Mariam Dogar
5/27/15
Humanities
Section K
Maggie: Naturalism in a Nutshell
As scientists persistently tackle the many problems of mankind, they undergo a critical
exploration of various phenomena in the cell, brain, human body, atom, solar system, and
universe. At a fundamental level, scientists yearn to discover the why in order to fully
comprehend the how. In this respect, the philosophical mentality of a naturalist is analogous to
the curious mind of a scientist. Naturalists are concerned with the underlying driving forces,
whether environmental or hereditary, behind one's behavior. Stephen Crane, a renowned
naturalist, is no exception because he presents a deterministic and objective view of human
nature in his writing. In “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” Crane magnifies socially oppressive
forces and naturalistic ideals through the passiveness and brevity of his writing, the anonymity
and homogeneity of his characters, the pervasive evidence of escapism from incessant
pandemonium and melancholy, and the destruction of the protagonist, Maggie.
Crane’s compact writing style of simply constructed sentences combined with a
concentration of consequential concepts contributes immensely to the overall effectiveness and
identification of the novella as a naturalist piece. He employs crafty dialect involving
idiosyncratic phrases when the characters are speaking; “What deh hell?” is particularly
reoccurring amongst the majority of characters, placing them all at an identical, unsophisticated
level. The short length of the story is important because it only makes the slight story of Maggie
seem even less significant; if the story was not so troubling and lugubrious, it would be easily
forgettable, as Maggie was to Pete. Succinct sentences devoid of passion and opinion are
ubiquitous throughout the work. For example, simple phrases like “She began to weep,” “She
flourished it,” and “Maggie broke a plate,” are scattered throughout the initial chapters, and their
concise form is almost unnoticeable. As the novella progresses, however, these diminutive
sentences become more grave and telling, such as “The babe, Tommie, died,” “She and Jimmie
lived,” “Maggie observed Pete,” “Maggie gazed long at her mother,” “He was a knight,” and
“Maggie went away.” None of these sentences would be especially intriguing if they were
surrounded by context in a paragraph of longer, more intricate sentences. However, Crane
intentionally isolates these potent phrases from the larger, descriptive paragraphs, utilizing the
stark contrast to highlight the significance of these observations. The off-handed manner in
which saturnine happenings are relayed enhances the naturalistic feel of the novella because it
comes across as everyone in the book is numb to overwhelming struggle and death. The only
moments of flourish come when Crane is depicting a horrifying scene, such as the “tattered
gamins” with “small, convulsed faces” and the “grins of true assassins” making a “furious
assault on the gravel heap.” In these instances where he intensely focuses on the beast-like
qualities of mankind and nature, Crane truly pulverizes romanticism and displays his naturalistic
views.
The one-dimensional view of the characters of the Bowery present in “Maggie: A Girl of
the Streets” makes them barely distinguishable from any other sordid types in the poor alleys of
other stories and rids them of a sense of individuality on a psychological level. Naturalist writers
were typically the bohemian type, familiar with lowbrow lifestyles and focused on the squalid,
repulsive, brutal, and pathetic in man and nature. The characters in this novella all witness, enact,
or are subject to verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. This is especially evident in the turbulent
scene in which every one of Maggie’s pugnacious family members are shrieking and fighting; in
the bedlam, the reader cannot discern who the villain is or who the hero is because every person
in the commotion shares the same appalling characteristics. The rambunctious Jimmie swears
and strikes the “upbraid[ing]” Maggie. The quivering Maggie weeps and “jerk[s]” the terrified
baby. The frightened baby “roar[s]” and “bawl[s],” but he only annoys the bellowing father. The
cursing father leaves the raucous scene and the mother for alcohol. Additionally, the drunken
mother rampantly abuses her children. At some point, the cacophony blurs together and all
characters are seen in the same tumultuous light. Another way in which Crane makes his
characters unremarkably similar to each other is by naming them simply and plainly; the names
are two syllables long at most and are all derived quite unimaginatively from the Bible. Details
about appearance like hair and eye color are unspecified, and the reader is never given more
information about a character than is necessary to know. The purpose this serves is to make the
work as relatable and objective as possible. This is similar to a scientist’s experiment, where
every subject in it is supposed to be identical to each other until the control group begins to differ
from the experimental group.
Throughout the novella, characters are constantly trying to escape from the
aforementioned turmoil and despair that they have to live in. The reader’s first exposure to this is
when the father is engaged in the brouhaha with his family for not more than a few minutes
before he runs away. After a “lurid altercation in which [he and his wife] damned each other’s
souls with frequency,” he “rushed from the room, apparently determined upon a vengeful
drunk.” This is not the only time alcohol is utilized by a character to evade his or her problems;
the mother indulges in alcohol very frequently. Later on, Jimmie also gets drunk and Maggie is
in love with a bartender. The whole family’s disposition towards alcohol, abuse, and anger
management issues falls in line with the naturalist view that bad breeds bad. Additionally, the
baby escapes the frightening situation by dying; this suggests death may be more favorable than
oppressed, angry life. Another character that seeks escape is Pete, and he does so by being
effortlessly lured away from Maggie by Nellie, the "woman of brilliance and audacity.” To Pete,
she represents the sophistication and worldliness that he craves. Ironically enough, Maggie
thinks of Pete the same way. Poverty, a lifetime of brutality, and a lack of meaning to life all
force Maggie towards Pete, her sole available escape route.
The most poignant part of the novella is that Maggie’s aspirations and attempts at success
are squandered by forces much larger than her. Crane’s protagonist is subject to massive social
forces that are as unrelenting and inevitable as fate itself. Crane describes the Bowery as
containing "withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something." Social
circumstances steer the lives of the Bowery members, and in the case of Maggie, the oppressive
forces set her on a path towards tragedy and ruination. The first warning comes when Crane says
“The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful
production of a tenement district, a pretty girl,” and that “the philosophers… puzzled over it.”
Every other character is hardened and brutalized by the environment, with the exception of
Maggie, who retains her romantic, naïve nature. Eventually, this leads to her downfall because
all exceptions in the Bowery become eliminated. Pete’s voice is “burdened with disdain for the
inevitable and contempt for anything that fate might compel him to endure,” and Maggie
idealizes him for it. Her “thoughts were often searching for faraway lands where, as God says,
the little hills sing together in the morning,” and there was always a lover “under the trees of her
dream-gardens.” However, Maggie’s fantastical dreams are dashed not only by her abhorrent
environment, but by Pete, who discards her without a second glance. According to naturalism,
primal savagery and brutality truly triumphs in the end, making the novella so tragic and telling
of the mindset of Crane and his contemporaries.
With writing that is laconic and compendious, characters that are contemptible and
mostly indistinct, examples of escapism from despicable situations, and the elimination of the
idealistic Maggie, Stephen Crane exemplifies naturalistic ideals and the inescapability of social
forces. In his novella, uncontrollable social forces take on the role that ineluctable fate would
have played in a non-naturalistic work. Love and compassion are nowhere to be seen; in fact,
they are replaced with hopeless dreams of escape from constant antagonism and all that is
squalid and dirty in man and nature. Not only does Crane oppose romanticism, but he also
actively tears it apart by annihilating Maggie and what she represents. As evident in the novella,
the naturalistic view is that the world is not spiritual, but rather it is deterministic and invariably
shaped by heredity and environment. Characters do not die content as satisfied individuals;
instead, pathetic deaths in the Bowery become one of many. Crane believes that life without
meaning drives people to primal savagery and brutality. In “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” he
effectively demonstrates this in a manner reminiscent of a scientific experiment, where the
Bowery people are the control group and Maggie is delivered the independent variable: hope for
a better life. With Maggie’s tragic demise, there is no questioning the conclusion of the
experiment.