Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets

Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets


In the Stephen Crane novel; Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Maggie and Jimmie are two siblings being raised within the Lower East Side slums of New York City. The breaking of furniture and fistfights are an everyday occurrence in the broken-down family apartment. The mother and father fight constantly while their children hide frightened. This then is the environment that Maggie and Jimmie struggle with throughout the novel. Their different responses to their environment each led them to different ends. Maggie dreams of a better life and tries to escape her environment, which leads to her eventual suicide, while Jimmie accepts his environment, becomes nihilistic, and lives. Crane’s work demonstrates that the reaction to one’s environment can greatly affect the outcome of one’s life.
From the start, Maggie is a harsh contrast to the slum environment she was born into and has to endure throughout her life. “The girl, Maggie, blossomed ...