Mendacity

for me, a word associated with Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (boomed by Big Daddy as played by Burl Ives) There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity ... You can smell it. It smells like death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiiE-h9ZYag

Mendacity, which one could concede is a gender neutral term, plays throughout the story. Each character offers different justifications and goals for lies, covering most categories contemporary people use. Intermittent explosions between the players sequentially destroy various mythical ways that silence or pretense was supposed to be benign. Motives include: ensuring direct personal gain, avoiding being on one's own after escaping poverty through marriage, keeping Big Daddy's spirits and appetite up for his 65th birthday, making someone else look bad, or making the family look "good." Eventually, they all are exposed as just increasing the intensity of conflict, and destroying trust. Token parts for a cleric who overlooks the obvious, and a physician who practices paternalistic lying and secrecy, warn that deceit exists beyond family ties. Unfortunately, this too has a current credibility.