Stephen Crane's Maggie

Paper Summary:

Stephen Crane, through his impressive naturalism, is one of the greatest novelists, short story writers and poets in American history. This paper shows how nowhere are the elements of the naturalism for which he is acclaimed more evident than in his famous character, Maggie, from his novella, "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets". This paper argues that it is because of Crane's strong naturalist views, as well as biographical details of his own life, that he is able to propel his character, Maggie, from a fictional literary interpretation into the quintessential example of "a product of her environment" that remains in the collective imagination of literate humanity.

From the Paper:

"Another element of naturalism is that it extended the tradition of realism, and thus aimed at an even more faithful, unselective representation of reality that was presented without moral judgment. Moreover, it emphasized man's accidental and physiological nature rather than his moral or rational qualities thereby making individual characters seen as helpless products of heredity and environment. This also meant that they were motivated by strong instinctual drives from within and harassed by social and economic pressures from without. As a result, naturalistic characters had little will or responsibility for their fates, and the prognosis for their outcomes was generally pessimistic at the outset."

More papers on Stephen Crane's Maggie:

• Persuasive Essay # 72975 : "Stephen Crane's "Maggie" and Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"
• Analytical Essay # 60950 : "Stephen Crane's Success as a Naturalist"
• Analytical Essay # 23456 : "Maggie, Girl of the Streets" by Stephen Crane"

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