Prostitution, alcohol, violence; all elements of Maggie Johnson’s life in Maggie: a girl of the streets by Stephen Crane. Living in the Bowery of New York City, Maggie grows up surrounded by violence and abuse from her mother and father. The lack of opportunity presented to her in the tenements forces Maggie to resort to another way out of this living hell: Pete. Using Maggie only for her body, he causes her to start seeing value only in her appearance. After Pete abandons Maggie for Nellie, she resorts to prostitution in order to make a living. Maggie’s environment played an enormous role in her life and fate because of the living conditions of the tenements and the people closest to her. Although Maggie’s innocent and naive personality made
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Crane describes the tenements in New York City as, “…a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter…In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles” (6). Maggie’s home was filled with dirt, darkness, and danger. When degraded to these conditions, living like animals, one could find it hard to see value in their life. The imagery used to describe the tenements goes hand in hand with how Crane wants the reader to see Maggie’s situation in poverty as. The horrid conditions Maggie endured found themselves in a sweatshop, where “She perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars, the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything in connection with collars” (17). Maggie’s only option, given the environment she grew up in, was to work in the sweatshops, because she the slums offered no opportunity to have a proper childhood or education. Because of the lack of promise in any job working for low wages, she saw Pete as her best opportunity out of the Bowery who ends up leaving her to a life of prostitution. The lack hope in the tenements creates a cycle for poverty, where people like Maggie can never escape. Jacob Riis once said, “…moral citizens, regardless of their economic status, should be given a chance to improve their lives…given that chance, many could rise out of poverty and into the ranks of the middle class” (“Tenement Life”). Maggie never had a chance to rise out of poverty. The life in the tenements with poor conditions of grime, dirt, no plumbing, and packed with people made it impossible for Maggie to make a better life for herself. The brutal streets consume her and she dies while the world keeps turning without
Crane describes the tenements in New York City as, “…a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter…In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles” (6). Maggie’s home was filled with dirt, darkness, and danger. When degraded to these conditions, living like animals, one could find it hard to see value in their life. The imagery used to describe the tenements goes hand in hand with how Crane wants the reader to see Maggie’s situation in poverty as. The horrid conditions Maggie endured found themselves in a sweatshop, where “She perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars, the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything in connection with collars” (17). Maggie’s only option, given the environment she grew up in, was to work in the sweatshops, because she the slums offered no opportunity to have a proper childhood or education. Because of the lack of promise in any job working for low wages, she saw Pete as her best opportunity out of the Bowery who ends up leaving her to a life of prostitution. The lack hope in the tenements creates a cycle for poverty, where people like Maggie can never escape. Jacob Riis once said, “…moral citizens, regardless of their economic status, should be given a chance to improve their lives…given that chance, many could rise out of poverty and into the ranks of the middle class” (“Tenement Life”). Maggie never had a chance to rise out of poverty. The life in the tenements with poor conditions of grime, dirt, no plumbing, and packed with people made it impossible for Maggie to make a better life for herself. The brutal streets consume her and she dies while the world keeps turning without