Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Selected Stories (Best Novel Classics, #28) (Bedford Cultural Editions) (First Novel Library)

by Stephen Crane

Alfred Kazin (Introduction) and Tom Wolfe (Afterword)

Published in 1893, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets shocked a world unprepared for its grim and starkly realistic exploration of a pretty young girl’s fall on New York’s Bowery, and its critical depiction of the irresponsibility of men toward women. The five other stories in this collection are tales of quiet tension and raw intensity. From the local color of small-town life to the bustle of the city to war stories imbued with an ironic view of heroism, these stories are brilliantly constructed, extraordinarily lyrical, and psychologically penetrating. As a whole, this masterful collection demonstrates the unique and stunning genius of Stephen Crane and makes up an enduring testimony to one of America’s finest writers.
 
Edited and with an Introduction by Alfred Kazin and an Afterword by Tom Wolfe

• ISBN10: 0451529987
• ISBN13: 9780451529985
• Publish Date: 7 February 2006 (first published September 1966)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Signet Classics
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780451529985

Reviews

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

Maggie is exactly the kind of book I normally wouldn't like, and one that I think doesn't adhere to the structural conventions most contemporary readers expect of books.  As a naturalist book\, it attempts to show how humans are shaped by their surroundings--in this case, a New York tenement--and strives to create a sense of realism with short, impressionistic chapters that don't show any real overarching connections between characters.  This means that characters are introduced, are dropped, sometimes come back, sometimes don't.  Unity of structure and a clean character arc are not necessarily the goal.  And while I hate when this type of writing is done poorly, I think Stephen Crane does it pretty well.

The story very clearly shows how Maggie's eventual downfall is a direct cause of her surroundings.  Her parents fight all the time; the tenements are a place of dirt and violence.  Maggie longs for something better, and doesn't necessarily see the problem of staying out with a man, when he's offering something that seems a step above what she's used to.  When Maggie's mother wails that she didn't raise Maggie to be such a wicked girl, readers can see the irony.  Maggie's mother barely did any "raising" at all; of course Maggie didn't naturally intuit some sense of morals or social convention.

The story isn't moralizing, however, as one might expect. Though the causes of Maggie's descent into prostitution are  clear, Crane isn't really judging here.  He's not judging Maggie, and he's not judging the people who could have helped her but chose not to.  It's a simple portrayal of what life might be life for people in a situation like Maggie's, and it's pretty compelling.