The short novel by Stephen Crane, “Maggie : A Girl of the Streets”, despite the title, is not necessarily just about Maggie, but rather deals more directly with the Bowery environment itself and how it shapes the lives of its inhabitants. The author, Stephen Crane, actually lived in the Bowery District of New York and witnessed firsthand the miseries that were commonplace among the denizens of the slum. Accordingly, this plot summary of “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” will not just discuss the main character, but the setting as well.
In terms of offering a summary of “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” by Stephen Crane, the novella introduces us to a scene involving a number of rough young boys brawling, one of which is Maggie’s brother, Jimmy. As the fight becomes more serious, another boy named Pete intervenes and rescues Jimmy. The fight starts again just as Jimmy’s father approaches and makes his son come home. The family’s house is squalid and chaotic. Both parents are alcoholics, and the three children, Jimmy, Tommie, and Maggie are left to fend for themselves and hide from their tyrannical mother as best as they can.
At this point in the plot of Maggie Girl of the Streets, large periods of time are skipped over and before the first part of the novella is over, Maggie’s father and her younger brother Tommie have passed away. In response to his hard life, Jimmy has become a heartless teamster while Maggie seems almost untouched by the misery that surrounds her. We are told in “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” that she is quite beautiful and it becomes clear, especially when she hooks up with Pete later, that she has a sentimental and romantic side. Pete takes Maggie to shows featuring melodramatic plots of young heroines being saved by love and she sees Pete as her chance to escape Bowery life.
In this story by Stephen Crane, Maggie is taken in by Pete’s fancy dress (even though he is only a bartender and almost as poor as her family) and stays with him despite the fact that her insane drunken mother says that Mary has disgraced her family by sleeping with Pete. Although it is never discussed within the narrative, the reader must assume that the two actually have slept together and that she has been “ruined.” This fact angers Jimmy who lashes out at Pete, causing Maggie to flee from her home and move in with Pete. Despite the fact that this is quite a rough neighborhood, her leaving home brings disgrace to the family (as if her mother’s behavior alone didn’t). Away from her family, Maggie’s life falls to pieces after she goes to a local bar with Pete where they meet Nellie who eventually persuades Pete to leave Maggie. Dejected, Maggie tries to run home but her mother and brother reject her. It is at about this point where the somewhat chronological narrative begins to break up.
The reader of this story by Stephen Crane is aware that another span of time has passed and the events that follow are told in vignettes. We learn that Jimmy has found himself a girl and has done exactly the same thing to her that Pete did to Maggie. Furthermore, the Maggie and her brother have not made amends because one night she goes to see him but he casts her off. We also learn that Pete has met a just end when Nellie leaves him. The final part of this summary of “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” by Stephen Crane “zooms in” on a prostitute who solemnly walks the dim streets of New York while a fat man follows her. “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” by Stephen Crane concludes with Jimmy learning that Maggie’s body has been recovered and the reader of this Stephen Crane story is left with the impression that the nameless prostitute in the earlier scene was Maggie. It is also worth noting in this short plot summary of “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” that her bitter mother finally admits that she forgives her daughter, but of course, it’s far too late for that.
When performing an analysis of Maggie: Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane there are many themes and motifs to recognize. First of all though, just as this summary of “Maggie Girl of the Streets suggests, this is more like a novella than an actual novel. On the one hand, this brevity of this Stephen Crane story seems unwarranted since there are so many aspects to the story that are left untold (Maggie’s loss of purity, the deaths of Tommy and her father, as well as the large spaces in time that are not otherwise accounted for.) It seems as though there should be far more detail and another two hundred pages for this story to come to life, but when one truly considers the purpose of this story, it is not meant to whisk a reader away in a romantic or melodramatic flurry, but is rather presenting us with a series of archetypal characters that would have been present all over the Bowery.
The fates of the characters in “Maggie” by Stephen Crane, even Maggie’s unfortunate fate—are not the result of any crucial decisions that have been made. The fates of all these characters in “Maggie A Girl of the Streets” by Stephen Crane are sealed as a matter of their class status and their stories would be interchangeable with a host of other Bowery denizens, thus the individual account becomes useless and almost generic. The very fact of the title, the simple description “A Girl of the Streets” is anonymous, even with a name attached to the front of it. This suggests that the story of Maggie is not important—she is just another sad tale out of thousands. The brevity does not allow the reader to engage with the characters as a traditional novel would because the purpose is different. Whereas many novels wanted to reinforce the idea of decisions and destiny, the fates of all these characters was already set it stone. Thus what is important is not the story, but the setting and overwhelming frequency of such stories in everyday life.
Some Important Quotes from Maggie: Girl of the Streets
While there are any number of themes you could explore in this book, I have included a set of what I’ll call “all-purpose” quotes. These are tied to the presence of literary naturalism in the text and also focus on the character of Maggie—two things that are worth writing about. Look at how the environment influences everything and pay attention to the contrast between the Bowery and Maggie herself.
The tenement where Maggie resides is described as, “a dark region where…a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter” (5).
Maggie, “blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of the tenement district, a pretty girl” (16).
Compare the above quote with: “Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels” (7).
“She wondered if the culture and refinement she has seen imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on the stage, could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and worked in a shirt factory” (28).
“She imagined a future, rose-tinted, because of its distance from all that she previously had experienced”(39).
Hope these help! If you are looking for something more in-depth and you have access to academic journals, I suggest you take a look at an article by Katrina Irving called “Gendered Space, Racialized Space: Nativism, The Immigrant Women and Stephen Crane’s Maggie.” It can be found in a journal called College Literature 20.3 (from 1993). It’s a great article and opened my mind about some of the deeper questions in the novella.
Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Summary of “The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane • Biography of Stephen Crane
