Maggie Stevens Mallison

Margaret (Maggie) Mallison is Judge Stevens' daughter, Gavin's twin sister, Charles Mallison's wife and Chick's mother. The role she plays in the six late fictions in which she appears or is mentioned is largely defined by her relationship to these male figures, especially to her son, toward whom she is unfailingly protective despite his own restiveness with her concerns. She is well-educated, within the limits defined by her gender and her caste: she attended the Jefferson Female Academy, where she met and became friends with the woman whom Gavin would eventually marry. She is also intelligent and humorous and at base a kind person, as we see when in The Town she enlists in Gavin's cause to get Eula Snopes accepted by the other ladies of the town, and by her treatment of Eula's daughter Linda when she comes over for Sunday dinner. When the occasion calls for physical as well as moral courage, as in Intruder in the Dust, she rises to it with grace and authority - which arouses her son's protective instincts though she declines his help.