The story centers on Maggie, a young girl from the Bowery who is driven to unfortunate circumstances by poverty and solitude. The story opens with Jimmie, Maggie's brother, as he fights a gang of boys from an opposing neighborhood. He is saved by his friend, Pete, and comes home to a brutal and drunken father. As years pass and their father dies, Jimmie hardens into a sneering, aggressive, cynical youth and Maggie begins to work in a shirt factory, but her attempts to improve her life are undermined by her mother's drunken rages. Maggie begins to date Jimmie's friend Pete, who has a job as a bartender and seems a very fine fellow, convinced that he will help her escape the life she leads. He takes her to the theater and the museum, but Jimmie and her mother accuse her of "Goin to deh devil" and throw her out. As the neighbors badmouth Maggie, Pete decides to leave her and she gets scorned by the entire tenement and left on the street.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, language: English, abstract: When Mark Twain published his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884, it was seen as the most important representative of a new literary movement: the realistic literature. Though not everyone thought of the novel as a "masterpiece" from the beginning on, it became more popular and significant in the following decades. Ernest Hemingway even called it "the one book that all modern American literature comes from" (Bloom 2004:2). Taken at face value, this statement implies that also Stephen Crane's Maggie - A Girl of the Streets has been influenced by Twain's writing. Since both authors belong to the same period in American literature they naturally adopted literary styles, topics and devices that were typical for that era. Though both novels belong to the realistic period they vary in certain aspects. Unique to Crane's novel are the use of language and the determinism that accompanies the story. These aspects are the central subjects of this paper. It states that language, the characters and the aspect of determinism make Maggie a rather naturalistic than realistic novel. To understand the difference between both terms a review gives the characteristics of realism and separates naturalism as an independent literary form. The two main aspects that make Maggie a naturalistic novel are being examined separately afterwards. Here, the novel itself shall be the main source. At first, determinism is detected in the novel and it shall explain how the characters' fate is shaped throughout the story. Afterwards, aspects of naturalistic language and animal metaphors are examined. The conclusion gives a brief summary of the findings and offers further considerations on the topic and the novel.

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 10, University of Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures), course: English Literature, language: English, abstract: This essay takes a closer look at characteristics of Naturalism in Stephen Crane’s "Maggie.A girl of the streets.".

Essay from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), course: Written Academic Discourse, language: English, abstract: Scholars classify Stephen Crane's novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets as a "blend of realism and naturalism" (Keenan 937). Set in the Bowery district of 19th century Manhattan, it vividly conveys the poor living conditions of the lower classes. Due to rising immigration rates and urbanization during the so-called 'Gilded Age', the social character of New York had undergone dramatic transformations. Thus, the realistic description of the heroine's poor living conditions in Crane's Maggie serves as a vivid illustration of the urban 19th century "residential segregation according to [. . .] social class" (Shi and Tindall 780). Despite its evident realistic elements, Crane's novel cannot merely be categorized as a work of realism. In fact, the dominant techniques of characterization militate in favour of its categorization as a naturalistic novel rather than a realistic one.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, language: English, abstract: When Mark Twain published his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884, it was seen as the most important representative of a new literary movement: the realistic literature. Though not everyone thought of the novel as a “masterpiece” from the beginning on, it became more popular and significant in the following decades. Ernest Hemingway even called it “the one book that all modern American literature comes from” (Bloom 2004:2). Taken at face value, this statement implies that also Stephen Crane's Maggie – A Girl of the Streets has been influenced by Twain's writing. Since both authors belong to the same period in American literature they naturally adopted literary styles, topics and devices that were typical for that era. Though both novels belong to the realistic period they vary in certain aspects. Unique to Crane's novel are the use of language and the determinism that accompanies the story. These aspects are the central subjects of this paper. It states that language, the characters and the aspect of determinism make Maggie a rather naturalistic than realistic novel. To understand the difference between both terms a review gives the characteristics of realism and separates naturalism as an independent literary form. The two main aspects that make Maggie a naturalistic novel are being examined separately afterwards. Here, the novel itself shall be the main source. At first, determinism is detected in the novel and it shall explain how the characters' fate is shaped throughout the story. Afterwards, aspects of naturalistic language and animal metaphors are examined. The conclusion gives a brief summary of the findings and offers further considerations on the topic and the novel.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Wuppertal, course: Hauptseminar - New York in American Literature, language: English, abstract: Stephen Crane published his first novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in March 1893 on his own expenses under the pseudonym "Johnston Smith". As a young author "who was yet to find a public he was cautious about immediately identifying himself with a work that he himself regarded as shocking" (Ziff x) because it tried "to show that environment is a tremendous thing [...] and frequently shapes lives regardless" (Sorrentino 82). That Maggie is one of the major works to criticize the environment of late 19th century New York City becomes obvious when the reader notices that the protagonist Maggie does neither occur in the first, nor in the last chapter of the novella. Looking more closely at the word "environment" itself one can observe that the term is ambiguous. On the surface the term seems to describe the external living conditions, namely where and under which circumstances the characters live. But it is not the life in the Bowery and the tenements Stephen Crane is referring to since Maggie does not die of starvation or diseases, but of the mental influences, such as the Church and the theater that constantly affect the people. Exactly this environment, Jacob Riis argues, "is indeed a 'tremendous thing in the world' and it frequently shapes the lives of children who grow up in it" (LaFrance 42). Nevertheless, the external living conditions determine the way people are and act. "Crane depicts the influence the city exerts upon the perception of reality of its inhabitants, and this perception differs very much already from one member of the Johnson family to the other" (Schaetzle 19). This is the reason for me to argue that the bad circumstances in the Bowery of New York City contribute to the decay of the moral values and shape lives, as well. T