desire to save her family and enrich herself.
A part of this is also a motivation to generally be perfect, ever-smiling and the best. While this ambition could be seen as noble, Maggie takes it to an unhealthy extreme, often enjoying making others feel bad about themselves and inspiring envy in people.
Maggie's vanity, superficiality and obsession with her appearance (as well as her fear of the elderly) all come from the traumatic experience of her father leaving her mother for a younger woman. Her mother being a great beauty, easily enticed the older rich man but once her looks started to fade, her mental instability became even more noticeable. This instilled the unhealthy mindset in Maggie that looks, money and power are all that matter, and that getting old means losing all of one's power. This even leads to some feelings of suicidal ideation in Maggie as she casually contemplates killing herself when she turns 40 so as not to lose her beauty.

Vanity - Maggie is obsessed with her appearance and has a great deal of pride in her beauty. This might make her seem superficial and narcissistic, but her vanity comes from the deep emotional pain of seeing her father leave her mother for a younger, more beautiful woman. In a way it is almost tragic that Maggie, an intelligent and accomplished woman, should be so obsessed with something as fleeting as beauty.
Ambition - It is Maggie's ambition for saving her family financially and re-entering the upper echelon of her society that drives most of the plot. It causes her to resort to increasingly unscrupulous methods and contributes to her deteriorating mental stability, culminating in her murder of, what she perceives as, a rival for the affections of her rich fiance.
Apathy - Maggie's repressive society encourages her to bottle up her feelings, leading to her becoming an apathetic and bitter individual. It is this absence or repression of guilt and negative emotion that allows her to get away with murder.
Superiority - Maggie has quite an ego as she is something of a big fish in a small pond. She constantly demeans others (very subtly of course) to feed her own fragile ego, which only serves to indicate her deep-seated insecurities and neuroses. Maggie is the 'Mean Girl' character who is privileged a perspective as the main protagonist.

Maggie harbours quite a disdain for men in general, although this doesn't stop her from using them for financial gain and she even convinces herself she is in love with her wealthy fiance to make their relationship more bearable.
Maggie is quite afraid of the elderly as they effectively epitomise her irrational fear of ageing and fading into irrelevance.

Maggie spends a considerable amount of time plotting and scheming to attain money, power and financial stability.
She enjoys crochet, knitting and dressmaking, although the necessity of these skills have slightly removed the enjoyment.
Maggie enjoys going into dress shops and other stores and perusing the items, not buying anything but merely pretending that she can. It is a coping mechanism.
Maggie enjoys baking but doesn't really enjoy cooking, but understands the necessity of these skills.
Maggie is an excellent chess player as well as being quite talented at bridge and other card games.

INTJ

Apple tart, although she often denies herself this delicacy to keep her figure.

Her beauty and her intellect.

Her engagement ring (although this might eventually be replaced by her wedding ring)

Pink

Works in a sweet shop, befitting her saccharine facade. She pretends it was a requirement of her mother's to learn responsibility.

Irish Republican (i.e. Does not recognize the authority of the Crown, considers herself 'Irish' and wants a united Ireland). In terms of modern, American politics, Maggie holds many views of a right-wing Conservative, as she has internalized the misogynistic and homophobic ideals of the Catholic Church which is a dominant force in rural Ireland and she believes she should be a homemaker and that pursuing a career as a woman is silly. Despite being undeniably affected by these conservative ideals, Maggie also uses them to her advantage, weaponizing the internalized misogyny of her political and religious sphere to attempt to ruin the reputation of a romantic rival, displaying her Machiavellian tendencies.

Catholic, as most others in her town. The influence of religion on her town is a key contributor to its toxic, misogynistic and repressive nature.

Attended primary school and secondary school but could not afford to attend university as she wished. She passes this off by looking down on women who attend university, making it seem like she chose to stay in her small town to meet a man when she really did not have a choice.

Maggie was born in 1935 to Patrick O'Connell and his famously beautiful wife, Rose. She was the apple of her father's eye and was beautiful from the day she was born. Her childhood passed in a golden haze, beloved by peers and adults alike as a golden angel: demure, elegant and charming like her lady mother, who often entertained guests in their large, beautiful home by the sea, presenting the image of the perfect nuclear family. But what Maggie did not know at her young age was that her parent's marriage was failing: her mother's looks and mind started to slip, leading to her becoming a bitter, histrionic woman whose addiction to pills affected her fertility leading to multiple miscarriages. Disappointed with his wife for being unable to give him a son and growing frustrated with her mental instability, Patrick began seeing a younger woman in the city, before eventually running away altogether, leaving Maggie and Rose behind with debt, bills and their beautiful house which slowly began to deteriorate. Maggie, still only a child, was awoken to, what she perceived, as a harsh truth: Beauty is everything. Everyone in the town loved her because she was beautiful. Boys wanted to kiss her because she was beautiful. Girls wanted to be her because she was beautiful. Her father left her mother because she was not beautiful anymore. And so, with this epiphany, Maggie begins to plot to save her family. Inside, Maggie was no longer the 'beloved angel', it became a facade that she used to disguise her subtle attacks to the petty, small-minded people around her. Her traumatic experiences made Maggie a jaded, pragmatic, manipulative and vain individual, her beautiful face and sharp mind made her more dangerous than any man. She began using her feminine wiles and astounding beauty to escape her situation, be it by inventing little lies to the rest of the town to preserve their reputation or by seducing a wealthy man to rise beyond her station. Through her wit, determination and sheer force of will, Maggie clambered out of the filth that her parents had left behind, resolving to save her mother and herself, and restore the golden childhood that had since become a distant memory. By the events of the story, Maggie is engaged to a wealthy, knight-in-shining-armor named John and she has fooled the town into thinking she is no poorer than she was before, even having her own little posse of girlfriends who obey her every whim. She is set for life... until the mysterious and alluring Katherine makes a visit from America and instantly the entire town falls in love with her. Fearing her new Prince Charming will leave her for the enticing woman, Maggie plots to destroy Katherine's reputation and send her kicking and screaming back to the Land of the Free. But as time goes on and Maggie gets more desperate, she becomes obsessed with the girl and her demons which she has worked so hard to suppress begin to show themselves...

October 2nd