Character Clues

Character Analysis

Occupation

Members of the middle and working classes are fixtures of Realist literature—it's all about the workers in this genre. To this end, the people in Maggie work their tails off… and are still poor. This work-based reality is key to understanding how hopeless things are for our main girl (and pretty much everyone else around her).

The audiences in the music halls are made up of people seeking lowbrow entertainment as an escape from the dismal grind of daily life: "The vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quitted labor. Men with calloused hands and attired in garments that showed the wear of an endless trudge for a living […]" (7.2). Maggie is one of these people, grinding away in the factory all day and relishing small pleasures thanks to Pete by night:

The air in the collar and cuff establishment strangled her. She knew she was gradually and surely shriveling in the hot, stuffy room. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated trains. (8.5)

This entrapment Maggie feels in her life makes Pete seem practically like a member of the aristocracy—Maggie imagines him to be a "very elegant and graceful bartender" (5.11), emphasis on the bartender. Only a girl stuck working in a factory could think that a bartender's money could be her ticket to a markedly better life, which is exactly the case for Maggie.

Physical Appearance

Looks matter. In the Bowery world you have to look tough, ideally wear a sneer, and have an air of being above it all. When we first see Jimmie, he's a scrappy hooligan—"His infantile countenance was livid with fury" (1.2)—so even though he's a kid, his face already shows the anger of a man and the wear-and-tear of life on the streets. So much for his "infantile countenance."

Jimmie grows up quickly, and looks all the more like one of the hardened products of the street: "The inexperienced fibers of the boy's eyes were hardened at an early age. He became a young man of leather" (4.3). Despite her surroundings, Maggie grows up to be a pretty young lady—which is not necessarily a good thing, since she captures Pete's eye: "Say, Mag," he says, "I'm stuck on yer shape. It's outa sight" (4.2). If only she didn't look so good, her life might have turned out a bit better… or at least lasted a while longer.

Curious about Pete's looks? We dissect all the ways he screams bad news over on his page in the "Characters" section. So get clicking.

Social Status

If the social spectrum is a ladder, the folks in this book are pretty much barely hanging on to the bottom rung. Our main girl lives in a tenement, which means her daily life is governed by violence and poverty and that she has basically no hope of ever really living differently. And just because Pete seems like a classy cat to Maggie doesn't mean he's that much farther up the old social ladder—this book is populated by manual laborers, prostitutes, beggars, and thieves, and Pete isn't the lone exception.

In short, there is not a single character we can point to whose life isn't shaped by poverty. It's a bummer.