Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Corruption of Innocence

In the novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane, Maggie, a prostitute on the street corners in New York sees life in the eyes of a “painted cohort.”  Maggie involves herself in a toxic relationship with an arrogant and wealthy fellow, who she is easily attracted to.  Pete, the arrogant gentlemen, takes her on dates to dance halls.  The dance halls transform from elegant lounges to dirty strip clubs.  Maggie, who was fascinated by the silks and the wealth of these women envisions her future to be just like theirs.  Through the acts of fooling with a dishonest man her family disowns her.  She spends her days and nights on street corners, away from the lighted parts of town, smiling and glancing at the men who pass.  In the last glimpse of Maggie in the concluding chapters she dies, surrounded by nothing.  The transformation and degradation of the dance halls shows the downfall in personality and character of Maggie throughout this novella.  

The first Dance Hall that Maggie was brought to was the most elegant, presenting innocence and quality.  It inhabited vibrant light, and people who could easily be perceived as family oriented.  The waiters and little children ran around gracefully to assist all who requested service.  It was infrequent to see a man or women in a drunken state.  Crane writes, “ The great body of the crowd was composed of people who showed that all day they strove with their hands” (Crane, 22).  A crowd of people consumed of such elegant innocence, just as Maggie saw her relationship with Pete as an opportunity to experience and explore love so innocently.  The hard working families and their kids at this dance hall resembled that aspect of innocence as well.  The people showed that they ‘strove all day with their hands’ meaning they were hard at work all day, and the money they had, they earned.  The crowd had no intentions to become drunk and irresponsible, they were warm-hearted and genuine.   Maggie was enjoying the young and innocent love she felt, just as the people of this dance hall were drinking beers and conversing in great innocence.

The second dance hall Pete dragged Maggie to, encouraged outrage and obliterated despair.  The whereabouts of a quiet observant stranger told the story and atmosphere of this dance hall.  While the stranger drinks himself to oblivion, he watches confusingly at Pete who treats people with such arrogance and disrespect.  The hall was elaborate and looked to be tidy, but it also accentuated Pete’s tendencies. It showed ‘opulence and geometrical accuracy,” (Crane, 34) describing the life of lavish Maggie had begun to live with Pete.  However, Crane also illustrated that, “The open mouth of a saloon called seductively to passengers to enter and annihilate sorrow or create rage” (Crane, 33).  The ‘annihilation of sorrow’ connects to the beginning of the annihilation of Maggie’s existence.  The deeper Maggie dug with Pete, the further she found herself from her family and her innocence.  While this hall is lavish, like Maggie’s life with Pete, the hall also defeats emotion, foreshadowing what Pete’s intentions with all women are.

The final dance hall that Maggie visits symbolises her downfall and the depletion of her existence.  The hall is full of barely clothed women, greasy men, and wild music.  The dance hall is illustrated as “hilarious,” in other words more entertaining than enjoyable.  The absence of lavishness and elegance resembled the loss of love and purpose in Maggie’s life, the departure of Pete.  While she had grown to appreciate elegance and fall in love with wealth, it was now gone. In description of the hall’s atmosphere Crane wrote, “A woman was singing and smiling upon the stage, but no one took notice of her” (Crane, 42).  Maggie is now similar to this woman, no one is interested to give thought to her life.  Pete has chosen to explore with Nelle and Maggie’s family believes she has been destroyed and “gone to Hell.”  People no longer care about her, she feels lost, and she no longer has Pete to ‘take notice of her.’  Maggie struggles to find purpose, just like the men at this dance hall, whose only purpose is to empty their pockets for half-naked women.  The lack of consciousness in this dance hall is able to show how Maggie is lost, without purpose or feeling, just like the woman who sings for the inattentive men, theoretically playing for a lost cause.

Maggie, a girl of the street, is at once innocent and genuine.  However, the wealth and arrogance of the hungry men took over her, she found herself suffocated.  Her infatuation with Pete led her to be deathly hurt when his loyalty didn’t prevail.  The dance halls Pete brought Maggie to tell the story of her downfall.  The loss of innocence, elegance, and attention lead to the destruction of Maggie’s existence and eventually her death.  The evolution of the three dance halls in this Novella demonstrate the downfall of Maggie’s life and her character.