Maggie’s Meaningless Effort

Maggie Johnson is an Irish American girl who was dealt an impossibly difficult hand. Despite this, she constantly tried her best no matter her situation to improve her living conditions against all odds. Maggie is a selfless protagonist to the core, but still suffers a harsh fate regardless of her efforts. At the beginning of the book, Maggie is a gleaming light of hope for her family, nevertheless, she devolves into a tragic hero who still tries to do what’s best. In Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane develops a fictional character who portrays the masses who have little to no control over their lives. Through Crane’s language, it is understood that Maggie had no impact on her downfall, and was born to become ‘The girl’ who she ends the story as.

Maggie’s home, Rum Alley, is not one to be proud of. Rum Alley is filled with violence, poverty, and hatred. This ‘dark region’ is home to adult devils who dump their “loads of babies to the streets and the gutter.” (Crane 8). Simply having parents at home, no matter what their status or decency is a rarity to those born in this decrepit town. Because of her surroundings, Maggie begins her life with a chip on her shoulder. Her brother constantly fighting rival towns, and her mother boiling red whilst belligerently drunk, brings attention to the urgency in her home life. However, in comparison to the infants fighting with each other on the streets, she is a cut above the rest. Although she may appear fortunate, it is evident by the way Crane names her brother ‘Jimmie’, and her mother ‘Mary’, but refers to Maggie as “The little girl” (Crane 9) that she has yet to be significant. Her lack of importance in contradiction to her actions creates a character that one can stand behind. For instance, even after her brother beats her, she still asks, “‘Will I wash deh blood?’” (Crane 13). Her selflessness cements her role as a protagonist. By trying to aid her brother who previously smacks her, she earns the sympathy of the reader. Despite this, it is vital that Maggie’s big-heartedness cannot be mistaken for perfection as she later falters.

While it is true Maggie is more altruistic than any anyone else in the book, she remains flawed. Maggie’s overwhelming flaw is that she relentlessly seeks a way to whisk herself from her current state of reality. She acts this out by trying to engage in love with a man who she describes as ‘ideal’ after first sight. Maggie overlooks this fatal error in judgment because “Under the trees of her dream-gardens there had always walked a lover.” (Crane 34). This lover, although unexplored, is taken at face value. Maggie finds no reason to explore Pete any deeper simply because he holds exactly what she had been looking for, status. Maggie’s unkempt desire for status makes her unaware of Pete’s intentions. She fails to recognize when she is only admired for her body rather than her behavior. This tunnel vision she holds for Pete indicates her imperfection, giving her the true mark of a tragic hero. Although one would feel inclined to blame this imperfection for Maggie’s downfall, it is clear that her downfall was marked from the beginning of the story.

By the end of the story, Maggie is simply, ‘the girl’. She has lost all sense of individuality and character that she possessed prior to her descent. However, it has been evident since the beginning that her downfall was outlined in her introduction. As depicted, “The girl walked out of the realm of restaurants and saloons.”(Crane 108). This depiction may seem contradictory to what we had thought Maggie’s future would become. Upon close inspection, Stephen Crane always made it apparent that Maggie was always ‘the girl’. Drawing attention back to the beginning of the book, Maggie was always nameless. Unidentifiable through any means of individuality, she crawled her way through a sludge of hateful and abusive relationships. Born into a family who beat her when she offered aid, Maggie was led down a path that led to a dead end. As Maggie “went into the blackness of the final block.” (Crane 112) it is important that we remember the description of her home, Rum Alley.  Described as a “dark region” (Crane 8), it is clear that Maggie ended exactly where she began. As she dies without meaning, one must ask if she was born to die in Rum Alley. Her fate outlined since the beginning makes it clear that she is irresponsible for her own death, and had no impact on her situation.

At no point throughout the book did Maggie have an option over the agency of her own life. Her romance with Pete, struggle for wealth, and frustrating death, are all consequences of her birthplace. No one in her family tried as hard as Maggie to escape Rum Alley. Maggie was unique in her charitable behavior that caused her to run in circles in her search for a better life. Even after all these factors, she lived an unimportant life that resulted in a meaningless death. These events, although evident from the beginning, were masked by hope shared by the reader and Maggie. Because of these factors, we can conclude that Maggie was born to become ‘the girl’ and had no impact on her journey as a tragic hero.