Maggie, a Girl of the Streets
Crane, Stephen
Maggie, a Girl of the Streets
Stephen Crane
Maggie, a Girl of the Streets
Publisher's Note
The interest which has been shown in The Red Badge of Courage has been most gratifying, but it has also involved a few inaccuracies of statement in regard to the history of Mr. Crane's literary work. The Red Badge of Courage was offered to and accepted by the publishers in December, 1894, and it was published in October, 1895. As it happened, the actual publication in England came some two months later. By that time the American press had appreciated the quality of the book so cordially and unanimously as to dispose of the lingering tradition that only a well-known author, or an author with the hall mark of foreign approval, is recognised by our reviewers.
As to the book which succeeds The Red Badge of Courage, it should be said that Maggie has never been published before, even in serial form. The story was put into type and copyrighted by Mr. Crane three years ago, but this real and strenuous tale of New York life is now given to the public for the first time.
An Appreciation
I think that what strikes me most in the story of »Maggie« is that quality of fatal necessity which dominates Greek tragedy. From the conditions it all had to be, and there were the conditions. I felt this in Mr. Hardy's »Jude,« where the principle seems to become conscious in the writer; but there is apparently no consciousness of any such motive in the author of »Maggie.« Another effect is that of an ideal of artistic beauty which is as present in the working out of this poor girl's squalid romance as in any classic fable. This will be foolishness, I know, to the many foolish people who cannot discriminate between the material and the treatment in art, and think that beauty is inseparable from daintiness and prettiness, but I do not speak to them. I appeal rather to such as feel themselves akin with every kind of human creature, and find neither high nor low when it is a question of inevitable suffering, or of a soul struggling vainly with an inexorable fate.
My rhetoric scarcely suggests the simple terms the author uses to produce the effect which I am trying to repeat again. They are simple, but always most graphic, especially when it comes to the personalities of the story; the girl herself, with her bewildered wish to be right and good, with her distorted perspective, her clinging and generous affections, her hopeless environments; the horrible old drunken mother, a cyclone of violence and volcano of vulgarity; the mean and selfish lover, dandy, rowdy, with his gross ideals and ambitions; her brother, an Ishmaelite from the cradle, who with his warlike instincts beaten back into cunning, is what the b'hoy of former times has become in our more strenuously policed days. He is, indeed, a wonderful figure in a group which betrays no faltering in the artist's hand. He, with his dull hates, his warped good-will, his cowed ferocity, is almost as fine artistically as Maggie, but he could not have been so hard to do, for all the pathos of her fate is rendered without one maudlin touch. So is that of the simple-minded and devoted and tedious old woman who is George's mother in the book of that name. This is scarcely a study at all, while Maggie is really and fully so. It is the study of a situation merely; a poor inadequate woman, of a commonplace religiosity, whose son goes to the bad. The wonder of it is the courage which deals with persons so absolutely average, and the art which graces them with the beauty of the author's compassion for everything that errs and suffers. Without this feeling the effects of his mastery would be impossible, and if it went further, or put itself into the pitying phrases, it would annul the effects. But it never does this; it is notable how in all respects the author keeps himself well in hand. He is quite honest with his reader. He never shows his characters or his situations in any sort of sentimental glamour; if you will be moved by the sadness of common fates you will feel his intention; but he does not flatter his portraits of people on conditions to take your fancy.
W.D. HOWELLS
Chapter I
A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting him.
His infantile countenance was livid with the fury of battle. His small body was writhing in the delivery of oaths.
»Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll git yehs!« screamed a retreating Rum Alley child.
»Naw,« responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, »dese micks can't make me run.«
Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus.
The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone.
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