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Maggie is the central protagonist. The play charts her journey towards finding her strength and role as leader of the family and as an individual.

In Act I, we witness many of the challenges she has to face as a working class housewife in the East End of Glasgow in the 1930s. She attends to her children, her husband and Granny as if she is mother to all of them. She still idolises her eldest son, despite his poor behaviour. This shows her loving and perhaps overly stoic nature.

Circumstances become strained, however, due to the arrival of Alec and Isa, the departure of her daughter and the revelation that Bertie is suffering from tuberculosis. Burdened by the weight of her family, Maggie breaks down.

It is the accumulation of events that forces her to take control in the climax of the play.

Maggie's journey

When the play begins, Maggie, despite the hardships she must face, appears to be content in her role as wife and mother. She puts all her energy into raising her bairns and the language of the play reinforces this.

She is often described as coming in at a run in order to clout her children and we see her seize Edie, then thrust her away after examining her head for lice. It is clear that Maggie has an exhausting task.

When Lily tries to get Maggie to realise that she has sacrificed her own self for her husband and family, she is quick to defend her situation: You leave John alane! He does his best for us.

However, Maggie changes as she gradually becomes more and more worn down by performing such a tiring role. After arriving back from hospital, clutching Bertie’s shoes, she must deal with Jenny’s departure. A month later, she is confronted with her weak, grown-up son suffering at the hands of his belligerent wife.

The love she has for her children, particularly those she feels she has failed, is obvious, as she always tries to placate Jenny and is easily taken in by Alec’s demonstrations of illness. However, in Act II she is disappointed in her son’s dishonesty and her husband’s lack of support and she leaves the house to return stoney eyed.

The stage directions note Ernest’s suspicion of this new silent, grim-mouthed woman making tea in the kitchen. We are reminded of the description of Lily as hard-mouthed here, which implies that Maggie is adopting a similar capacity for independence.

This pre-empts the scene in which she cries hysterically and collapses in a storm of weeping. Perhaps through exposure to Lily, and to the younger generation of females, Maggie begins to recognise her life for what it is. So in the final scene, we see a character motivated to take control, able to first humiliate and then manage her sensitive husband, so that she can make her forgotten long-ago dream a reality.