Maggie: A Girl Molded and Devoured by the Streets.
...to her never stood up for herself. When her boyfriend, Pete, was reunited with an old female friend of his, she “was silent, (as) he paid no attention to her” (Crane 40). Even when her own family disowned her she didn’t even try to defend herself or at least plead her case. Rather, she just “turned and left” (Crane 44). Despite Maggie’s unfortunate surroundings she did not succumb to their ways and become a bad natured person like the only people she knew. In fact Maggie even knew of her own good nature, and realized that she was not “a bad woman. To her knowledge she had never seen any better” (Crane 35). Throughout Maggie: A girl of the streets Maggie’s character is changed in many ways. When we first meet Maggie as a child she is described by Crane as “a small ragged girl” (4). However, when we first meet Maggie as a young woman she “blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl. None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins” (Crane 13). Her transformation does not just end with her physical appearance. With early womanhood came a longing for love, an emotion she had never felt before even from her own family. We first notice this when she starts having feelings for Pete, “Maggie perceived that here was a beau ideal of a man. Her dim thoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as God says, the little hills sing together in the mourning. Under the trees of her dreamgardens there had always walked a lover” (Crane15). After Maggie falls in love with Pete and starts to date him, she also starts to worry about how she looks and also takes notice of what other women wear. Crane’s tells us “she began to note, with more interest, the well-dressed women she met on the avenues. She envied elegance and soft palms. She craved those adornments of person which she saw every day on the street, conceiving them to be allies of vast important women” (21). Maggie’s final transformation is for the worst. After she is left by Pete and shunned by her family and community, Maggie is left with no other option than to resort to a life on the streets and prostitution. (Crane 49) How Maggie changes throughout the story is a direct result of the impact that her environment and acquaintances have on her. As a child her mother and even brother constantly beat her. When she showed concern for her bother’s constant fisticuffs, “he suddenly swore and struck her. The little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burst into tears and quaveringly cursed him. As she slowly retreated her brother advanced dealing her cuffs” (4). Maggie’s farther seemed not to care about her or any...