Maggie Tullilever's Stages Of Moral Development Essay

Thesis: Does Maggie Tulliver reach all stages of Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development?
Stages of Moral Development of Maggie Tulliver
Premoral: It’s hard to pinpoint Maggie Tulliver in Kohlberg’s first stage of moral development. Naturally, it would seem every person starts in this stage before our minds begin to advance in development. However, the times we see Maggie get in trouble for being disobedient, she has disobeyed without seeming worried about whether she gets caught or not. She seems to do what she wants, regardless of what the consequences could be. In Book One, Chapter Two, after Maggie has come in the house and her mother has seen that she’s gone near the water when she wasn’t supposed to, she doesn’t seem to show any remorse
She throws her bonnet down and her mother reprimands her for it. ‘O dear, O dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin’ of, to throw your bonnet down there? Take it up-stairs, there’s a good gell, an’ let your hair be brushed, an’ put your other pinafore on, an’ change your shoes—do, for shame; an’ come an’ go on with your patchwork, like a little lady.’ To which Maggie responds in a “vehemently cross tone”, ‘O mother’, I don’t want to do my patchwork.’ Even after her mother basically tells her she isn’t being a “lady”, she doesn’t care. She’s honest about how she doesn’t want to do her patchwork and her mother not considering her a lady because of this, doesn’t seem to bother her at all. She even goes so far as to tell her mother how she doesn’t even like her Aunt Glegg, after her mother suggests her make something for her with her patchwork. I would consider Maggie in stage one during this time of her life because even though she
Well, mostly what her father and Tom desire of her. Comparable to her younger self in the scene with the bonnet and the patchwork, Maggie never seems to focus as heavily on what her mother or her aunts think. Tom’s opinion of Maggie controls her in so many areas of her life. I think part of her realizes how her feelings toward Tom and his feelings toward her are different, at an early age. I think she notices it whenever she and Tom cut her hair, but then he still picks on her and goes to dinner without her. As she’s lying in her room, her thoughts are “O, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; if he had been crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too.” (Eliot 63) but it’s later in the book when she directs it at