Maggie: A Girl Of the Streets, critical essay
Maggie’s father is dead, her baby brother is dead, her mother is always drunk, and Jimmie is never home. Maggie grows up alone in her run down tenement house. She is forced to make a life for herself. Nellie is “cut from the same cloth,” yet she makes herself a life. She is very independent and does not rely on anyone. In the novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets written by Stephen Crane, Nellie serves as a literary foil for Maggie. Maggie wants so much for someone to rely on. She want so much for Pete to like her, but she is blinded by his major flaws. Pete gives Maggie the attention she wants and then she can not live without him. In comparison, Nellie moves on so fast, she never stays with anyone for long. She lives on her own, taking money anywhere she can find it. They are both living the lives of Irish immigrants looking for a new world, with little in their lives, trying to find the American dream, Nellie and Maggie turn to prostitution for money. Despite being from the same background, Maggie and Nellie are very different. Nellie is self sufficient and independent, while Maggie needs a human connection and someone to lean on. One of them survives, the other one dies. Crane uses their characters to criticize society.
After the death of her father, Maggie realizes she needs a job. She begins to work at a factory sewing collars and cuffs. Still oblivious to the world around her, she sees an opportunity to have a connection with someone, someone to guide her, someone to look at her, and listen to her. Maggie soon begins spending her factory money to impress a boy. In the novel the narrator quotes, “She spent some of her week’s pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin,” (Crane 28). Maggie is spending her hard earned money, she needs to live on, to get a man’s attention. Instead of saving it, she uses it to get Pete’s attention. Maggie is so innocent that when Pete finally does give her attention, she soaks it in and admires everything that Pete does regardless of the actions. When they go out at night Pete is rude to the waiters, he says, “Ah, git off deh eart’,” (Crane 32) but Maggie is so oblivious that she thinks it is part of his elegance. Maggie has been closed off to life, she learns so much from her experiences with Pete. He takes away her innocence and she grows up in the time she spends with him. Maggie is lost without him. Before Pete she had no one to lean on and now she can’t survive without him.
Unlike Maggie, Nellie survives on her own. She makes her money as a prostitute and leaves when she is no longer making money. She appears to have money compared to Maggie and Maggie notices that. “She perceived that her black dress fitted her to perfection. Her linen collar and cuffs were spotless. Tan gloves were stretched over her well-shaped hands. A hat of a prevailing fashion perched jauntily upon her dark hair. She wore no jewelry and was painted with no apparent pain. She looked clear-eyed through the stares of the men” (Crane 65). Maggie is envious of Nellie’s appearance and the way Pete looks at her. Nellie looks the way Maggie wants to look and she gets Pete’s attention the way Maggie wants to. Nellie moved to Buffalo following a man for his money and came back because she wanted more. She is a strong and independent women that makes a life from what she can get. She switches from man to man depending on the hour. Next to Maggie, she highlights the differences between them, she has a way of surviving, Maggie does not.
Crane created both of these characters to describe the life of immigrants coming the the new world in hopes of being successful and finding jobs. The story is told in favor of Maggie, but through Maggie, Crane criticizes the way she spends her life trying to fix herself and relying on those around her. Maggie is in a situation where she has no one to rely on so she must learn to rely on herself. Unfortunately for her, she does not do that and ends up finding herself in deeper and darker places than ever before until she is so empty and sick she has nothing left to live for. On her last night as a prostitute, Maggie finds her way down a gloomy ally with a strange man. They make their way in the darkness, “At their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue,” (Crane 82). Maggie has reached the end, she did not find a way to be independent, but she also never knew how to be. Her dependence on those around her leads her to the end of her life. Maggie’s ending may be very sad and dark, but Nellie’s is very different.
Crane added Nellie into the story as a devil like character to take Pete away from Maggie. At first, readers are meant to dislike her, but as the story goes on, Nellie’s life style seems to be favored. The last time she is mentioned in the story is when, “The women of brilliance and audacity stayed behind taking up the bills and stuffing them into a deep, irregularly-shaped pocket” (Crane 86). Crane gives her the name of “brilliance and audacity,” it is as if he is applauding her for doing what she must do to survive. Despite being a prostitute she holds on to her identity the best she can when everyone else is emptied and hollowed out. Nellie survives, while Maggie dies.
Maggie lived in an old tenement house with her drunk mother and the occasional visits of her brother. She had no one throughout her childhood and grew up sheltered and innocent from the outside world. When she fell in love with Pete, he exposed her to the world around her. In this world, she needed someone to depend on. As she lost herself to others, she slowly crawled her way towards death. Crane uses her life as a demonstration of what you will become living your life relying strictly on others. Nellie is introduced as a literary foil to show that in a messed up world it is important to be independent and self reliant.