Poverty in Homelife, Work, and Social life; the Effect it has on Women in Guilded Age New York City and it 's Correlation to Maggie by Stephen Crane
The Guilded Age was the time period from around 1890 to 1920. It was a time period of massive immigration to American cities, urbanization, and industrialization. There were large changes to the economy around the country but the places affected the most were the larger cities, for example, New York City. With an influx of population in these cities, sanitation, comfort, safety, and opportunities were limited if not nonexistant. Families were thrown into a life of serious poverty causing many to not survive. Women in this time period had little to no rights. The limited rights and oportunities …show more content…
The setting was the Bowery in Guilded Age New York City. We meet many significant characters such as Maggie, Jimmie, Pete, Nellie, Mary, and Jimmie Sr. All of these characters represent a certain kind of person from that time period. Jimmie Sr and Mary represent the struggle of alchoholism and the massive effect on families it had even then. Pete and Nellie represent people who somehow made a life for themselves while surviving through the poverty and disease in their lives. Pete was a gang boy and wore nice clothes, giving Maggie the idea that he was of higher prestige and notion. Nell was symbolic of a classic women back then, she was a prostitute but was living a life of "luxury". She was portrayed as being at peace with her lifestyle and in fact accepting it to become a woman of style and grace. Jimmie became an example of a normal working class man. Jimmie held a job, visited taverns, had female company regularly, he had not beaten his environment, he had become it to survive. Maggie is symbolic of a working lower class woman of the Progressive Era. Maggie was the character with the dreams for more. She dreams to become somebody more. She falls for Pete because she believes him to be a man of power and importance. She goes to his parties to become apart of that social crowd. Maggie becomes swept up in the life she wants just to be let down and forced into the inevitable …show more content…
She knew she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot, stuffy room. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated trains. The place was filled with a whirl of noises and odours." (Crane, 23).
Maggie 's first job in the non fiction was making collars in a collar factory. This porrtrays the kind of work women had available during the Guilded Age, the conditions of their work environments and the low pay. She goes on to wonder if the women she worked with ever had dreams of a new beginning and a brighter future proving that Maggie had the ideas of the "New Woman" but because of her life of poverty, she did not have the resources to fulfill her dreams.
"She became lost in thought as she looked at some of the grizzled women in the room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out, with heads bent over their work, tales of imagined or real girlhood happiness, or of past drunks, or the baby at home, and unpaid wages." (Crane,
The Guilded Age was the time period from around 1890 to 1920. It was a time period of massive immigration to American cities, urbanization, and industrialization. There were large changes to the economy around the country but the places affected the most were the larger cities, for example, New York City. With an influx of population in these cities, sanitation, comfort, safety, and opportunities were limited if not nonexistant. Families were thrown into a life of serious poverty causing many to not survive. Women in this time period had little to no rights. The limited rights and oportunities …show more content…
The setting was the Bowery in Guilded Age New York City. We meet many significant characters such as Maggie, Jimmie, Pete, Nellie, Mary, and Jimmie Sr. All of these characters represent a certain kind of person from that time period. Jimmie Sr and Mary represent the struggle of alchoholism and the massive effect on families it had even then. Pete and Nellie represent people who somehow made a life for themselves while surviving through the poverty and disease in their lives. Pete was a gang boy and wore nice clothes, giving Maggie the idea that he was of higher prestige and notion. Nell was symbolic of a classic women back then, she was a prostitute but was living a life of "luxury". She was portrayed as being at peace with her lifestyle and in fact accepting it to become a woman of style and grace. Jimmie became an example of a normal working class man. Jimmie held a job, visited taverns, had female company regularly, he had not beaten his environment, he had become it to survive. Maggie is symbolic of a working lower class woman of the Progressive Era. Maggie was the character with the dreams for more. She dreams to become somebody more. She falls for Pete because she believes him to be a man of power and importance. She goes to his parties to become apart of that social crowd. Maggie becomes swept up in the life she wants just to be let down and forced into the inevitable …show more content…
She knew she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot, stuffy room. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing of elevated trains. The place was filled with a whirl of noises and odours." (Crane, 23).
Maggie 's first job in the non fiction was making collars in a collar factory. This porrtrays the kind of work women had available during the Guilded Age, the conditions of their work environments and the low pay. She goes on to wonder if the women she worked with ever had dreams of a new beginning and a brighter future proving that Maggie had the ideas of the "New Woman" but because of her life of poverty, she did not have the resources to fulfill her dreams.
"She became lost in thought as she looked at some of the grizzled women in the room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out, with heads bent over their work, tales of imagined or real girlhood happiness, or of past drunks, or the baby at home, and unpaid wages." (Crane,