“All I’m Trying To Do is Survive…”

“All I’m trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.” ―Tupac Shakur

In the novella, “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets”, written by Steven Crane, there are two characters that define the lifestyle of women who grew up in impoverished areas during the early 1900s. Through these two characters, Crane portrays to his audience what it took for most women to escape these areas that they were born into.

As a reader we can understand that Nellie, a character in the novella, is the exact opposite of Maggie, the main character, even though the two come from the same background life. Nellie is wealthy, powerful, and confident; where as, Maggie is meek and powerless, which often allows her future to be determined by the actions of others around her.

We can depict how Nellie serves as a foil for the main character Maggie through their interactions with Pete. Maggie’s first love is Pete. She follows him everywhere and is absolutely mesmerized by him and everything he does; she feels safe behind his powerful fists, and believes that he is her world and her everything. “Her life was Pete’s and she considered him worthy of the charge” (Crane, 58). This differs from the way Nellie interacts and treats Pete. Nellie is a gold-digger, and that is how she has become as wealthy and rich as she is now. She plays Pete and takes all of his money and then leaves him. “She laughed. “What a damn fool,” she said, and went” (Crane, 86). This shows us that Nellie was Pete’s world and controlled every move he made, where as Pete took advantage of Maggie and crushed her dreams because he was her world.

Crane uses Nellie’s personality traits to make Maggie’s standout in the plot; she is used as her foil. As readers, we see how awful Nellie is towards Maggie and others; we also realize that this is how she survives and thrives. While realizing Maggie’s qualities more easily through her foil, we read and feel for the innocent girl who gets run over by the world. “…her eyes had been plucked all look of self-reliance.” and, “She imagined a future, rose-tinted, because of its distance from all that she previously had experienced” (Crane, 58). Maggie does this because her innocence leads her to believe that being dependent on others is the only way to obtain the luxurious life that she desires. Unlike Maggie, Nellie is hardened by life, she comes to realize that she can cheat the system and make it out of the place that she and Maggie both grew up in by being ruthless and mean. Nellie’s approach was different from Maggie’s submissive persona.

Crane uses these two characters to represent the reality of life; he is writing this story during a time were no one cared to understand the struggle that women of minorities or majorities felt through their impoverished lives. In the plot not only do we see Nellie as Maggie’s foil, but we also see how Nellie represents the part of the female population that is willing to take a bad situation and change it in hope of a better life. Crane, illustrates to his audience how a poor immigrant women growing up during the Industrial Revolution was able to determine the outcome of her future. She either succeeded in life by escaping her impoverished background or failed to obtain the brighter future that all desired, and stayed put in in the slums of the United States. Nellie represents those who achieved the desired lifestyle by taking risks and not fearing the power of men. Maggie represents all women who were innocent and meek, “Those glances of men, shot at Maggie from under half-closed lids, made her tremble” (Crane, 59). This shows us that Maggie, unlike Nellie who “…apparently seeing the wall beyond“ (Crane, 66), was scared of men and the world that she lived in. More importantly she lost all self-reliance when she met Pete due to her lack of self-esteem and confidence.

Relating back to the quote by Tupac Shakur, the plot showed us that Nellie truly “make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave” her because she wasn’t afraid. While serving as Maggie’s foil, the plot showed us that Maggie, and people in general, often fail because they are afraid to do the things no one else wants to in an attempt to succeed.

Works Cited:

1. Shakur, Tupac. “Tupac Shakur.” Iz Quotes. N.p., 2017. Web. 23 Jan. 2017.
2. Stephen Crane women amd marxism fiction, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. “Chapter XII.” Maggie: A Girl of the Streets-ch12. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2017.