The Story Archive

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Stephen Crane · 1893 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Victorian

In a Bowery tenement of drunken brawls and thrown crockery a girl grows up, as the narrator has it, in a mud puddle and blossoms there. Her brother's friend Pete, a bartender with a shining collar, takes her to beer halls and dime museums and lets her believe she has been rescued. Crane paid for the printing himself under a pseudonym because no publisher would touch the subject, and the family that ruins her is the loudest in condemning her.

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Attributes

Genre
TragedyPsychological
Theme
Class & InequalityLoss of InnocenceIndividual vs SocietyBetrayalSuffering & Endurance
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Fallen WomanInnocentScapegoat
Plot structure
Tragic ReversalChronicle
Emotional arc (story shape)
Fall (Tragedy)
Symbol / motif
The CityThe RiverThe GarmentThe Stage
Conflict
vs Societyvs Person
Mode / tone
RealistIronicTragic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues