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MonkeyNotes-Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
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Mrs. Mary Johnson Mrs. Johnson is one of the most vicious
figures in literature. She dominates the Johnson home as if playing
out any nineteenth-century manÂ’s nightmare of a dominating
woman. Crane seems to be suggesting here that one of the vices
produced by poverty is the toppling of the manÂ’s rightful place as
the head of the household. In the first scene in which the couple is
featured, Mrs. Johnson runs him out of the house. He is a vicious
character but doesnÂ’t even compare with Mrs. Johnson for
unreasonable screaming and gratuitous abuse of everyone in sight.
Like Jimmie and Maggie, Mrs. Johnson is also a voice of the moral
norm of her time, despite the fact that she violates it at every point.
Mrs. Johnson is an alcoholic, she abuses her children, she makes
the home unlivable by her drunken rages, yet she condemns her
daughter for having sex out of wedlock. She refuses to let Maggie
live with her even when Maggie is abandoned by her lover. In this
respect, she causes MaggieÂ’s death. Still, she finds no hypocrisy in
becoming tearful when Maggie dies. She enters the role of the
bereaved mother with great ease and she is fully endorsed in this
hypocrisy by her neighbors who have witnessed her abuses over
the years.
Pete Crane probably knew a man like Pete. He spends more time
describing PeteÂ’s clothing and mannerisms than he does any other
character. He doesnÂ’t use as much venom in his portrait of Pete as
he does for Mrs. Johnson, but he certainly seems to have enjoyed
creating this arrogant and stupid character. He writes of Pete, "He
could appear to strut even while sitting still and he showed that he
was a lion of lordly characteristics by the air with which he spat."
Pete is the kind of man who thinks more highly of himself than
anybody else except Maggie. He is an arrogant man who has
nothing to be arrogant about. Yet, he is the most successful
character coming out of this neighborhood. He is a bartender and
has a steady job at a saloon. He makes enough money that he
attracts the "brilliant and audacious" Nellie. Pete has the
convenient morality of a man who nurses his sense of guilt with
alcohol and the approbation of prostitutes. Crane brilliantly chose a
man like Pete for Maggie because the match is so believable. Pete
is exactly the kind of man Maggie would have been attracted to.
He is so different from her brother and father in their open
brutality. He is an imitation gentleman.
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