When her father comes downstairs there is a battle between the shift of power. ‘Dinner is at one father’ Maggie tells Hobson, but Hobson replies, ‘Dinner will be when I come for it. I’m master here.’ At once Maggie doesn’t continue to argue and accepts his decision, conveniently making Hobson seem like he has the power of the household.
Willie Mossop, the worker who actually makes the boots, has no self-confidence in the beginning of the play; he is even scared of receiving praise. Mrs H, a rather high-class woman, comes into the shop one day and asks who made her boots. When she asks for Mossop, Hobson apologises but she doesn’t even know what for. ‘Are you Mossop?’ she asks. Mossop answers, ‘Yes mum’ As we can see from these 2 words of speech, we already know what kind of a person Willie Mossop is. We can see that he cannot even answer as a confident person, but thinks of himself as a lower class person who has to call this woman, ‘Mum’ instead of ‘Madam’ or ‘Miss’. Mrs H asks him to take ‘that’ and as she says this, Willie bends down, ‘rather expects “that” to be a blow’. Willie is used to being beaten and not treated fairly as a person but is extremely surprised when Mrs H gives him a card asking him to make all of her shoes as they are fantastic.
Moving on the middle of the play, the situation hasn’t changed that much. She has decided to move out and marry Willie Mossop, in which she forced him into it as a ‘business deal’. She visits her sisters to ask them to come to her wedding while also telling them that they WILL get married, ‘I don’t allow for folks to change their minds. He made his choice. He said get married and you’re going to.’ She is talking about Hobson telling the girls they will get married in arranged marriages apart from Maggie whom he says is, ‘Too old’. Vickey and Alice are a little weary of following in Maggie’s footsteps and rebelling against their father, so much so that they refuse to approve to her marriage to Willie Mossop. Maggie asks them to kiss her bridegroom, to which they agree, but reluctantly. ‘You have approved. You’ve kissed the bridegroom and you’ll go along with us.’ Maggie orders her sisters to join her and Willie at their marriage ceremony, again with great resistance the girls go along without their father’s knowledge, who coincidentally has fallen down a cellar.
After the wedding, Hobson has been summoned to pay damages for damage to the cellar that he had fallen down earlier. Albert Prosser, Alice’s bridegroom to be, is the solicitor summoning £1000 from Hobson. When they have all met in Maggie and Willie’s new home, Maggie takes over as most powerful even over her father, ‘Eh Albert Prosser I can see you’re going to get on in the world but you needn’t be greedy here. That one thousand’s too much.’ When Hobson and Albert Prosser start to argue over a price, Maggie, yet again, jumps in. ‘If there are any more signs of greediness from you two, there’ll be a counter – action to personal damages due to your criminal carelessness in leaving your cellar flap open.’ Maggie comes up with a price of £500, but Hobson tried to disagree. In the beginning we saw Maggie step don from trying to take over the domination role but here we see Hobson step down. ‘You can afford five hundred pounds and you’re going to pay five hundred pounds.’ Hobson then steps down and agrees to pay a sum of five hundred pounds.
The ending takes on a very different dominant role, the role that was most unlikely to take on the power of the house now steps up, Willie Mossop. Maggie and he are now married, running their own successful business and go to visit Hobson, as his business is not doing so well. ‘Now then, Maggie, go and bring your father down and be sharp. I’m busy at my shop, so what they are at his.’ Willie is now being known as Will and actually demands something off Maggie to which she does with no arguments. When Hobson comes down, Willie tries to arrange a joint shop between them, Hobson is not so pleased about changing the name of it so Maggie also argues in favour of her father but Willie is not going to be defeated it seems. ‘Mossop & Hobson or its Oldfield Road for us Maggie.’ At this point Maggie steps down from the power battle like she did to her father in the beginning of the play. ‘Very well. Mossop & Hobson.’ She still has the power over her father though because she is deciding for him, what the shop is to be called, and really Hobson has no say in the matter. At the very end, what finishes Willie Mossop’s rise to power, is when Alice asks Maggie to come to her wedding. ‘Do you mean to say you won’t come?’ she asks and Maggie answers ‘It isn’t for me to say at all. It’s for my husband.’
