M ngeles Cruz Fernndez

M Carmen Prez Flix

Lit. Norteamericana
Prof. Mar Gallego
Maggie, NATURALISTIC FEATURES IN THE NOVEL
OUTLINE
THESIS:
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, clearly reflects many features of Naturalism. We
can see them in characters as well as in the environment that surrounds them. Apart
from that, the use the author makes of irony is relevant, and also, impressionistic
techniques that are useful to show the reader what the true reality was like. By means of
this irony and impressionistic images, Crane portrays Maggie as a victim of this cruel
environment.

MAIN BODY:
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Stephen Cranes biography and literary trajectory
1.2 Naturalistic context
2. NATURALISTIC FEATURES IN Maggie
2.1 General features of Naturalism applied to the novel
2.2 The way of showing reality
2.2.1 Irony in Crane
2.2.2 Impressionistic images in the novel
3. MAGGIE VS REALITY
3.1Maggie as a victim

CONCLUSION
To conclude, we have seen that Maggie is presented as a victim of that hideous
world that surrounds her, that is, she is a victim of her own reality. To create this effect,
Stephen Crane makes use of many naturalistic narrative techniques, but the main one is
the use of irony. By means of ironic images and situations he shows how the protagonist
is the victim of this cruel and horrible environment.

Maggie, Naturalistic features in the novel.

Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, clearly reflects many features of Naturalism. We
can see them in characters as well as in the environment that surrounds them. Apart
from that, the use the author makes of irony is relevant, and also, impressionistic
techniques that are useful to show the reader what the true reality was like. By means of
this irony and impressionistic images, Crane portrays Maggie as a victim of this cruel
environment.
Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, the 1st of November of 1871.
He died in Badeweiter, Germany, the 5th of June of 1900. His father, Jonathan Towneley
Crane, was a reverend and her mother, Mary Helen Peck Crane, was also a member of
the Methodist church. The kind of education he received was so influential in the
development of his literary trajectory. It was marked by his personal experience, as a
reaction to a life full of repression and restrictions imposed by his parents. In this way,
most of his works mainly show pictures of social decadence and concerns.
Appart from being a novelist, he also wrote in newspapers. He started writing in
newspapers in 1888, and from this moment, he continued doing both things. His
journalistic vision was something very determinant and influential to his literary
realistic style, since it offers a different perspective. This is something that we will see
in his novel, Maggie, a girl of the streets.
Naturalism is a literary movement developed during the 19th and 20th c. It could
be considered as the continuation of a previous movement, Realism, since it follows
more or less the same line. The main difference between Realism and Naturalism is that
it adds something new: Naturalism has a particular philosophical orientation. It deals
with the study of human behaviour and experience. Its a way of dealing with human
life from a different point of view.

Stephen Crane was one of the main naturalistic authors, he could be considered
as the first precedent of Naturalism in the USA and the starting point of Modern
American Novel. Some authors dont know from where Naturalism emerges in Crane,
they simply state that its something innate and natural in him.
Crane has been classified as a realistic, naturalistic or impressionistic writer.
Naturalism is different from realism because it adds something new to realism, it
implies the scientific discoveries and methods of the time to the literature. Naturalistic
authors follow the ideas of Spencer and Darwin. They are about the believing in the
social and genetic determinism that would mark the destiny of the human beings. This
last idea is clearly shown in Cranes novel.
The primary goal of the late nineteenth century American naturalistics was to
represent the intermingling in life of controlling force and individual worth.
Many authors say that Maggie is not a naturalistic work. They argue that it is
subjective and that Crane uses the imagination on it, something which is incompatible
with naturalism. But other authors say that Crane is a naturalistic writer because he
believes that environment mold lives. His primary concern is a satiric assault on
weakness in social morality.
The main characteristics naturalistic novels have are the following ones.
Most of naturalistic works deal with the lower groups of society, where
environment conditions show extreme situations. In the case of Maggie, the novel is
developed in a very poor setting (Rum Alley, the Bowery) where very poor people
live. Its mainly focussed on the life of Maggies family and the living in the
neighbourhood, showing at the same time the cruelty and violence of her life totally
parallel to the environment where she lives. As we can see in quotation number 1, that
is a description of all this poverty:

- EVENTUALLY THEY ENTERED A dark region where, from a careening

building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the
gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it
against a hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire
escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags, and bottles. In the
streets infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of
vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped
leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels []
Characterization in Maggie is reduced to a very short group of members:
Maggie, Jimmie, her mother (Mrs. Jonson), and Pete, Jimmies friend and the one who
seduces Maggie. The heroes and heroines of naturalistic novels are generally speaking
weak personality people who dont have anything to do or say about their destinies.
They are victims of their fates, but this is something that we will analyze hereafter.
Their lives are conditioned by their personal circumstances surrounding them. In the
case of Cranes novel we can see how she is the prototypical naturalistic heroine in the
sense that she is a character in opposition to her environment, which is the one that
determines her life and her decisions. On the one hand she is conditioned by the
maternal figure of Mrs Jonson and society (the neighbourhood), on the other hand its
the figure of Pete that seduces, blind, and strikes her leading her to suicide.
If we look at the formal features of the novel we can see how its structure is very
well balanced in the sense that the first part of the novel is devoted to the causes that
lead Maggie to degradation, and the second part deals with the consequences of this
progressive degradation and culminant death (Maggies suicide). The beginning of the
novel is a very relevant and striking one. It causes a strong effect on the eye of the
reader, as we can see in quotation number 2:

-A VERY LITTLE BOY STOOD upon a heap of gravel for the honor of
Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from devils Row, who were
circling madly about the heap and pelting him.
His infantile countenance was livid with the fury of battle. His small body
was writhing in the delivery of oaths
This effect is also very clearly represented in the next quotation. It offers a vision
of lie as a jungle where the existence is an eternal fight of survival.
- The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they arranged
themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling high from a precarious
infants chair and gorged his small stomach. Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity,
the grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of
fear of interruption, ate like a small pursued tigress
As we continue with our outline, now we are going to analyze the way Crane
deals with reality, how he shows it in Maggie. On the one hand, Cranes novel is full of
irony and by means of ironic images and situations, he shows how different is the real
situation of characters involved in them.
The language of the novel is full of irony. Cranes ironic method consists of
presenting what characters think they are, their own vision of their world, the moral they
think rules their lives, and contrasting everything with what their lives and their world
really are.
The two main ironies are, on the one hand, the application that characters make
of the middle-class moral values to a brutal and amoral world and, on the other hand,
the sentence, by the society, taking into account these values, of a good young girl; a
sentence that will be the direct cause of her fallen.

The use of irony is clearly reflected when Crane writes about Maggies mother.
Mary Johnson, an alcoholic, brutal, cruel and hideous woman, who has mistreated and
frightened her children. She is looking herself, firstly as a victim, and then, after the
seduction and fallen of Maggie, as a virtuous and sacrificed mother, betrayed by her
cruel daughter. This is something that we can see in quotation number 4.
-Yehll fergive her, Mary? pleaded the woman in black [] The tears
seemed to scald her face. Finally her voice came and arose in a scream of pain.
Oh, yes, Ill fergive her!Ill fergive her!
In any moment in the novel, Mary Johnson realizes how she really is. She is
blindness by her selfishness, and for this reason, she is extremely cruel when she treats
her daughter; and her self-deception gets its climatic point at the end of the novel, as
you have seen in this quotation. Their value system is hypocritical. It is based on the
approve of the others, of society, and thats the way Crane ironically shows reality.
We can also see irony in the place where they live: The Bowery. It was both a
battlefield and a prison. A battlefield because the family were always fighting and
because Jimmie was frighten; and a prison because of the Johnsons life, full of
darkness, fear, and without morality. Maggie wants to escape from her reality, but she
falls into the same world she wanted to escape.
Another ironic vision of reality was Cranes desire to reduce the extraordinary and
violence to the common place, daily life.
On the other hand, we have the other main representation of reality that the
author creates, the one created by means of impressionistic images and pictures.
Cranes novel is structured in short and dramatic moments which are mainly
focused on crucial events. As you could have perceived while reading the novel, there
are not long and detailed explanations, but it consists of a succession of images and

pictures. At the same time, that kind of narration the author created is also based on the
use of strong and violent colors that shows the reader the cruelty and brutality of the
environment, creating a striking effect to the readers eye.
By means of the use of images and color the author gets to show how violent is
the setting and characters living there. Most of the times the figure of Maggie doesnt
appear in a remarked way, but as a distorted one.
In quotation number 5 we can see how, by means of a description based on
the use of strong colors, the author shows the cruel situation that Maggie is involved in.
She feels rejected and isolated from society.
- She went into the blackness of the final block. The shutters of the tall
buildings were closed like grim lips. The structures seemed to have eyes that
looked over them, beyond them, at other things. Afar off the lights of the avenues
glittered as it from an impossible distance. Street-car bells jingled with a sound of
merriment
As we continue with our outline, and as we have previously commented before,
we are going to focus on how Maggie is presented as a victim of her own reality and
environment (according to Blanche Gelfant, it is called effect of disassociation).
From the beginning of the novel the character of Maggie seems to be in contrast
to the rest of the people surrounding her: her family, her environment,and so on. She
is a symbol of purity corrupted by external hostility, which is mainly represented by the
figure of her mother and society. She appears as a sweet, weak and, frightened creature
who is totally in opposition to the corrupted environment where she lives.
One of the main features of Maggies personality is the purity that characterizes
her, and it would be precisely this purity the one leading her to misfortune and suicide.
She desires to escape from her reality, looking for an idealized one and, she finally falls

in the world she wanted to escape, getting to self-destruction and tragedy. This is
something ironic.
Maggie is a victim of her environment, or what is the same, of society. She is
induced, judged, and punished by society. On the one hand, the figure of Pete is
presented as a path towards salvation to this cruel live where she lives. He blinds her by
means of seduction, relative luxury life, he blinds her trying to show her a fantastic
and extraordinary world which is very different from the real one. On the other hand,
she feels rejected by Pete, her mother, and the rest of society; and thats what leads her
to prostitution and then, to death.
As a clear example of this social conspiration against Maggie we have chapter
XVII, which is the one that better shows Maggies evolution towards degradation and
then, to suicide. As we can see in quotation number 6
-At the feet of the tall buildings appeared the deathly black hue of the
river. Some hidden factory sent up yellow glare, that lit for a moment the waters
lapping oilily against timbers. The varied sounds of life, made joyous by distance
and seeming unapproachableness came faintly and died away to a silence
To conclude, we have seen that Maggie is presented as a victim of that hideous
world that surrounds her, that is, she is a victim of her own reality. To create this effect,
Stephen Crane makes use of many naturalistic narrative techniques, but the main one is
the use of irony. By means of ironic images and situations he shows how the protagonist
is the victim of this cruel and horrible environment.

QUOTATIONS
Q.1 - EVENTUALLY THEY ENTERED A dark region where, from a careening
building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the
gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it
against a hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire

escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags, and bottles. In the
streets infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of
vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped
leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels []
Q. 2 -A VERY LITTLE BOY STOOD upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum
Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from devils Row, who were
circling madly about the heap and pelting him.
His infantile countenance was livid with the fury of battle. His small body
was writhing in the delivery of oaths
Q.3 - The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they arranged
themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling high from a precarious
infants chair and gorged his small stomach. Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity,
the grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of
fear of interruption, ate like a small pursued tigress
Q.4 -Yehll fergive her, Mary? pleaded the woman in black [] The tears
seemed to scald her face. Finally her voice came and arose in a scream of pain.
Oh, yes, Ill fergive her!Ill fergive her
Q.5 - She went into the blackness of the final block. The shutters of the tall
buildings were closed like grim lips. The structures seemed to have eyes that
looked over them, beyond them, at other things. Afar off the lights of the avenues
glittered as it from an impossible distance. Street-car bells jingled with a sound of
merriment
Q.6 -At the feet of the tall buildings appeared the deathly black hue of the river.
Some hidden factory sent up yellow glare, that lit for a moment the waters lapping

oilily against timbers. The varied sounds of life, made joyous by distance and
seeming unapproachableness came faintly and died away to a silence

WORKS CITED:

Conn, Peter. Literatura Norteamericana. Cambridge UP. Madrid, 1998.

Crane, Stephen. Maggie. Edicin y traduccin de Pilar Marn. Ed: Ctedra,

Letras Universales. Madrid, 1992.

Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. Signet Classic. Penguin Group.
United States, 1991. Introduction by Alfred Kazin.

Matterson, Stephen. American Literature. The essential glossary. Ed: Arnold.

London, 2003.

Prez Gallego, Cndido. Gua de la Literatura Norteamericana. Ed:

Fundamentos. Madrid, 1982.

Pizer, Donald. Realism and Naturalism in NineteenthCentury American

Literature. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. London, 1984.