How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning in snow storms beneath happy-hued church windows. And a choir within singing "Joy to the World." To Maggie and the rest of the audience this was transcendental realism. Joy always within, and they, like the actor, inevitably without. Viewing it, they hugged themselves in ecstatic pity of their imagined or real condition. (8.21)
This is one of the novel's only moments of positive religious reflection. Maggie constantly struggles with managing reality and the life she imagines she could someday obtain.
Quote #5
The last act was a triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses, the representative of the audience, over the villain and the rich man, his pockets stuffed with bonds, his heart packed with tyrannical purposes, imperturbable amid suffering. (8.25)
The music hall plays fuel fantasies, and sometimes, false hopes, for the audience members. The stock narrative of the hero prevailing, the masses finally getting their due, and the villain being punished is exactly what the audience wants and needs to see. It gives them hope, even if it is false.
Quote #6
Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of the melodrama. She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked. The theatre made her think. She wondered if the culture and refinement she had seen imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on the stage, could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt factory. (8.26)
The melodramas provide Maggie with an image of what life can be—they stimulate her imagination and fuel her hope.