Maggie, a Girl from the Streets

The novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane, takes place in the slums of New York City during the 1890’s. It is about a girl, Maggie Johnson, who is forced to grow up in a tenement house. She had a brother, Jimmie, an abusive mother, Mary, and a father who died when Maggie was young. When Maggie grew up, she met her boyfriend, Pete. In Maggie’s eyes, Pete was a sophisticated …

…not just about that. If you look at Maggie’s dreams and hopes, you will find she is nothing more than a little girl with the same ambitions of any other girl. If she had been anyone else’s child, and grown up somewhere else, she could have had a chance to achieve anything she wanted, perhaps even wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. She just grew up with the wrong family, in the wrong place.