Madge
Open
Madge certainly seems to be the character closest to Gar. Their easy and intimate relationship is established in the first scene, which shows them dancing and joking with each other.
This may be because Madge is so emotionally open compared to Gar’s father. She has no problems discussing his imminent departure and becomes frustrated with S.B. when he won’t even admit that his son is leaving.
Significantly, she is the one who tells Gar about his mother - never even alluded to by S.B. until the very last scene - and Gar feels comfortable asking Madge questions about her.
In a way Madge - who recalls bathing Gar “every Saturday night till you were a big lout of fourteen” - is the mother he never had.
Hard-working
Madge has been working for the O’Donnell family since Gar was born (as seen from the bath comment above). Yet she still seems to be under-appreciated by S.B., despite doing everything for them.
She loses control around the midpoint of the play when her frustrations and exhaustion build up.
The stage directions state that she is “on the point of tears”, and the verb ‘accuse’ is used to describe her tone.
As “The tears begin to come” she lists her jobs to S.B., “the stairs have to be washed down, and the store’s to be swept, and your room has to be done out – and – and – I’m telling you I’ll be that busy for the next couple of weeks that I won’t have time to lift my head!”
The punctuation used here, the dashes and the exclamation mark, show her anger. This all suggests she gets very little thanks.
It also seems to be the case in her own family. We see her discuss going to help her nephew’s family as they have their seventh child, “maybe I’ll take a run over on Sunday and square the place up for her”.
She is delighted about the fact that “they’re going to call this one Madge - at least so she says”, but in one of the final scenes between Madge and S.B. we find out that “They’re going to call it Brigid."
Madge doesn’t bring this up in her subsequent conversation with Gar, perhaps hiding her disappointment in much the same way many of the other characters hide theirs.