Colors of the Streets

Many authors use colors to enhance their novels. They use them to project a character’s personality, a settings description or an event’s impact. This is exactly what Stephen Crane does in abundance in the novel Maggie a Girl of the Streets. He uses colors in every scene and with every character. His colors enrich the novel and make Maggie’s story come to life. A classic color Crane uses is red, which describes Maggie’s home life and mother. Maggie’s character is seen as pale and small, however Pete is golden like royalty. Another descriptive method Crane uses is the lighting of scenes, chapter seventeen specifically involves light levels changing the mood of the novel. Overall, Crane uses light and color to amplify the novel and the events that take place in it.

“Blasphemy is when the lord’s name or the bible’s teachings are spoken about irrelevantly.”

The color red is used to refer to Maggie’s angry and alcoholic mother. When someone drinks their face turns red and Maggie’s mothers face is often red because she uses drinking as a method to cope with her chaotic, miserable life. When she drinks her anger often comes out on her kids and the furniture in the house. In order to convey when Maggie’s mother is angry Crane uses red or crimson, a deep red color. In one scene Maggie is about to leave the house to go on a date with Pete, a boy her mother does not approve of, “Maggie’s red mother stretched on the floor, blasphemed, and gave her daughter a bad name” (Crane 17). Blasphemy is when the lord’s name or the bible’s teachings are spoken about irrelevantly. It is usually used in a setting of rage and in the novel all of the characters seem to use it. “What de hell,” is a classic example of a catchphrase the characters use when they get angry. Based on this, it can be inferred that Maggie’s mother was angry at the time of her blasphemy. So by conveying the mother’s rage and the color red in the same sentence, Crane is connecting the two; therefore, using red as a metaphor for her rage. Red is used to amplify the novel, as Crane drops hints of Maggie’s mothers rage repeatedly.

Another color in Maggie’s family life is blue. Much of the setting in Crane’s piece is gray and sad. The apartment that the characters live in is located in a poor neighborhood in New York City and is full of “dark, dust-stained walls, and the scant and crude furniture” (Cane 16) The grayness represents poverty, an apparent theme in the novel, but Maggie tries to undo this grayness, as she wants to find a better life past poverty. She hangs up a blue ribbon in the apartment, which is her first attempt to try to find something better for herself. Crane uses blue as a color of optimism for the future that Maggie holds through the first part of the novel. It seems like nothing can stop this urge that Maggie has to get out of poverty, it is like she is the color in a setting of dark gloomy despair.

In conjunction with the gray, yellow is a color Cane uses to represent Maggie’s home life. Yellow constitutes family, a theme that runs through the novel, but the theme of family is not always positive. It is also the lack of help families get and how they always cycle back to poverty. “Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against a hundred windows” (Crane 3) The poor Irish community that Maggie lives in is full of small children, since their parents do not have the access to contraceptives they need. Crane uses yellow to show this pain and poverty in the novel, as well as the families all over the city. Another instance where yellow is used to represent an event is when Maggie and Pete go to the dance hall. It is described as “an orchestra of yellow silk women and bald headed men on an elevated stage near the centre of a great green-hued hall, playing a popular waltz” (Crane 17). But this time Crane uses yellow to describe a new beginning for Maggie, with Pete. Just like in the bible, yellow in this circumstance shows the jow Maggie feels by this new beginning. Crane intentionally used yellow in two contexts in this novel: to represent the poverty of Maggie’s home life and to represent the joy she feels with Pete. Therefore, yellow constitutes. the change Maggie goes through.

Maggie’s innocence is portrayed with it’s own colors and shades, specifically pale and white. The prostitute Nellie calls Maggie “a little pale thing with no spirit” (Cane 40). The prostitute sees Maggie how she is-pale and naive to the world. This theme of naivety is seen in Maggie throughout the novel. When a baby is first born it is pale, almost white, so by calling Maggie pale Crane is comparing her to a young child who has still yet to see the harshness of the world. Another time Maggie is compared to as pale is when Cane mentions her life as a whole. He compared Maggie’s life to “pale-green snow-storms” (Crane 36). This quote infers that the struggles Maggie goes through are also pale, just like herself. Maggie’s paleness is not necessarily a color but Crane still uses it as one that describes Maggie.

In contrast to Maggie’s paleness, Pete’s interactions with Maggie are represented by the color gold. The color gold is seen as a color of royalty, like a gold crown or cape. To Maggie, Pete is like a king-rich, confident and beautiful. Cane portrays Maggie’s feelings towards Pete as a color, so that it is easy to understand her feelings. In the novel Maggie is fantasising about Pete, wondering what his home looks like and where he eats his meals. She immediately assumes he lives a life of luxury and wealth. Maggie’s feelings are directly translated by Cane into the color of gold surrounding Pete. As Maggie is wondering what her first date will be, she imagines a “golden glitter of the place where Pete would take her” (Cane 16). Maggie is romanticizing Pete and the things Pete does with her, which shows the relevance of the golden metaphor by Cane. Cane not only uses colors to represent people but also events.

In chapter seventeen of the novel, colors are used to signify an event and a transition. In this chapter Maggie is walking down the streets interacting with lots of men. She starts in a light area of the city with “glittering avenues” and “light of an adjacent park” (Cane 48). She even interacts with men who give off a light ora, with one man wearing “a light overcoat and derby hat” (Cane 49) It is obvious that Cane is trying to show how Maggie was not in a scary environment, merely a normal city street; but as she continues her journey she enters dark allies and runs into sketchier people. “The girl went to gloomy districts by the river, where the tall black factories shut into the street” (Cane 49). Maggie is walking into worse neighborhoods that are dark. Cane almost tries to show Maggie as turning into the shadows, as she ducks in shadowed allies and is masked by looming buildings. The last time Cane mentions Maggie is when she “went into the blackness of the final block” (Cane 49). Maggie turned into the darkness, or died. Darkness, to Cane, means death and destruction. This is obvious when he uses these colors as Maggie disappears and dies. Maggie makes her journey from the living, or the light, into death, or darkness. Cane’s smart use of color and hues marks out her life and amplifies her death.

Crane’s use of light and colors as comparisons to different aspects of the novel amplified the characters and events. Maggie’s home life is represented through the colors red and yellow. Maggie herself is pale and innocent, therefore being portrayed by light colors. Pete is the opposite, compared to a bright gold. The use of lighting expresses Maggie’s death and what leads up to it. Overall, every color that Cane uses has a meaning that brings the book to life. Without color, the book would not have the impact that it has. The book shows themes of poverty, desperation, alcoholism and misfortune. The shades that Crane uses just supplement for these themes making them more realistic and powerful.