Language Use Variance in Stephen Crane's 'Maggie'

Despite the similarities in the time periods of the pieces, the use of language in them is very different. In Stephen Crane's “Maggie,” the audience is given the story of a poor family whose children grow up and experience difficulties due to their social position. As already noted, the dialog is treated in the story in a much different manner than the paragraphs which are written in a more eloquent manner. An example of this is:

A fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appealing thing that he loves with a distant dog-like devotion. They had been known to overturn street-cars. Those leaping horses, striking sparks from the cobbles in their forward lunge, were creatures to be ineffably admired. The clang of the going pierced his

This can partiality be seen as a result of the book being set in London rather than America, like in “Maggie.” However, the character Tessa had a background similar to Maggie in a couple of ways. Tessa is also from America, and was rather poor. The reason she moves to London to be with her brother is that she sold all of her possessions to pay for her aunt’s funeral. This shows that her and her aunt had very little money to get by on. The thing that sets the two characters apart is that Tessa is educated. This fact is shown in the dialog of Tessa, as she says things like, “I'm awfully obliged to you for everything, Jessamine. Shall we return to the institute now?” (Clare 120). She is well spoken and doesn't get called out by other characters for her speech other than when using what is mentioned in the book as American phrases. This feature of the character seems to be attributed by Clare to the fact that Tessa has a love for books, which would have imparted on her the sort of eloquence that is seen in Crane's world descriptions. While Tessa is poor and begins in a similar position as Maggie, Cassandra Clare uses the character’s ability to converse on the same level with a proper lady like Jessamine to establish that she has the potential to escape from her dire social

She could try and marry someone who is better off, as she does with her brother’s friend Pete, but she will never succeed given the way Crane uses language within the story. Unlike Clare’s Tessa, she is not only poor, but uneducated and not well spoken. She can never pretend to be anything more than what she is, and Crane shows this fact plainly to the reader through his use of a disconnect between the dialog and the description of the