Assignment #5: Close Reading of the last chapter of Maggie

The last chapter of Maggie is very strange. After denouncing her for leaving her shit situation for a man who appeared to love her and then condemning her when she returns because he utterly abandoned her, Mary the mother weeps and wails for her daughter's supposed death, and in doing so has the sympathy of the tenement community. Is Maggie really dead though? Chapter seventeen suggests that she has moved on to another life and is doing well for herself, although her name is never used (she is named "girl") it can be assumed that this is Maggie. Maggie had nowhere to go and thusly became a girl of the streets, she is at home wandering the city looking for patrons. The girl of chapter seventeen is described as wearing a "handsome cloak" and her feet are described as "well-shod". This girl is doing well for herself, no longer wearing worn out rags and going barefoot. She seems to be happy and at ease, even when the strange man at the end followed her. the suggested imagery is that something unpleasant had happened to Maggie on behalf of this strange man, however no conclusions are made.
Jimmies' declaration that "Mag is dead" is met with denial and then sadness by the mother, who in her hysteria kept repeating that she put her daughter in shoes that were as big as a thumb. Mary screams at Jimmie to "Go git yer sister and' we'l put deh boots on her feets!" and Jimmie goes to do just that. Is putting shoes on the dad a kind of cultural practice or is Mag not really "dead", but dead in memory only? Was this the moment that Jimmie found out that his sister finally went to the streets and rather than torment his mother by saying that's where Maggie was, he just said that she was dead?
Mary is also urged by fellow mourners to forgive Maggie, and Mary screams that she will forgive her at the very end of the story. Shouldn't it be Maggie who forgives her mother and her community? A community that is soiled in every debauchery except "loose women" and they have a break down when their girl goes out and has a good time?