Pockets of personality: what might your characters choose to carry?

I’m a proud pocket devotee: I refuse to buy clothes without pockets. But what do I put in them? A quick check of my jeans reveals fairly prosaic items: my phone, lip balm, a handkerchief, an old bus ticket – but in a coat I find shells, a pinecone, and a rather decrepit sycamore seed. These are not, in fact, random detritus, but treasure: on walks, my pockets become repositories for precious items my children insist on keeping – then promptly forget about. As a mum, my pockets are essential, practical – but also reminders of beach days and enthralling games. As a writer, I believe our characters’ pockets are full of possibilities, both for revealing personalities, and for vital plot points.

The pocket itself

Does your character actually have pockets? Perhaps surprisingly, the pocket, or pouch, goes back thousands of years: Otzi the ‘Iceman’ found preserved in the South Tyrol Alps had one tied onto his belt. European men’s clothing has had built-in pockets since the Renaissance, while women, from the seventeenth century, had tie-on pockets – until fashionable silhouettes became narrower, meaning reticules became popular.

If your character doesn’t have pockets, how might they feel? In Alix E Harrow’s historical fantasy, The Once and Future Witches, women keep spell ingredients in their pockets, such as herbs, candles, and snakes’ teeth; when pockets become symbols of dissidence and are no longer used for respectable women’s clothing, her heroine, Juniper, is infuriated – not to mention unable to defend herself. Could the lack of a pocket prove vital in your character’s confidence, or ability to overcome obstacles?

Pockets could range from the plain to the elaborate. Kate Eddowes, one of the victims explored in Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, had pockets made of unbleached calico and bed-ticking, rough materials that would be durable, but potentially uncomfortable. However, wealthier women’s pockets could be elaborately embroidered in silks, and would make valuable gifts. Consider what your characters would decorate their pockets with: their favourite flowers or animals? Their initials? Or, since these were usually tied on beneath skirts to thwart thieves, something they might not want others to see – a secret, or a coded message?

How might your character interact with their pockets? Are they constantly checking them? Do they touch each object in turn, or seek out one in particular? What textures and shapes might reassure them, or remind them of a certain person, place, moment?

Practicality

The final section of The Five is entitled ‘A Life in Objects’: it’s a simple list of everything the murdered women had on their person. Many objects are vital everyday items, including combs, handkerchiefs, matchboxes, and knives. Kate Eddowes’ pockets also contained menstrual rags and a “portion” of a pair of spectacles, a detail I find unbearably poignant. I wonder where Kate got them from, whether they were made for her eyes, and how they were broken.

More light-heartedly, in Lucy Barker’s The Other Side of Mrs Wood, our eponymous medium has special séance dresses, whose hidden pockets mean she can perform her supernatural interactions smoothly. The gang of thieves in Anna Freeman’s Five Days of Fog don clothes with capacious pockets for stowing loot. Historically, people carried all sorts of items related to their occupations, from leather-working tools to pencils, penknives, and corkscrews – and of course, keys, whether for houses, cupboards, or pocket watches.

What might your characters carry the keys for? What else might they need to go about their daily business? How big are their pockets, and what can (or can’t) they fit in them?

Protection

Your characters’ vulnerabilities could be enhanced by what is, or isn’t, in their pockets. In Rachel Louise Driscoll’s Nephthys, Clemmie, the asthmatic heroine, discovers she’s left her bottle of eucalyptus oil behind while visiting the pyramids, placing her in a dangerous situation. Annie Chapman, another of The Five, was carrying medicine for tuberculosis in a scrap of envelope. Without medicine (or another substance your character relies on) how will they cope? How urgently do they need it? Consider where they get it from, and what their relationship with that person, or place, might be like.

Conversely, the contents of your characters’ pockets might empower them. Juniper carries a pine wand for spell-casting, but in more realist settings, characters might carry knives, or pistols, or information that could be used to defend themselves. Simply carrying these objects might prove dangerous: what makes the risk worth it?

Punishment

Suppose someone discovered what was inside your characters’ pockets – especially if acquired by illicit means? Whilst some historical cases border on the comical, such as Jane Griffiths, in 1807, stashing two live ducks in her pockets, others are heartbreaking. Elizabeth Warner, a servant, was acquitted of murdering her baby daughter in 1770, having attempted to conceal the afterbirth in her leather pocket.

Then there’s espionage: we’ve considered what we can reveal about a character through their pockets, but has your character considered that too? In Sebastian Faulks’ Charlotte Grey, shreds of French tobacco are added to Charlotte’s pockets before she enters Occupied France, and she carries a novel that ‘Dominique’ would enjoy. Do your characters’ pockets contain authentic clues, or red herrings?

Personal

Objects in pockets may have an intensely personal, even talismanic significance. In Stacey Halls’ The Foundling, mothers leave tokens with the babies they have to give up so they can potentially be reunited; Bess gives her daughter half a heart carved from whalebone, the other half being with her baby’s father. In Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby gifts Marianne a pocket volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which later becomes a heartbreaking reminder for Marianne. Meanwhile, Hallie Rubenhold records that Elizabeth Stride had not only a comb on her person, but also a broken piece of comb: why might she have held on to such an object?

Even seemingly trivial items can be imbued with resonance. Take the shell I unearthed in my coat: if your character had a shell, who gave it to them and why? What memories does it evoke? What games did they play with it? Did they plan to use it for something else – and why did they never do so? People talk of hearing the sea through shells – can anything else be heard? Why might your character want to listen repeatedly?

Try listing everything your character carries. For each object, think about why they carry it. Has it been there so long they’ve ceased to notice? Will it prove a good luck charm, or could it draw them into danger?