Critical Thinking Blog 2 - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

I didn't see The Awakening or Daisy Miller as particularly depressing but after reading Maggie: A Girl of the Streets I was throughly depressed. I think this stems from the fact that this story is very reminiscent of parts of the US and the world. The Bowery is depicted as a hell-hole for lack of a better world, where children have no opportunities and can only hope to marry a drunk. What's sad is that there are parts of the world like this, where a woman's sole chance is to become a prostitute. I loved Crane's use of religious wording, namely all the references to hell. It's not enough to have all the characters telling poor Maggie "Go teh hell" (978) but there are also more subtle references. Mary washes Jimmie in "an unholy sink" (960), the house has "red hues" and her "face was inflamed" (963). The author does a pretty good job of depicting Mary as the devil incarnate and probably the worst person ever. It's also obvious to see the religious connotations when Jimmie tells Mary that Maggie's "gone teh deh devil" (979) to show she's had premarital sex. It seems almost like the author is showing religion to be the driving force in why people are the way they are. In the end when Mary starts her stream of forgiveness for Maggie it's surrounded by implied God-fearing people and the religion only masks the deciet and illusion of forgiveness. The harsh reality of the Bowery proves that children have no escape from a life of degradation and poverty and hiding behind a religious background doesn't do anything. Jimmie becomes a man who "believed in nothing" (965) and shows remorse for his sister's condition, while still publicly bashing her to Mary. At the end I was just depressed because Maggie had a very idealized, sentimental view of the world and all of that was corrupted and stomped on due to circumstances of birth.