Speaking generally as well as of the Burroughses, the work clothes of the grown people become them as their own skins do. In their Good clothes they look stiff and shy, like orphans at a party.
The fact remains, however, that clothes are powerfully significant psychologically and socially: in every garment you see there is a badge and division of class as distinct as any uniform could effect and far more subtly exact; and a human being is shaped by the clothes he wears quite as much as by the amount of money he is accustomed to feel the presence, or lack thereof, in his pocket; and as the world is today the future of a marriageable girl, for instance, can be profoundly influenced by what clothes she can or cannot wear.