abraham cahan,
Stephen crane
and the romantic tenement tale
of the nineties
david m. fine
American Studies h a s p u b l i s h e d a n u m b e r of related r e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of u r b a n fiction, p o v e r t y a n d s e x roles i n this period;
several p r o v i d e solid r e i n f o r c e m e n t for M r . F i n e ' s a r g u m e n t s ;
others suggest qualifications. B e i n g i n v e t e r a t e l y i m m o d e s t about
t h e q u a l i t y of s t u d i e s p u b l i s h e d i n t h e j o u r n a l , w e enthusiastically
c o m m e n d t h e following to r e a d e r s of this article:
SHELDON N O R M A N GREBSTSIN, "DREISSER'S VICTORIAN V A M P , " IV, 3 .
Adds depth
to
w h a t M r . F i n e s a y s a b o u t t h e fallen u r b a n w o m a n : Carrie "is precisely that
m i x t u r e of s t r e n g t h s a n d w e a k n e s s e s w h i c h t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y c o n c e i v e d h e r
t o b e , b u t . . . i s a t t h e s a m e t i m e i n h e r u n r e q u i t e d s e x u a l s i n s t h e first m o d e r n
heroine."
K E N N Y A . J A C K S O N , "ROBERT HERRICK'S U S E OF CHICAGO," V , 1 , 2 4 . A s t r o n g
study
of t h e r e a c t i o n of a n o t h e r n o v e l i s t o f t h e s a m e p e r i o d t o t h e c i t y .
NORTON M E Z V I N S K I , " A N IDEA OF F E M A L E SUPERIORITY," II, 1 , 1 9 . E v i d e n c e f r o m
the
h i s t o r y of t h e W C T U , o f a l l t h i n g s , o n c o n t e m p o r a r y d e f i n i t i o n s of t h e n a t u r e o f
women.
W I L L I A M W . N I C H O L S , " A C H A N G I N G A T T I T U D E T O W A R D P O V E R T Y I N The
Ladies'
Home
Journal:
1 8 8 5 - 1 9 1 9 , " V , 1 , 1 3 . S o m e t i m e s t h e u r b a n p o o r a r e not s e n t i m e n t a l i z e d
in c o m m e r c i a l s l u m fiction. T h e m i d d l e - c l a s s " g u i d e " appears i n both articles.
ROBERT W . SCHNEIDER, " S T E P H E N C R A N E AND T H E D R A M A OF T R A N S I T I O N :
HISTORICAL C O N T I N U I T Y , " II, 1 , 1 .
.
"FRANK NORRIS:
THE NATURALIST AS VICTORIAN," III,
1, 13.
A STUDY I N
Two
terrific
reinterpretations w h i c h serve as correctives to accounts w h i c h see naturalists (is
Crane really a naturalist?) as m o r e radical'than t h e y really w e r e .
W A R R E N I . T I T U S , " T H E PROGRESSTVISM OF T H E M U C K R A K E R S , " I, 1 , 1 0 .
Intellectually
related t o t h e t w o articles b y Schneider, and useful f o r providing political correlative for w h a t w a s going o n aesthetically.
—SGL
I n 1896 Appleton's published A b r a h a m Cahan's first novel, Yekl, A
Tale of the New York Ghetto, a n d reissued Stephen Crane's Maggie, A
Girl of the Streets, b r o u g h t o u t privately a n d pseudonymously three years
95
earlier. Neither the Bowery nor the i m m i g r a n t Lower East Side of New
York were new subjects for fiction at that time. For m o r e t h a n a decade
magazines had been featuring stories and sketches of slum life. T h e city's
"other half" had become, by the mid-nineties, a p r o d u c t of proven marketability, one which the writer w h o wanted to demonstrate his contemporary social relevance could hardly resist. W h a t m a d e the almost simultaneous printing of Maggie and Yekl significant was that in these two
slim first books, Crane a n d Cahan—then u n k n o w n to each other a n d from
entirely different backgrounds—launched a dual assault u p o n the romantic
conventions w hich h a d come to be identified with the tenement tale.
W h i l e neither author was able to avoid entirely the condescending tone
which had always characterized the fictional treatment of the poor, the
protagonists in these two novels were far different from the self-sacrificing,
noble, and heroic tenement dewellers readers of the nineties h a d come to
expect in their fiction. T h e slum denizens of Crane and C a h a n were vain,
assertive and self-seeking, a n d in portraying them as such, the authors
undermined the sentimental assumptions of the p o p u l a r tenement tale.
T
N o two contemporaries could seem less alike. I n background, training, and temperament they belonged to different worlds. Cahan, the son
of an impoverished T a l m u d i c scholar from a small shtetl near Vilna,
emigrated penniless to America in 1882 among the advanced g u a r d of the
large Russian-Jewish migration which was to last through the second decade of the twentieth century. At the age of thirty-six he h a d established
himself as a cultural leader of New York's Lower East Side ghetto. H e h a d
worked in sweatshops, served as a "walking delegate" to the new unions
springing u p in the ghetto, taught English to immigrants in East Side
night schools, helped edit the Yiddish Arbeiter Zeitung and published
articles and sketches in both the Yiddish and English press. His active
life would continue for more t h a n a half-century, dominated by his successful editorship of the Forward, which h e turned into America's largest
circulation Yiddish daily. W i t h the possible exception of The Rise of
David Levinsky, his fiction would be forgotten.
1
Crane, by direct contrast, was the son of an upper-middle class New
Jersey Methodist minister. H e spent his adolescent years not in a Russian
shtetl b u t in Asbury Park, an affluent New Jersey resort. A n d his knowledge of the slums was not, like Cahan's, the product of enforced daily
contact, b u t of his fascination with the submerged p o p u l a t i o n of the
Bowery and T e n d e r l o i n districts, where he spent a good deal of his time
between 1891 and 1895. Maggie was written early in 1893 when he was
living with some students in an East Side rooming house. W h e n the book
was reissued in 1896, he was only twenty-five, and he would live b u t four
m o r e years, his fame as a writer assured with the publication of The Red
Badge of Courage in 1895.
2
If, then, Cahan drew his materials directly from the life h e knew
first-hand a n d Crane from life observed from the perspective of an out-
96
sider, the two stories d o n ' t reveal this difference. A similar ironic and
detached point-of-view pervades both books. William Dean Howells
noted the similarity between the two novels a n d paired them in a review
for the New York World. Of C a h a n he said:
I cannot h e l p t h i n k i n g that we have in h i m a writer of
foreign b i r t h w h o will do honor to American letters. . . .
T h e r e is m u c h t h a t is painful in his story, as there is m u c h
that is dreadful in Mr. Crane's work, b u t both of these
writers persuade us that they have told the t r u t h and that as
conditions have m a d e the people they deal with, we see their
people.
3
Howells was no stranger either to Cahan or Crane in 1896. H e had
read the 1893 version of Maggie—Crane h a d sent h i m a copy—and was
impressed by the y o u n g writer's uncompromising u r b a n realism. I n January of 1896, after Red Badge was published b u t before the reissue of
Maggie, he wrote Crane, "For me, I remain t r u e to my first love, 'Maggie.'
T h a t is better t h a n all the 'Black Riders' a n d 'Red Badges.' " H e went
on to contribute the Preface to the 1896 English edition of Maggie.
Howells was also interested in Cahan's early work. Attracted to an early
ghetto sketch, "A Providential M a t c h , " he sought out Cahan in 1892.
T h e y met in Howells' home, and encouraged by the famous m a n to write
a novel about ghetto life, C a h a n set out to work on Yekl, which he completed in 1895. Howells was pleased with the manuscript and saw to its
publication with Appleton's after both H a r p e r ' s and McClure's h a d
rejected it.
4
5
6
Despite Howells' praise, both books were uniformly denounced for
their sordid treatment of the lower class. Reviewers did not question the
propriety of treating slum or ghetto material in fiction; the tenement tale
was well established both in England and America and stories of slum
life were enjoying a vogue. W h a t they attacked was the relentless depiction of rapacity a n d avidity they found i n these books. T h e reviewer
for The Nation, for instance, labeled Crane "a promising writer of the
animalistic school," which he defined as "a species of realism which deals
with m a n considered as an animal . . . b u t which neglects, so far as
possible, any higher qualities which distinguish h i m from his four-footed
relatives, such as h u m o r , thought, reason, aspiration, affection, morality,
and religion." Similarly, the reviewer of Yekl in The Bookman asked,
"Does Mr. C a h a n wish us to believe that the types of life of the ghetto
thus represented are truly representative of his race? T h a t it is as sordid,
as mean, as cruel, as degraded as h e has shown it to be? For . . . throughout the work there is n o t a gleam of spirituality, unselfishness, or nobility."
7
T o the reviewers b o t h books exuded the odors of "Zola's stinkpot."
Maggie a n d Yekl h a d become part of the larger battle fought over the
limits of realism in the eighties and nineties. Cahan and Crane, like Zola
97
before them, were guilty of t u r n i n g men into beasts. H o w far they had
come from the r o m a n t i c conception of the poor in the tenement tale
tradition can be seen by looking briefly at that tradition.
T h e genesis of tenement fiction both in England a n d America can
be traced first of all to the spread of slums t h r o u g h o u t such cities as
L o n d o n , New York and Chicago in the late nineteenth century a n d to
the warnings of the social consequences of slums presented in such books
as Charles L o r i n g Brace's The Dangerous Classes in New York (1872),
Charles Booth's multi-volume Life and Labour of the People of London
(1889 and 1897) and Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (1890).
Articles on slum life were appearing in all the journals advocating a concern with contemporary problems. I n 1890 Arena introduced a series on
poverty in American cities a n d u n d e r Benjamin Orange Flower's editorship continued throughout the decade to feature exposes of the slums.
I n 1891 Scribner's began a symposium on " T h e Poor in the Great Cities"
(published in book form in 1896) which featured such contributors as
J a c o b Riis, Walter Besant and Joseph Kirkland. T h e r a p i d growth of the
immigrant population, the proliferation of labor warfare, the physical
spread and increasing density levels of the city's traditional slum areas
a n d the public outcries over rising rates of u r b a n crime, vice a n d disease
all combined to make the slums increasingly visible a n d topical as the
century drew to a close. T h e American City h a d taken o n a foreign and
tattered appearance which suggested endless literary opportunities.
8
Moreover, although neither the new realism nor naturalism necessitated the treatment of the u r b a n poor, writers were drawn to the subject
because it offered a radical deviation from the genteel, Victorian n o r m of
the drawing room. T h e y sought to m i r r o r in fiction what the social
scientists, settlement workers a n d reform journalists were revealing about
the new u r b a n America. B u t however realistic was the impulse b e h i n d
slum fiction, the product was generally romantic and sentimental. T h e
native-born a n d immigrant poor alike were portrayed in story after story
as ignorant a n d innocent victims of economic forces beyond their control,
b u t free from the moral debilities the journalists and social scientists
were linking with destitution. Environment crushes bodies in these tales,
b u t leaves souls untouched. Poverty is rarely degrading; more often it is
ennobling. Men are hard-working, honest a n d uncomplaining; women
self-sacrificing, courageous and either inviolable or cruelly betrayed. If
the heroine yields to the seducer, it is only after a long, h a r d struggle,
as in the case of Cora Stang, the beautiful slum flower in Edgar Fawcett's
The Evil That Men Do (1889).
I n other words, the daily horrors of slum life, the wretched sweatshop
a n d tenement house conditions which the u r b a n reformers were describing in the press, were often enough dramatized in fiction, b u t the moral
implications of these conditions—the effect o n inner character—formed
little p a r t in the fiction. Sensational journalistic exposes of the brutal
98
crimes, beastiality a n d rapacity bred by slum life may have been an imp o r t a n t factor in d r a w i n g story tellers to the slums; however, the portrayal of the poor in slum fiction derives more from the conventions of
romantic, sentimental n i n e t e e n t h century fiction than from the contemporary journalistic reports. Howells, whatever his own squeamishness and
ambivalence when it came to the slums, took note of this pervasive
sentimentality in slum fiction. In an 1895 editorial on the popularity of
Edward Townsend's Bowery gamin, "Chimmie Fadden," he wrote that
middle class readers "must have toughness idealized, and they must have
the slums cleaned u p a little . . . if they are to have them in l i t e r a t u r e . "
0
10
11
Jacob Riis' work reveals this characteristic shift which occurred when
the reform j o u r n a l i s m became fiction. I n How the Other Half Lives, a
collection of articles, accompanied by photographs, on New York's slum
neighborhoods, he insisted repeatedly that the slum environment is degrading as well as destructive, b u t in his fictional sketches collected in
Out of Mulberry Street (1897) the poor retain a k i n d of moral innocence,
faith a n d idealism in the face of their poverty. A few of his sketches can
be cited to illustrate this. I n one, a young waif's belief in Santa Glaus so
touches the older gamins in a dormitory for street youths that they gather
their meager savings to fill his Christmas stocking. I n another tale, a
young tough, arrested w h e n the police break u p a gang war, escapes his
arresting officers to rescue an infant h e sees wander in front of an oncoming streetcar. I n still another, an old ghetto slippermaker works day
and night at his trade in a tenement flat, depriving himself of food and
sleep in order to have Yom Kip pur day free to worship and fast. Riis
claimed in the Preface to Out of Mulberry Street that the material for
these stories came from "the daily grist of the police hopper in Mulberry
Street" (where as a police reporter he was assigned), b u t his treatment of
the material, his nagging insistence on the u n s u n g heroism of his slum
dwellers, suggests a stronger fidelity to the conventions of fiction than to
the facts the reform journalists—himself included—were digging u p .
It is to Riis' credit as a story-teller that he doesn't rescue his characters
from their poverty. T h e r e are none of the sudden and melodramatic
reversals of fortune for the worthy poor which one finds in the slum
novels of Dickens a n d George Gissing in England and Edward Townsend
(and of course H o r a t i o Alger) in America. Death is prevalent in these
sketches—usually in the form of a bizarre accident resulting from unsafe
living and working conditions. T a k e n collectively, these mawkish stories
of Riis all seem to say t h a t the slum environment destroys life b u t not the
indomitable spirit of the poor. Physical impoverishment is not to be
equated with spiritual impoverishment.
T h i s blend of cynicism and sentimentality, the stance which resulted
perhaps out of necessity from the police reporter's experience, characterizes the greater n u m b e r of the period's tenement tales. Many of the writers, like Riis, were reporters who found the brief story focusing on the sin-
99
gle incident—only a step removed from the journalistic sketch—the most
congenial m e d i u m for depicting slum life. T h e y were more interested in
representing the elemental struggle between m a n and his environment,
acted out every day in the slums, than in extended plot or character development. Often a collection of stories set in a single locale (a neighborhood, a block or even a single tenement building) with some of the same
characters reappearing gives the semblance of a novel, b u t in such collections there is rarely any continuity of plot from episode to episode.
T h e practice of grouping tenement sketches in this way may have originated with A r t h u r Morrison's L o n d o n collection, Tales of Mean Street
(1894). It appears in America in James Sullivan's Tenement
Tales of
New York (1895—largely West Side New York Irish), J u l i a n Ralph's
People We Pass (1896—German and Irish youths in a single New York
tenement house), Alvan Francis Sanborn's Moody's Lodging House and
Other Sketches
(1895—Boston's poor Irish settlement a r o u n d T u r l e y
Street) and Isaac Kahn Friedman's The Lucky Number
(1896—a mixed
immigrant community in Chicago).
Another way of grouping tenement tales was a r o u n d a central character whose adventures could be followed in serialized publication. By
far the favorite of such heroes was the plucky, resourceful street arab—the
kind Riis liked to write a b o u t and E d w a r d T o w n s e n d so successfully exploited in his "Chimmie F a d d e n " sketches for the New York Sun.
"Chimmie" is a Bowery tough who rescues the u p p e r class heroine when
she is assailed on a "slumming t r i p " a n d is rewarded by being given a job
as footman to the girl's father, affectionately referred to by C h i m m i e as
" 'is whiskers." In a long series of monologues Chimmie tells of his experiences among polite society, allowing T o w n s e n d to reveal t h r o u g h his
young innocent the fundamental moral honesty of the slum boy in contrast to the deviousness and connivances of the r i c h .
Other popular
versions of the idealized tough presented in serialized form were George
Ade's "Artie" and R i c h a r d Outcault's comic-strip creation, " T h e Yellow
Kid" (born in the Sunday edition of the New York World in 1895).
12
T h e focus in fiction on the street tough is not surprising in light of
the concern for the plight of the slum child voiced by all the reformers.
" T h e reform of poverty a n d ignorance must begin with the children,"
Riis m a i n t a i n e d .
T h e slum child was both the most pathetic victim
and, if he could be reached through schools, settlements a n d the church,
the best hope for an end to the recurring cycle of u r b a n crime, immorality
and disease. W h a t emerges in the fiction, though, is the street y o u t h as
hero more than as victim. Unlike J i m m i e , the brother of Crane's heroine,
the gamins in the p o p u l a r slum fiction are more valorous t h a n discrete,
a n d they are kept occupied in tale after tale in rescuing women from
would-be assailants or b u r n i n g tenement buildings, and children from the
paths of oncoming trains. A slight variation on this theme is James
Sullivan's "Slob M u r p h e y " (in Tenement
Tales of New York). "Slob" is
13
100
despised by the neighbors in his West Side Irish tenement house because
of his often cruel practical jokes. B u t when he lies dying after being
crushed beneath the hooves of a milk-wagon horse, he experiences beatific
visions a n d in his last words implores his father to give u p the drinking
which has caused the family so m u c h misery.
In the same way that the idealized gamin in most slum fiction differs
from Crane's J i m m i e , the slum girl w h o appears in these stories offers a
striking contrast to Maggie. As James Colvert points o u t in his introduction to the recent Virginia edition of Crane's Bowery Tales, Crane
adopted m a n y of the attitudes and assumptions a b o u t the slum girl from
the p o p u l a r reform tracts. W h e t h e r or n o t he h a d actually read the works
of T h o m a s D e W i t t T a l m a d g e (author of The Mask Torn Off), J. W .
Buel (Metropolitan
Life Unveiled) or Jacob Riis, he was well aware of
the prevalent p o i n t of view which regarded the slum girl in terms of
virtue overwhelmed by a corrupting e n v i r o n m e n t .
Relating Maggie to
attitudes found in reform tracts of the eighties and nineties is a familiar
strain in recent C r a n e scholarship, o n e which has all b u t replaced the
earlier emphasis on Crane's debt to Zola and French naturalistic sources.
Marcus Cunliffe in a short piece in 1955 outlined some of the "American
Background" of Maggie, a n d since t h e n this has been a common element
in discussions of the w o r k .
14
15
16
T h e t r e a t m e n t of Crane's heroine certainly follows the broader lines
of the "virtue overwhelmed" theme found both in the reform tracts and
the p o p u l a r fiction, b u t Crane's story differs from other versions in his
having resisted casting Maggie in the role of the long-suffering heroine
struggling to m a i n t a i n her purity against the wiles of a ruthless seducer—
often from the u p p e r classes. I n Fawcett's The Evil That Men Do, for
instance, the h e r o i n e succumbs to h e r seducer only after a long, h a r d
struggle—with h i m a n d with herself. She ends, typically, as a prostitute
and finally is m u r d e r e d . A far different version of the slum flower is the
heroine of E d w a r d Townsend's A Daughter of the Tenements
(1895),
who rises from the world of sweatshops and fruit-stands to a successful
career as a dancer. I n a letter to K a t h e r i n e Harris, to whom, presumably,
he h a d sent a copy of the 1896 Maggie, Crane wrote with what seems like
some bitterness: "My good friend E d w a r d Townsend—have you read his
Daughter of the Tenements?—has
a n o t h e r opinion of the Bowery and it
is certain to be better t h a n m i n e . "
17
O n e further observation about t h e p o p u l a r slum romances before we
r e t u r n to Crane a n d C a h a n : in most of these stories we see the poor
through the eyes of a sympathetic, benevolent middle class narrator drawn
to the slums as a reporter, a settlement worker or a young writer in search
of u r b a n local color. Sometimes the n a r r a t o r is a young writer who, like
Crane in his early Bowery sketches, has u n d e r g o n e "an experiment i n
misery," disguising himself as a Bowery b u m in order to discover the
t r u t h a b o u t the " o t h e r half." T h e p o i n t of view of this persona, then, is
101
like that of his readers, whom he conducts on a kind of guided tour of
the slums. Alvan Francis Sanborn, w h o in Moody's Lodging House and
Other Tenement Sketches (1895) a n d Meg Mclntyre's Raffle and Other
Stories (1896) provides a wealth of Boston Irish local color, is just such a
narrator. H e claims to have disguised himself as an unemployed laborer
to live among the poor in a cheap r o o m i n g house. W h a t he discovers
among the " t o u g h " Irish, though, is what Bret H a r t e discovered among
the rough-and-tumble gamblers a n d prostitutes of the Sierra mining
towns: honor among thieves and a deep sense of loyalty and sacrifice
for which, he says, one looks in vain a m o n g the "better" classes. Brander
Matthews, a professor of literature at Columbia, invented for his Manhattan Vignettes (1894) the narrator R u p e r t de Ruyter, a Knickerbocker
writer whose search for local color leads him to the Mulberry Street
Italian ghetto, where he finds the life "unfailingly interesting." Such narrators gave to middle class readers the k i n d of poor they wanted to believe in and expected in their fiction. Occasionally, derisive stereotypes
appeared, reinforcing some of the community attitudes toward particular
immigrant groups. W e have, for instance, the stiletto-bearing Italian in
Matthews' " I n Search of Local Color" (Manhattan
Vignettes) and the
vulgar, brutal Jewish "sweater" in James Sullivan's "Cohen's Figure"
(Tenement Tales of New York), b u t generally the portraits were idealized
and sentimentalized, evading some of the unpleasant truths the reformers
were uncovering.
A short summary like this can, of course, only hint at the direction the
tenement tale was taking in these years. But it should serve to set off the
achievements of Cahan and Crane, whose slum novels were published at
the height of the popular literary interest in the u r b a n poor.
Aggressive, self-seeking and self-justifying, the characters in Maggie
and Yekl recognize no obligations to others if such obligations stand in
the way of their desires. As Pete uses and discards Maggie when Nell
comes along, Yekl abandons his " g r e e n h o r n " wife and child for the more
Americanized Mamie Fein. Uncomfortable moral insights or sensations
are dismissed as not being applicable to them. Pete insists to the end that
he is a "good feller." J i m m i e dismisses the similarity between his own
seductions and Pete's violation of his sister. H e "wondered vaguely, if
some of the women of his acquaintance had brothers. Nevertheless, his
mind did n o t for an instant confuse himself with those brothers nor his
sister with t h e i r s . " H e will not a d m i t to himself for long the t h o u g h t
that Maggie "would have been more firmly good had she better known
why." (115) Maggie, after h e r "fall," instinctively shrinks from the
"painted" women in the music hall. (108) And disconsolate Mary J o h n s o n
cries "I'll fergive h e r " after the girl's suicide. Similarly, Yekl ("Jake")
justifies his a b a n d o n m e n t of his wife by blaming her for h o l d i n g h i m
back. Like Pete, he sees himself as a gallant, and wallows in self-pity a t
his fate after Gitl and their child arrive in America:
18
102
MEETING T H E NEEDS OF T H E NEIGHBORHOOD:
A plate from a condescending
do-gooder t r a c t ( L i l l i a n W . B e t t s , T h e Leaven in a Great City, 1 9 0 2 ) of g e n e r a l l y
Progressive s e n t i m e n t . T h e b o o k suggests, b y t h e b y , t h e c o m p l e x i t y of m i d d l e class
a t t i t u d e s t o w a r d t h e t e n e m e n t d w e l l e r , w h o is seen b o t h a s a n object of s e n t i m e n t a l
hopes a n d a s a s c a r y a n d " s w a r t h y '
m e n a c e to n a t i o n a l virtue. W e run the cut
b e c a u s e of t h e m e n t i o n of d a n c i n g in t h e g h e t t o ( s e e p a g e 1 0 3 ) .
7
All his achievements seemed wiped o u t by a sudden stroke
of ill fate. H e thought himself a martyr, an innocent exile
from a world to which h e belonged by right; a n d h e frequently felt sobs of self-pity m o u n t i n g in his t h r o a t .
19
Earlier, when h e saw his three-year-old son at Ellis Island, he "began to
regard him, with his mother, as one great obstacle dropped from heaven,
as it were, in his way." (75-76)
Jake is n o t in love with Mamie, b u t with the image of himself as a
"Yankee" or a n "American feller," an image sustained by the impression
that h e is an attractive blade to Mamie a n d the other working girls w h o
attended "Professor" J o e Peltner's ghetto dancing academy. Maggie too
is victimized by a false estimate of herself a n d her world. She is enthralled
by the glitter of the tawdry music halls to which Pete takes her a n d
believes literally in the "transcendental realism" of the Bowery melodramas, which celebrated the "hero's erratic march from poverty in the
first act, to wealth a n d t r i u m p h in the final one." (71) T r a p p e d by inadequate romantic conceptions of life, Maggie and Jake fall victim to a
world which will n o t come a r o u n d to them. T h e y attach themselves to
false ideals a n d to false lovers. Pete a n d Mamie are their deliverers,
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avatars of the bright night world outside. Pete, Maggie's "knight," swaggers into the J o h n s o n flat and
As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of
their prowess, Maggie leaned back in the shadow. H e r eyes
dwelt' wonderingly a n d rather wistfully u p o n Pete's face.
T h e broken furniture, grimey walls, and general disorder
and dirt of her h o m e of a sudden a p p e a r e d before her and
began to take a potential aspect. Pete's aristocratic person
looked as if it m i g h t soil. (47)
This passage can be compared to one in Ye Id in which Mamie, overdressed, struts into Jake's t e n e m e n t flat. Just as Maggie sees Pete as her
champion, Mamie represents to J a k e the possibilities of a larger, freer
world, a world to which he h a d once belonged b u t from which h e was
unjustly banished:
H e r perfume lingered in his nostrils, taking his breath away.
H e r venemous gaze stung his heart. She seemed to h i m elevated above the social plane u p o n which he h a d recently
. . . stood by her side, nay u p o n which he h a d h a d her at his
beck a n d call; while h e was degraded, as it were, wallowing
in a mire, from which he yearningly looked u p to his former
equals, vainly begging for recognition. An uncontrollable
desire took possession of h i m to r u n after her, to have an
explanation, a n d to swear that h e was the same Jake and as
m u c h of a Yankee a n d a gallant as ever. (112-113)
T h u s while Pete steps into the J o h n s o n tenement flat to a n n o u n c e to
Maggie what the world m i g h t h o l d for her, M a m i e calls on Jake to remind
him of what he has h a d a n d lost. Perhaps Maggie is less to be blamed
than Jake. It can be argued that she h a d little real choice, b u t to Jake
too "environment is a tremendous thing." H e is ensnared in a world
whose borders are the tenement and sweatshop. Alone, lonely a n d bored,
he had sought out and found—before the arrival of his family—some glitter in the night world of the ghetto, a n d now with his " g r e e n h o r n " wife
and a son who hardly knows h i m on the scene, he misses desperately the
glitter.
W h e n Cahan's novel opens, J a k e is already enmeshed in Mamie's
sleazy world and unwilling to send for his wife. H e is the "allrightnik,"
the recent immigrant w h o flaunts his claims to being an American by
aping the most raffish m a n n e r s of his adopted land. I n much the same
way that the opening scene of Maggie (Jimmie's valiant struggle for the
" h o n o r " of R u m Alley) sets the ironic tone of that book, the first chapter
of Yekl establishes the p a t t e r n for Cahan's novel. Clean-shaven, unlike
his bearded fellow-workers, J a k e sits at his sewing machine in an East
Side sweatshop loudly boasting a b o u t his knowledge of American life.
H e argues the superiority of Boston over New York and speaks knowingly
of J o h n L. Sullivan's career a n d prize-fight betting. In contrast to Bernstein, the presser, who studies English from a book p r o p p e d u p against
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his machine, J a k e learns his English from life, which to h i m means boxing, baseball a n d the dancing academy. T o the "ladas" of the ghetto he
plays the role of gallant, feeling no compulsion to let it be known that
he has a wife a n d child in Russia waiting for him to send money for a
boat ticket. I n the l a n d where a Yekl can become a Jake, Gitl and the
past come to m e a n less a n d less to him. A statement Larzer Ziff has made
about Crane's story applies as well to Cahan's: " W h a t Maggie is is the
result n o t of the action of her environment on a plastic personality, b u t
rather the reaction of that environment to the proposals made to it by
her pretensions and h e r l o n g i n g s . "
20
T h e proposals m a d e to the environment by both protagonists, it
should be p o i n t e d out, are not identical. Maggie and Jake seek freedom
from intolerable confinement, but the kind of freedom each seeks is different. Whereas Maggie wants only to escape the endless squalor and
brutality of h e r existence at home, Jake wants to escape his "greenhorn"
status. H e is searching—though in the wrong places—for an American
identity and not simply an end to his poverty. Maggie Johnson belongs
to an Irish-American family and lives in an Irish enclave in Manhattan,
but the fact of h e r "Irishness" is in n o way crucial to the story. Jake's
conflict, on the other h a n d , is directly related to the fact that he is an
East E u r o p e a n Jew a n d a recent immigrant, living culturally on the very
margin of American society. Jake is a m a n who has sold his birthright
for a distorted version of Americanization. W h a t the immigrant Jew loses
in his attempts to become Americanized is a theme which occupied Cahan
t h r o u g h o u t his fiction, and which is given its fullest expression in The
Rise of David Levinsky
(1917). As a novel about immigrant acculturation, Yekl deals with a subject which became increasingly popular with
writers as the vast presence of South and East European immigrants made
itself felt in the last decade of the century.
21
More significant, though, than the difference in the precise focus of
the two short novels is the realization that at the height of the popularity
of the romantic: tenement tale they brazenly defied the conventional attitudes which characterized these tales. In these two novels poverty is not
ennobling, w o m e n n o t inviolable, men not always hard-working, stoical
and uncomplaining. Poverty does affect character and not for the best.
Moreover, in these works there is no middle-class narrator between us
and the slums, no kindly guide leading us through the exotic netherworld
of the city, i n t e r p r e t i n g for us, moralizing, justifying. Instead of the
romantic slum tale's predictably and superficially ironic revelations of
the nobility of the downtrodden, these two books achieve an irony which
is both more profound and more fundamental in the opposition between
their protagonists' deluded, romantic self-images and the reality demonstrated in their actions.
Maggie and Yekl were attacked not because slum material was unattractive to a genteel reading public, b u t because the portraits of the
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slum dwellers in these works were not the kinds with which audiences of;
fiction had become accustomed and felt comfortable. In refusing to conform to the sentimental a n d r o m a n t i c assumptions of the p o p u l a r tenement tale, these two books failed to win the immediate positive recognition they deserved, b u t in refusing they also brought American fiction
a little closer to the twentieth century.
California State University, Long Beach
footnotes
1. Ernest Poole's i n t e r v i e w of C a h a n , " A b r a h a m C a h a n : Socialist, J o u r n a l i s t , F r i e n d of the
G h e t t o , " The Outlook,
X L I X (28 O c t . , 1911), 467-468, is u s e f u l as a brief b i o g r a p h i c a l source.
A n a c c o u n t of C a h a n ' s early career in N e w York c a n b e f o u n d i n R o n a l d Sanders, The
Doivntoivn Jews: Portraits
of an Immigrant
Generation
( N e w York, 1969),
passim.
2. R e c e n t s c h o l a r s h i p h a s corrected t h e earlier b e l i e f t h a t Crane w a s w o r k i n g o n
Maggie
in 1891 w h i l e h e w a s a s t u d e n t at Syracuse. H e w a s at t h a t t i m e w r i t i n g a story a b o u t a
p r o s t i t u t e , b u t it c a n n o t b e a s s u m e d t h a t this story later b e c a m e Maggie.
For a c c o u n t s of the
errors in d a t i n g , see the i n t r o d u c t i o n by J a m e s Cotvert to the V i r g i n i a e d i t i o n of
Stephen
Crane:
The Bowery
Tales, e d . F r e d s o n B o w e r s ( C h a r l o t t e s v i l l e , V i r g i n i a , 1969) a n d t h e introd u c t i o n to t h e f a c s i m i l e (1893) e d i t i o n e d i t e d by D o n a l d Pizer (San Francisco, 1968).
3. " N e w York L o w L i f e i n F i c t i o n , " N e w York World,
26 July, 1896, I I , 18.
4. Stephen Crane:
Letters,
ed. R . W . S t a l l m a n a n d L i l l i a n Gilkes ( N e w York, 1 9 6 0 ) , 102.
5. T h i s tale w a s later i n c l u d e d i n t h e c o l l e c t i o n , The Imported
Bridegroom
and
other
Stories of the Nezv York Ghetto
( N e w York, A p p l e t o n ' s , 1898), See S a n f o r d M a r o v i t z , " T h e
L o n e l y N e w A m e r i c a n s of A b r a h a m C a h a n , " American
Quarterly,
X X , 2 ( S u m m e r , 1968), 205.
6. R u d o l p h a n d Clara Kirk, " A b r a h a m C a h a n a n d W i l l i a m D e a n H o w e l l s : T h e Story of
a F r i e n d s h i p , " American
Jeivish Historical
Quarterly,
L I I (Sept., 1962), 27-57.
7. The Nation,
L X I I I (2 July, 1896), 15; N a n c y H o u s t o n B a n k s , ' ' T h e N e w York G h e t t o , "
The Bookman,
I V (Oct. 1896), 157-158. F o r a n E n g l i s h a c c o u n t of C r a n e i n l i n e w i t h t h e
a b o v e , see H . D . T r a i l , " T h e N e w R e a l i s m , " Fortnightly
Review,
L X V I I I ( J a n . , 1897), 63-67.
8. " D u r i n g t h e first five years of Arena,
we p u b l i s h e d over fifty carefully p r e p a r e d contrib u t i o n s d e a l i n g w i t h the p r o b l e m s of a d v a n c i n g p o v e r t y a n d its a t t e n d a n t e v i l s . " B e n j a m i n
O r a n g e Flower, Progressive
Men, Women,
and Movements
of the Past Twenty-five
Years (Boston, 1914), 120.
9. Eric S o l o m o n in Stephen
Crane:
From Parody
to Realism
(Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1966), discusses i n the first c h a p t e r t h e i n f l u e n c e of b o t h n i n e t e e n t h century s e n t i m e n t a l fiction
a n d reform j o u r n a l i s m on t h e b o d y o f s l u m fiction p r o d u c e d at t h e c u d of t h e c e n t u r y . S l u m
fiction, in t r e a t m e n t , seems closer to m e to the f o r m e r t h a n to the latter, t h o u g h t h e r e f o r m
literature m a y h a v e suggested t h e literary p o s s i b i l i t i e s of t h e subject. S o l o m o n ' s p o i n t i n this
c h a p t e r is that Maggie p a r o d i e s b o t h o f these c o n v e n t i o n s .
10. Sanford Marovitz; i n " H o w e l l s a n d t h e G h e t t o : T h e Mystery of Misery," Modern
Fiction
Studies,
X V I , 3 (1970), 345-362, illustrates t h e writer-critic's e p h e m e r a l a n d r a t h e r s h a l l o w
c o m m i t m e n t to t h e denizens of the g h e t t o .
11. Harper's Weekly, X X X I X (1 J u n e , 1895), 508.
12. "Chimmie
Tadden";
Major Max; and Other Stories ( N e w York: L o v e l l , Coryell, 1895) is
a c o l l e c t i o n r e p r i n t e d f r o m sketches w h i c h a p p e a r e d i n t h e N e w York Sun a n d San Francisco
Argonaut.
13. The Poor in Great Cities ( N e w York: Scribner's, 1896), 92. See also W i l l i a m I . H u l l ,
" T h e Children of the O t h e r H a l f , " Arena,
X V I I , 91 ( J u n e , 1897), 1039-1050.
14. I n t r o d u c t i o n , Stephen
Crane:
The Bowery
Tales,
e d . Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville,
V i r g i n i a , 1969), li-lii. Stephen
Crane's Maggie:
Text and Context,
e d . M a u r i c e B a s s a n (Belm o n t , Calif.: W a d s worth, 1966), p r o v i d e s a s e l e c t i o n from these a n d o t h e r r e f o r m writers.
15. Colvert, in t h e I n t r o d u c t i o n to Bowery
Tales
cited i m m e d i a t e l y a b o v e , dismisses the
l i k e l i h o o d that Crane w a s i n f l u e n c e d b y Zola's L'Assomoir
as has b e e n a s s u m e d by m a n y
literary h i s t o r i a n s , a m o n g t h e m Lars A h n e b r i n k , x l i i i - x l v i . See M i l n e H o l t o n , " T h e Sparrow's F a l l a n d t h e Sparrow's Eyes: Crane's Maggie,"
Studia
Neophilologica,
X L I , 1 (1969),
115-129, for a brief r e v i e w of t h e s h i f t i n g critical perspectives o n
Maggie.
16. M a r c u s Cunliffe, " S t e p h e n Crane a n d the A m e r i c a n B a c k g r o u n d of Maggie,"
American
Quarterly,
V I I , 1 (Spring, 1955), 31-34. I n a d d i t i o n to this piece, those b y S o l o m o n , Colvert
a n d Pizer cited a b o v e all discuss t h e novel i n t h e c o n t e x t of c o n t e m p o r a r y r e f o r m d o c u m e n t s .
17. Q u o t e d i n E d w i n C a d y , " S t e p h e n Crane: Maggie,
A Girl of the Streets,"
in Hennig
C o h e n , ed., Landmarks
of American
Writing
( N e w York, 1969), 179. I n t h e s a m e l e t t e r is the
f a m o u s remark by Crane t h a t "at t h e r o o t of B o w e r y life is a sort of c o w a r d i c e . "
106
18. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets
( N e w York: n . p . , 1893), 114. S u b s e q u e n t p a g e references
t o Maggie
shall b e f r o m this first (1893) e d i t i o n a n d s h a l l b e i n d i c a t e d p a r e n t h e t i c a l l y i n t h e
text.
19. Yekl, A Tale of the New York Ghetto
( N e w Y o r k : A p p l e t o n ' s , 1896), 93-94. S u b s e q u e n t
p a g e references s h a l l b e f r o m this e d i t i o n a n d i n d i c a t e d p a r e n t h e t i c a l l y i n the text.
20. The American
1890's: Life and Times of a Lost Generation
( N e w York, 1966), 192.
21. Sanford M a r o v i t z discusses this t h e m e of loss i n " T h e L o n e l y N e w A m e r i c a n s of Abrah a m C a h a n , " American
Quarterly,
X X , 2 ( S u m m e r , 1968), 196-210. M y o w n u n p u b l i s h e d dissertation, " T h e I m m i g r a n t G h e t t o i n A m e r i c a n F i c t i o n , 1885-1917" ( U . C . L . A . , 1969) treats this
t h e m e also, 149-180.
107