How are Women Depicted in Ragged Dick?

        Ragged Dick is directed towards young males who are approaching the age when the thought of independence tantalizingly drifts through their minds. In note of this, all the main characters are male with brief glimpses of female characters strewn about the story. It is interesting to read a book whose target audience is young males and see how the opposite gender is depicted. Would Mr. Whitney remind a girl to “remember that your future position depends mainly upon yourself, and that it will be high or low as you choose to make it” (Alger, 57)? In turn, what role does the occasional woman play in a male-targeted book?

        The first female character appears aboard the horse-car while Frank and Dick were on their way to Central Park. We are presented with a lackluster description of the middle-aged woman, “whose sharp visage and thin lips did not seem to promise a very pleasant disposition.” (Alger, 42) This “lady, as she probably called herself” (Alger, 42) causes a scene on the horse-car ultimately placing her in “rather an awkward position after the fuss she had made” (Alger, 46). What message does this send to a young male in this period? The first interaction the boys have with a female character depicts the woman as being rather haughty, and we see her arrogance met with the quick wit of Dick who is supported by the crowd of impatient travelers. The young males that read Ragged Dick, who might not have much experience with women outside of their mother and sisters, would look down upon women more after this interaction.

        The next female characters who come into play are Bridget and Mrs. Mooney, who run the lodging Dick and Fosdick call home for the rest of the story. Bridget answers the door when Dick first rings the bell, and as can be expected from a fourteen-year-old boy, begins flirting with her by calling her “Queen Victoria” (Alger, 58-59). Bridget does not make much of this attempt, and hurriedly responds to her missus’s call. From this interaction, young males become more confident, imaginedly thinking, “If Dick can do it so can I!” Once Mrs. Mooney comes to talk with Dick, we notice that there is some respect directed towards her because Alger addresses her in the story as “Mrs. Mooney.” I wonder if Mr. Whitney would think of her profession as “honest business”, equating it to the “respectable labor” of Dick’s boot-blacking enterprise.

        The last notable female in the story is Ida, who takes an interest in Dick. He is feeling brash because “it was the first time he had ever been near so well-dressed a young lady” (Alger, 81). To young men reading this story, the interaction between Ida and Dick suggests that the better one is dressed, the better “company” one finds themselves with. In Ida’s only appearance in the story, her role is purely based upon her looks, as Alger makes a point to call out her intelligence through her mother’s correction to the distance between New York and Egypt. Alger further exerts her unimportance to the story as a whole by having the two promise to see each other again, but he fails to mention her for the rest of the novel.

        We know the target audience of Ragged Dick and the appeal of “pulling oneself up by their bootstraps,” but it is also worth it to see how the female gender is depicted in the story. Notice the significant differences in the interactions between opposite sexes in the two novels we have read—how are they portrayed, and how are they now?