one final glimpse into Peggy Olson

Peggy comes into the show carrying a lot of shame with her. It’s not entirely clear what’s triggering it. She’s labeled as a “prude” all throughout the show and at the beginning she’s incredibly nervous about the attention she’s receiving from the men in the office, and nervous about the way the other secretaries dress and act. It comes out as being self-righteous. Peggy doesn’t go and have a drink with everybody else. She doesn’t flirt and entertain the men in the office – except one – like other secretaries do. The one time she does, the result of getting pregnant without realizing it and having to give up a baby seems to free Peggy up from that shame. In an extreme way, Peggy must face who she “thought she was” and who she is, and live knowing that her mother and sister know. It’s basically the worst thing that could have happened to her, but it happened, and she lived through it. Peggy learns to avoid the feeling of shame and replace it with pride in her work. In many ways, this becomes Peggy’s safe haven.

It seems that Peggy’s shame doesn’t entirely go away even as she moves into a different version of herself. Peggy doesn’t crave the life that women are “supposed” to crave. She doesn’t want to get married and settle down. She doesn’t want kids. In the 1960s definition of “being a woman,” Peggy fails on many accounts. She’s essentially without value. And even though she isn’t willing to ignore her own feelings and go ahead with that lifestyle anyway, she can’t reconcile the version of herself she’s “supposed to be” and the version she is. Observing Peggy, you wouldn’t immediately recognize the shame she carries because she doesn’t get embarrassed. Again, when Peggy feels inadequate in the ways she can’t control – her lack of desire for a relationship, for a family, for kids – she supplements her confidence and her outward appearance with the one thing she has tremendous control over: her job. She doesn’t care about the standards of others if her own personal standards are being met. Peggy is her own worst critic and her own best friend.