What causes a pretty young girl to be driven into prostitution? This question, and others about environmental factors on a person's life were explored by Stephen Crane. Stephen Crane's novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets reflects a society where human behavior is affected by the environment one is born into through such things as the parents, siblings, the neighborhood, and the idea of seeking love.
The first influence that impacts a person is the neighborhood in which a person grows up. Maggie has grown up in the Bowery, the slums of New York. The neighborhood is depicted as a place with poverty, violence and neglect. Crane indicates that the ghetto makes individuals anonymous. In the beginning of the book there is a lack of proper names. The descriptions reflect the power of the ghetto to erase all traces of individuality (Rolland). Maggie is first depicted as “a small ragged girl” (Crane 6). On occasions Crane refers to human beings as body parts like “curious faces” (Crane 12). The ghetto disembodies its inhabitants to an extent that the face becomes substitution for the human being (Rolland). Maggie is a product of this environment. There is little chance that she is going to come out of this place better than everybody else. The ghetto corrupts individuals and takes away Maggie's innocence.
The second influence that has an impact on a person is their parents. Maggie has parents who do not particularly care about their children. Crane describes how the mother's “glittering eyes fastened on her child with sudden hatred” (Crane 19). When a mother looks at a child with hatred it affects them. Stephen Crane indicates that the children are abused by their mother regularly. The father says, “Let the kid alone for a minute, will...
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...Crane 77). He tells her, “Oh, go to hell!” (Crane 77). This explains how little he even cared about Maggie. This final event portrays the idea of how Maggie becomes the product of her environment and the people in her life. Maggie can be the sweetest girl in the world but if she doesn't have people who care about her to show her what is right then the negative path she goes down in life will be inevitable.
Parents, siblings, the idea of seeking love and the neighborhood which an individual grows up in can drive a person to prostitution. Without her family's support Maggie was left to walk the streets of New York as a prostitute, leading to her death by suicide. Environmental factors can have more influence on a person than he or she realizes. Crane shows us that Maggie was a good girl but because of where she grew up, she ends up a victim of negative environment.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, is a realist outlook on the gritty underside of Industrialized America. It is a story that doesn't withhold the dirt and grime that came with living in highly populated impoverished areas. The young Stephen Crane does a very good job portraying the destruction of a young, beautiful, and optimistic Maggie by forces outside of her own control. The rather dreary realism of the novel was a little unheard of at the time. Crane had to publish his book himself, as no publishers wanted to take the chance on a novel so negative about human nature. However, over time his story quickly cemented its roots as a fundamental column of American Realism Literature.
...daries and what belongs to her. She seems to think that objects that are important in Mother and Maggie's life are just aesthetic pieces of art instead of real life tools. Her idea of reality became warped around the lack of respect she showed the rest of her family.
In this story, Maggie is a lot like her mother. They both are uneducated, loving, caring, and allow Dee to run over them. Maggie has been through more things than her mother has though, because of the incident that happened. Maggie has scars like Emily, except Maggie’s scars are from a house fire (319). The house fire has impacted Maggie’s life tremendously, since she is very self-conscious and shy. Walker stated that Maggie is “ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs (318). The mother is protective of Maggie and will be there for her whenever she needs her too. Even though her mother knows all her struggles, she still supports her and pushes her to be better. I think that is one reason she pushes her to marry John Thomas, because she wants her to become her own person and to be strong (319). The mother of “Everyday Use” is opposite from the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing”, because she is there for her children no matter what their financial status
Maggie is introduced as someone who was shy and walked like “a lame animal” sidling up to someone who “was ignorant enough to be kind” (156). This is partly because of her self-consciousness of the scar scattering her arms and legs. Dee, by comparison, is the picture of confidence. She walks and speaks as if the world owes her everything she ever asks for. She feels powerful for getting away from what she saw as a prison. While Maggie is humble and kind, Dee will not hesitate to demand things and is ruthless in her pursuit. At least, Dee is ruthless in her pursuits, in Mama’...
During the late 19th- and early 20th century, the nature of society forced the working class women of America to take advantage of any means to support themselves, including prostitution. Each woman had to decide herself which work option best supported her financially.
"Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe."(61) She is afraid of being weak and unable to project her happiness with the life she has chosen. Maggie attempts to remain quiet and reserved during the visit of her sister. The difference of their lifestyle interpretations is one of humble to extravagant. Unlike other young women, Maggie continues to live in an un-educated world where happiness is formed in the heart, not with possessions.
This story, told in third-person limited omniscient, shows a teenager who is inept, and a parent who did too little, too late. The omniscient narrator mainly focuses on Donny’s mother, her lack of confidence, and the tribulations of being impotent in her own child’s life, which have a negative impact on Donny’s welfare. When Matt and Daisy get called to meet with the principal for the second time, instead of Daisy thinking about her child, she thinks about “how they must look to Mr. Lanham: an overweight housewife in a cotton dress and a too-tall, too-thin insurance agent in a baggy, frayed suit. Failures, both of them.” After Donny’s psychologist informs Daisy that he requires “a better sense of self-worth,” she, who severely lacks a sense of self-worth, ironically
...’ family is in deep alcoholism, depriving children the benefits of a proper upbringing. The Johnsons are also chaotic and tyrannical. Jimmie and his ilk of brawling youths epitomize the violence that rocked the society. In the middle of this violence is pursuit of vanity. Children are fighting viciously to establish the superior one. Adults are watching on indifferently. Maggie gets into prostitution because of pursuing an elegant life. She lacks appreciation of her beauty and persona. In the end, the question to ponder is whether human beings have the capacity to make personal choices in midst of immense social circumstances. Regrettably, Johnsons share the blame for the kind of person that their children turned out. The society too has remained passive in the midst of great social trepidation. Maggie and Jimmie share the blame for pursuit of vainglorious vanity.
The use of color in Stephan Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is crucial when looking at the setting of the story; the repeated use of red is significant when describing Maggie’s mother Mary and the importance of color in describing the social system through the story. It is seen prominently when Maggie and Pete go to the theater, parts of the play paralleled the lives of the common people: "The latter spent most of his time out at soak in pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated revolver, re...
Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession. Often prostitutes are thought to be seductively dressed women standing on the street corner calling out offerings of a good time in exchange for payment. That is an accurate depiction however, it is just part of the massive sex industry’s variety of marketing tools used in prostitution. The women and young girls standing on the corner are but a small fraction of a much larger picture and harsher reality.
Maggie lives with a poor and dysfunctional family and a hopeless future with only the small possibility of change. The environment and setting she grows up in do not support anything more than a dull, dreary and pathetic future for her. An old woman asks Maggie's brother Jimmy: "Eh, Gawd, child, what is it this time? Is yer fader beatin yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin yer fader? (Maggie, 10)" while he runs to Maggie's apartment one night. The lack of love and support of her family hinders Maggie's ability to live a happy and fulfilling life. Without knowing that someone loves her no matter what she does or how she acts Maggie may feel desperate enough to change her situation by any means she can, and without any useful guidance. Even without any positive influences Maggie grows up different from the low-life's living with and around her. Crane explains Maggie's uniqueness in the passage "None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it" (Maggie 16). Maggie's uniqueness gives her the chance to improve her life, but only a slim chance. Even though Maggie differs from the people around her they remain sleazy, making it harder for her to change her life because she must go outside of her community for help.
The issue of prostitution has sparked different reactions from societies around the world, with each culture defining it in their unique way. However, most communities agree on the definition of prostitution as the act of directly engaging in sexual activities for financial gains. The practice has been in existence since time immemorial, although, the reaction of people in the society differs. Various theoretical approaches have tried to explain the concept of prostitution considering the principal causative agents and the sociological impacts and responses. This essay will describe the theoretical approaches relating to prostitution and the sociological understanding and effect of the practice to the society.
Parental influences can negatively impact a child’s life. An example of this is in the novel
What is prostitution? Prostitution is engaging in sexual acts for money. It is a form violence against women and some men and little girls such as little boys (Prostitution p.1, p1). It is known as an epidemic dealing with STDs it brings among them and leads to suicide about 15% have done it (Prostitution p.1, p5).Many women and little girls are mostly forced to prostitution by men who are pimps. Pimps are people who recruit these women and they seem like they can be trusted and give women a fake job trying to trick her to traveling far away to foreign countries (Prostitution p.1, p5). An example would be a guy finding a small teenage girl on the street picking her up and trying to make her feel like she is worth something by buying things for her or even become their boyfriend and trick her for a job that sounds pleasant or legit but really is not. Later she is set up and feel like she has made a mistake into prostitution making her feel really low and depressed. These women and young girls are threatened and experience rape, abuse, or even put to death. This is very hard to overcome for some who have stopped or escaped prostitution (Prostitution p.1, p6). The main problems dealing with prostitution is gender. A lot of people believe that women are a commodity and they can be bought and sold to any who is willing to have them. No one choose to do prostitution, but the average age for a teen is 12 to 14 years old starting
As a girl, she had an extremely difficult childhood as an orphan and was passed around from orphanage to orphanage. The author has absolute admiration for how his mother overcame her upbringing. He opens the third chapter by saying, “She was whatever the opposite of a juvenile delinquent is, and this was not due to her upbringing in a Catholic orphanage, since whatever it was in her that was the opposite of a juvenile delinquent was too strong to have been due to the effect of any environment…the life where life had thrown her was deep and dirty” (40). By saying that she was ‘the opposite of a juvenile delinquent’, he makes her appear as almost a saintly figure, as he looks up to her with profound admiration. He defends his views on his mother’s saintly status as not being an effect of being in a Catholic orphanage, rather, due to her own strong will. O’Connor acknowledges to the extent that her childhood was difficult through his diction of life ‘throwing’ her rather than her being in control of it. As a result, she ended up in unsanitary and uncomfortable orphanages, a ‘deep and dirty’ circumstance that was out of her control. Because of this, the author recognizes that although his childhood was troublesome, his mother’s was much worse. She was still able to overcome it, and because of it, he can overcome