Hypocrisy In Stephen Crane's Maggie A Girl Of The Streets

Stephen Crane’s story Maggie a girl of the streets is a work of Naturalism. This form of literature shows that there is no promise for anyone who hopes to overcome the obstacles set out for them. In this story, the protagonist Maggie has no absolute free will. Her whole life was depended on the forces of the people in her environment such as her mother, her lover Pete, and mostly her brother Jimmie. This work shows the theme of hypocrisy, which affected their actions towards Maggie and ultimately determined her misery in prostitution and the fate of her death. Evidently, Jimmie’s hypocritical actions were becoming like his father, by not accepting that what Pete did to his sister is the same as what he had done to other women. Jimmie grew fearing his father for he would constantly beat him. Although Jimmie would hide and try to run away from his household, he eventually grew to be the figure he most feared: his father. Jimmie grew to have the same mentality of hatred for the world, which led to him …show more content…
“the definition of hypocrisy, such as the intention to deceive others” (Gordon and Rose 677) It may have first so to Maggie once they began dating because of how he treated her with the attention she had never received before. While she saw him as an ideal he saw her just as a new girl to seduce and take advantage of. After claiming his kind fairness, he soon was seduced by his past love interest Nellie, which led to his act of deserting Maggie. Pete himself uses hypocrisy to lure women because that is the only he knows to be with one. Therefore, he didn’t see how his actions would ruin others. So, in his case with Maggie he blamed her family for what she became. “Pete did not consider that he had ruined Maggie. If he had thought that her soul could never smile again, he would have believed the mother and brother” (Crane