sarah cole

From Marxist point of view, the story symbolically portrays the selfish, cruel nature of bourgeois and the powerless, sad destiny of lower working class people and their inability for upward mobility.
Ron and Sarah are two very contrasting individuals in terms of their jobs, appearances, and personalities. From the way Ron has been described through out the story, one is to see how he belongs to that of the upper class people. He would usually walk into a bar where normally group of young lawyers would hang out for drinks before going home after work. He himself is a lawyer, young and very attractive and in the way in which he would talk about his divorce to his friends without much emotion involved seems to signify the lack of sympathy associated with bourgeois, “"No big deal," he explained to friends, who liked both Ron and his wife…”
In the case of Sarah, she is “homely” as opposed to Ron, works at rumford press where all her fellow workers hate, including herself, and has three children, without their father, with obvious financial difficulties. Her feelings towards her three troublesome children are sincere and emotional, implying the sympathetic or good nature of lower working class people, “He can see with what pleasure and pain she speaks of her children; he watches her tiny eyes light up and water over when he asks their names.”
As Ron refuses to go out in public with Sarah when she asks him to go out for dancing, it is apparent that he isn’t comfortable being seen with her, being conscious of how they would look in other people’s eyes, possibly those of other members of his class. The sense of distance between two classes is shown here, with the idea of lack of opportunities for lower class workers to climb the social ladder because of bourgeois’ scheme.
As Sarah gets being abandoned by Ron later in the story, one can see the notion of victimization of lower class people done by cruelty of bourgeois.