Perhaps the name Margaret comes from Faust's innocent prey, Marguerite, who goes mad from the guilt of bearing and murdering Faust's illegitimate offspring. As traditionally portrayed in the Savoy opera, however, she is a parody of such madwomen as Ophelia and Lucia di Lammermoor. Munich (220) proposes that Margaret's nickname (Mad Meg) may have been inspired by Bruegel's "terrifying" painting Dulle Griet (meaning Mad Meg), which shows "a huge figure of a sword and skillet-wielding housewife [who] seeking mastery breaks through the boundaries of the kitchen. Even in hell she is a menace. Mad Meg may be understood as archetypal of all women … who defy propriety."
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