Journal for Stephen Crane

Francesca Cricchio
English 48B
Journal for Crane

"Maggie"


"With lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and audacity, the bartender raised his head and stared through the varying cracks between the swaying bamboo doors. Suddenly the whistling pucker faded from his lips. He saw Maggie walking slowly past." (993)

"Stylistically, Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crises and social isolation." A biography of Stephen Crane from Wikipedia.

The story opens with Jimmie, a young boy who is caught in a fight between a couple of other boys. His older buddy Pete comes along and breaks off the fight, and almost immediately after Jimmie gets in to another altercation with another boy. Jimmie’s father comes along, breaks up the fight and takes him home. On the walk home we are introduced to Jimmie’s older sister Maggie and younger brother Tommie. Maggie sees what happened to Jimmie and grows extremely worried because she knows that her mother will not be happy with him, and ultimately punish the entire family for his wrong doings. As the four enter (Father, Jimmie, Maggie, and Tommie) we are introduced to Mary who is the head of the household and also a belligerent drunk. She beats Jimmie for getting in to a fight, then later on punishes Maggie for breaking a plate, and finishes off the evening by yelling at her husband Pete until the night ends with the two parents passed out on the floor, and the children huddling for safety in the corner. The next chapters skip forward to about ten years later when the children are grown up. The father has died, and so has little Tommie. Jimmie is now a drunk and car driver, and Maggie works in a sweatshop making cuffs. Mary is now an even worse drunk and Maggie has begun dating Pete. One night Maggie and Mary get in a fight, Mary tells Maggie to “go to hell”, and Maggie leaves with pete, whom she becomes entirely dependent upon. Pete and Maggie date for a while, but then one day at the bar Pete sees an old acquaintance and leaves with her. Maggie is stunned and heads back to her home to talk to her mother and brother, but they ignore her and shun her from the home. Hopeless, she disappears on to the streets, and chapters later it is implied (but never actually stated) that Maggie is a prostitute. By the end of the novel Maggie dies, and when Jimmie goes to tell his mother of the fatal new, Mary falls into a deep pain of regret and forgives her daughter for everything she has done. Unfortunately, she forgives her too late.

I found this story to be such a tragedy. There were so many ironic situations that it almost broke my heart every time I turned the page. For starters, it was so sad what happened to Maggie and Pete. After leaving her own family to be with Pete, he leaves her for some woman, and Maggie is literally left hopeless. Ironically, Pete got his payback when his new girl, Nellie, left him all alone and hopeless as he lie passed out drunk on the floor. There was also an interesting parallel between what happened to Maggie, and what happened to Jimmie’s girlfriends. It is stated that Jimmie seduces and impregnates two women, and then leaves them without offering any support. Congruently, Pete left Maggie with no support. It was strange how both men were depicted as villains, even though one was a family member of the main protagonist. It just made the entire story even worse because Maggie’s own family members were the bad guys.
I also grew very upset with the entire irony of the argument between Maggie and Mary. Maggie, who is left homeless, heart-broken, and dirt poor, begs her mother for forgiveness and is shown no remorse. Maggie has to force herself into prostitution to stay alive, and ultimately dies from living in this environment. It isn’t until after her death that her mother shows sympathy, and by then Maggie is already gone.
The entire story is a melting pot of alcoholism, abuse, and neglect. All of the characters suffer in one way or another and many lessons are to be learned from this story. Mainly, I think that Maggie is an example of romanticism and the realities of life battle against her quest for “an upper-class life”. Her death is an example of real-life forces taking over her romantic imagination.