Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is a ground-breaking novel relating to the precarious state of women
in the new industrial world at the end of the nineteenth century. One blemish
on a reputation, and a woman would often be banned from her house, subject to
earning her living on the streets, and often dying young, as Maggie does. The
irony is that Maggie has two abusive parents, the father who dies early in the
novel, and the mother who hurls her out, with much fussing and lamenting about “all
she has done” for Maggie.
Crane’s irony
builds from the beginning through Maggie’s brother, who is upset his friend
debauched Maggie and got her pregnant. The turning point is in Jimmy, who
starts to realize that he has done the same to other brothers’ sisters. It is
the early realization of this behavior that makes the most interesting
psychological impact on the novel.
As always, Maggie
contains the beautiful word paintings of Crane. As Maggie descends towards her
doom each successive bar/entertainment place Maggie is taken to becomes
increasingly bawdy and unappealing. Maggie preserves what order there is in the
family home, nurses her mother, but that does not protect her position in the
end, when she gets hurled out.
This is one of the
most moving stories in American literature. If this novel doesn’t break your
heart a little, no novel will. In our mind, Maggie is the equal of Crane’s
more famous work, The Red Badge of Courage, which depicts war with a
candor similar to the depiction of the tenements and people of the Bowery in New
York. A must read for all students of American literature and a wonderful one
for the rest of us.
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