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Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
In 1892 Stephen Crane (1871-1900) published Maggie, Girl of the Streets at his own expense. Considered at the time to be immature, it was a failure. Since that time it has come to be considered one of the earliest American realistic novels. Maggie is the story of a pretty child of the Bowery which is written with the same intensity and vivid scenes of his masterpiece -- T...more
Paperback, 92 pages
Published
January 1st 2005
by Digireads.com
(first published 1892)
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Andy
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
industrial revolution turn-of-the-century stockyard loonies
Shelves:
20th-century-blues
Hard-core working class short fiction from one of the great originals of turn of the century neo-realism. "Maggie" reminds me of Tom Waits' "Swordfishtrombones" and "Rain Dogs" with its scenes of tenement melancholy.
Also included is "The Monster" about the black stable hand who risks his life to save a child and the callousness he suffers in return.
"The Blue Hotel" is about men too drunk and too insane to remember they're human. Buk...more
Also included is "The Monster" about the black stable hand who risks his life to save a child and the callousness he suffers in return.
"The Blue Hotel" is about men too drunk and too insane to remember they're human. Buk...more
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Couldn't appreciate "Maggie..." much when it was assigned reading in high school, but returning to it later in life I was pretty enthralled. Final lines of the story land like a punch to the jaw; I suspect I missed the conclusion's brutal cynicism when reading it as a teenager. My growing interest in that time period in general also made it better reading than the first time around, as I better understood the story's context (try Jacob Riis's collection of photographs How the Other Hal...more
Maggie (which I reread) is a classic and wonderfully devastating, but what really blew me away in this collection was the other text that I read for my exam, "The Monster." It's Frankenstein meets post-bellum commentary on American race relations, and the result is both very creepy and very moving. I think it would be a great story to teach in an American lit course because it shows the breakdown of the sentimental approach to overcoming racial difference that Stowe tries so hard to in...more
Really loved this novella. It directly transports one to 1880's Lower East side Manhattan. I thought Crane was born and raised in the Irish slums of the Bowery, but he had spent very little time there before the novel. His use of dialogue and slang made me feel like I was there in the tenement with Jimmy and Maggie. It taught me about history, the slums of old New York, and the puritanical views of lower class Irish at the time. I got a little bit of sociology, anthropology, history, and fi...more
John Wiswell
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Literary readers, short story readers, classics readers
Published by 21, famous by 24, dead by 28, it's really no surprise that Crane's fiction was ambitious or depressing. His word economy (and plot economy) was almost revolutionary in his time, and so even his worst stories are quick and relatively good reads. This volume contains some of his better short fiction, such as "Blue Hotel," the excellent short story on the attitudes of immigrants and self-fulfilling prophecies. This additional short fiction helps make up for some of the huge g...more
I think the moral of the story was lost on me, as the times have changed so much. Everything was inferred instead of said outright. Did she actually have "relations" with Pete? I can't be sure, so am unclear why her mother disowned her. Did she kill herself? Was her situation really so severe that was her only way out? Obviously there was quite the double standard. Sins were not arranged in order of importance. The parents could be alcoholic lowlifes, and beat their children, but she w...more
Bingjie
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Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Stories is written by Stephen Crane.There are 7 other stories expect Maggie: A girl of the Street ,such as The Blue Hotel, Twelve O'Clock, Moonlight on the Snow and so on.The background of Maggie: A Girl of the Street is a poor situation.These people like Jimmie, Maggie and of course their family are very poor.Maggie's mother always drunk and Jimmie is either.Maggie falls in love with Pete ,but they are in the different world. I think all this happened...more
Death was Maggie’s escape in “Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets.” Maggie is a pitiful young woman who never gets her opportunity to succeed in the world due to lack of funds and opportunity, and is forever held back by the stereotypes of her class. Like any young girl her age, she fell in love with Pete, a fellow who represented her hope of a better and happier future. Sadly there was never truly a formalized promise of marriage; it was all in vain to have given up her reputation for him in hopes th...more
Crane loves drama and he steeps this novella in the same mash of din and color as his Red Badge of Courage, but this ostensible failure (it wasn't popular until after he grew famous for Red Badge) is actually an odd mix of Jacob-Riis-esque documentary of the Bowery slums and a throw back of the mid-century temperance tales like Solon Robinson's wildly popular temperance tale, "Hot Corn," which was serialized in the New York Tribune (later published in novel format) and which spawned nu...more
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A decent bunch of short stories. Although, somewhat surprisingly to say the least, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was my least favorite in the collection.
Oh, for some strange reason Algeria was again mentioned in a book this summer. I don't know what it is with the place, but it seems something is calling me to Algeria. Or maybe the bigfoot aliens are leaving secret messages for me, warning me to not go to Algeria, or maybe they want me to go to Algeria to fulfill my interstellar destiny.
Oh, for some strange reason Algeria was again mentioned in a book this summer. I don't know what it is with the place, but it seems something is calling me to Algeria. Or maybe the bigfoot aliens are leaving secret messages for me, warning me to not go to Algeria, or maybe they want me to go to Algeria to fulfill my interstellar destiny.
Time to go back through my all-time least favorite books. And this one stands at the top of the list. It is 3/4 of a sparkling contribution to the world of literature, but as it is the book falls terribly short for the simple reason that it forcefully stamps out any possibility for resolution of any of the important points it raises.
From her brother, her mother, her own foray into an upscale social scene, and the squalors from which she emerges, Crane builds up to crucial realizations...more
From her brother, her mother, her own foray into an upscale social scene, and the squalors from which she emerges, Crane builds up to crucial realizations...more
While I enjoyed this novella more than "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin, the underlying premises behind Crane's story are false. Crane was a Naturalist, who believed that our lives are determined by our genetics and by our circumstances, and we cannot ever hope to extricate ourselves from this mess. Any author has the license to create a world in which there are no choices, or the only choices which are presented to the characters are bad ones. REAL life is not like that. There are s...more
I'm sorry, there's nothing I hate more than books with disgusting dialects. I can get the point without having horrible, broken dialogue. I understand that's what the people sounded like, but it makes me want to skip over every time a character speaks.
That is honestly the thing that stands out the absolute most about this story. Nothing else about it was really that compelling to me.
The characters were all extreme cliches and the moral was the same moral of every s...more
That is honestly the thing that stands out the absolute most about this story. Nothing else about it was really that compelling to me.
The characters were all extreme cliches and the moral was the same moral of every s...more
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Um.. Wow. A very long time ago I read and loved Red Badge of Courage. I thought I'd try some more Crane. This one was completely lost on me. It was very hard to read through the dialect. Cardboard characters were pretty predictable as was the ending. Social mores which are unfamiliar to modern readers featured prominently in the plot. As in a lot of literature of the time much of the action was implied rather than clearly stated making it difficult to interpret what even happened. Definitely a p...more
This novel has vivid imagery and profound diction. The way in which Crane shapes the meaning of this story through his Impressionist-like writing is beautiful. Even the dialect adds to the flavor of the story. It is also interesting to note how Crane makes the point that entertaining Romantic thoughts and holding onto Romantic ideals is deadly. (This is the way in which he makes a case for Realism/Naturalism instead of Romanticism.) It can be argued that Maggie's death is the result of her ...more
This was my second reading of this narrative and I understood it better this time. Crane's purpose is to illustrate the double standard for men and women in regards to sexuality, as well as to put a human face on the girls who end up in prostitution. He does so beautifully and without hitting the reader over the head with his message that these girls are to be pitied as many, like Maggie, have very little choice open to them and their life from the start pitiable. I am struck by the ironic a...more
A rose growing in the gutter of the New York’s Bowery in the 1890’s is Maggie, innocence itself, born in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. I am tempted to look at Crane’s naturalism and the description of her family as too unrealistic. There must be some good in this family but no matter how hard you read into it you’ll find none. Thinking of Emile Zola’s "Germinal" (1885) and the harsh darkness of that world. There was a point these writers were trying to make that cried out to ...more
I found the book to be boring. Most of the stories were meant to give insights into [a group of] people's lives, but did not have much in the way of a plot or conclusion.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1/5) - The impoverished people of Manhattan through the eyes of a girl's (unwise) first love. The story was simple and dull, and the accented speech made it very difficult to parse.
The Monster (2/5) - Henry saves Jimmie from a fire and becomes a leper due to his injuries. ...more
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1/5) - The impoverished people of Manhattan through the eyes of a girl's (unwise) first love. The story was simple and dull, and the accented speech made it very difficult to parse.
The Monster (2/5) - Henry saves Jimmie from a fire and becomes a leper due to his injuries. ...more
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, written by Stephen Crane, is a story of how a young Irish girl grows up on the streets of New York. With little to no education, barely any money, and her only peers of the neighborhood fighting at all times, this girl's life is full of hardships.
During her childhood, Maggie's younger brother Jimmie was always getting into fights with the neighborhood kids. Her mother was always drinking and her father barely cared for his family at all. Maggie's ...more
During her childhood, Maggie's younger brother Jimmie was always getting into fights with the neighborhood kids. Her mother was always drinking and her father barely cared for his family at all. Maggie's ...more
This book was amazing. I applaud Stephen Crane for writing this book. I really liked it. It told me that Black people wernt the only ones treated badly. That other people like the Irish people were.
Something bad about the book was that I could not understand the lingo. I mean I could understand it but I either had the read it aloud, or read it really slowly. Also sometimes even when i understood the words, I couldnt understand what it meant.
Some positive things About Maggie girl f...more
Something bad about the book was that I could not understand the lingo. I mean I could understand it but I either had the read it aloud, or read it really slowly. Also sometimes even when i understood the words, I couldnt understand what it meant.
Some positive things About Maggie girl f...more
Maggie: a Girl of the Streets written by Stephen Crane, is about a girl trying to get out of poverty. She leaves her home with a rich man named Pete. Her mother and brother dissaproved of him, but Maggie still left with him. When things did not work out with them, Maggie went back home but her mother kicked her out. Maggie then did not have a place to go and the last thing Stephen writes about her is that she died.
I thought that this book was very confusing. It was hard to understan...more
I thought that this book was very confusing. It was hard to understan...more
Kate
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review of another edition
Recommended to Kate by:
Required reading for AP English Literature Grade 11 or 12
This was a short enough novel that it wasn't a chore to read. I had a friend in high school named Maggie and I recall that we would sometimes call her "Maggie Girl of the Streets" while we were reading this book... The only other thing I remember about this book is the main character looking up and saying, "The moon looks like shit" - and my teacher dissecting this sentence to mean that the character's life was so terrible she couldn't think of anything wonderful to compare ...more
This book is a treasure, as much for the story of Crane's trying to get it published as for the story itself. I am always drawn to authors' first books. There's often an energy there lost in latter books. The energy and intensity of this story made gave it a momentum that wasn't lost on The Red Badge of Courage but was toned down. I admire the raw honesty of the prose here; there's something alive in it that refuses to be toned down for the audience's sake.
I thought I'd never read a book sadder than The Chocolate War, but I was wrong. Maggie: A Girl of The Streets is desolate. What I found most disturbing about it is that Maggie largely doesn't have parents, and certainly not loving parents. Both parents are alcoholics, and the father dies early. The mother is a brute who often smashes furniture in drunken rages. When Maggie disappears from the family's house while dating Pete (which is never really explained), her mother and older brother conclud...more
I can't help but enjoy Maggie this time around, most likely considering the context in which I was reading it (Crane and color imagery/the influence of French painting). I also tend to have an awkward fascination with the naturalist style, as bleak as it may be - and in that respect, I believe Maggie overshadows Red Badge of Courage in being a truly effective narrative in the context of realism/naturalism (and where the two intersect). It's also more accessible, mostly in that it's much shorter...more
I absolutely love this book. It's harsh language shows "a" (I don't want to generalize or make a claim about its truth status) brutality and bestiality of life in very vivid pictures. Crane manages to do this without sounding moralizing and I especially love his short sarcastic remarks. For me the greatness of it lies not in the story or in the way the story expectably ends, but in the way this story is presented. This book has a great force.
Part of the Americanism and Realism Literature, this tragic story is about a girl named Maggie that grows up in a family where each member has their fair share of issues. As it seems, Maggie is set on path for destruction from the very beginning. The story details Maggie's journey from a very broken home down the road to a sad and tragic ending. The end of the novel is vague, leaving the reader to only assume what exactly happened to poor Maggie.
A very sad story, but very well written. Like Dickens' novels, Crane brilliantly captures city life for the lower class during late 19th century America. Maggie's character evokes a lot of sympathy. Her tale is a good example of the "fallen woman" archetype and her demise is perhaps a good example of society's values at the time. I think that books like Make Lemonade would serve as a great classic-to-YA Lit bridge for younger readers.
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Stephen Crane was an American novelist, poet and journalist, best known for the novel Red Badge of Courage. That work introduced the reading world to Crane's striking prose, a mix of impressionism, naturalism and symbolism. He died at age 28 in Badenweiler, Baden, Germany.
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always tell these people some name like that, because if they got onto
your right name they might use it sometime. Understand?”
