Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels.
Their working conditions seem equally filthy. Jimmie eventually finds work as a teamster, driving a team of horses through the dirty streets of New York. Maggie finds work as a seamstress in a sweatshop. They can literally find no respite from the physical filth permeating their lives.
Nor can they find respite from the violence that permeates their lives. While the novel opens in a slightly mocking way, initially making light of Jimmie's skirmish with the other boys, it quickly becomes apparent that the boys intend to really hurt Jimmie. When Jimmie's father sees his child involved in the violence, he responds with violence and threats to get his son away from the altercation. They return to the family home where it is revealed that Jimmie is alternately loving and violent towards Maggie. The parents are violent towards each other, and towards the children. After Mr. Johnson dies, Jimmie begins to be violent towards his mother, and the implication is that her violent alcoholism demands a violent response. In addition, judging from the response...
Both Johnson parents are alcoholics and one sees the negative impact that alcohol abuse can have on people. However, alcohol seems to be the main focus of recreation in the Bowery. From Mr. Johnson to the kindly neighbor who offers Jimmie shelter in return for him purchasing beer for her, the lives there are consumed by the desire for drink. Pete, whom Maggie views as a hero, is a bartender. When Maggie is forced out of the family home, she and Pete are shown socializing in a series of progressively seedier bars.
If I had been an upper-class reformer of the time period, I do not think I would have tried to address all of the problems associated with lower-class life in the Bowery. They were simply too numerous to effectively tackle. Therefore, I think I would have concentrated on tackling the problems with alcoholism. In fact, this novel helped me understand why people favored Prohibition. The children in the neighborhood would never be able to stop their violence as long as they continued to witness it in their homes, and ending the violence in the homes would be impossible as long as people were chemically altered. Deeper problems, like sexism, would have permeated all levels of society, so that if I were an upper-class reformer of the time, I probably would not have had an objective perspective of those problems.
Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896), 9.
