Prof. Harrington made many references in class to the abominable female lead, Anne Ramsey, in the 1987 film Throw Momma from the Train. This woman is an abominable human, constantly screaming and ranting at her son, Danny Devito. While the mother in this film is so extreme that it is comical, the demonization of the matriarch is exceptionally clear, which connects the character directly to Mary Johnson, the mother in Maggie: A girl of the Streets and Other Short Fiction.
Both women do not play role of the nurturing maternal figure, but instead terrorize their family. Mary continually rampages through the tenement apartment, destroying both the furniture and her children's lives at one fell swoop. Crane describes an early scene,
The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a chieftain-like stride approached her husband.
"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "An' what in the devil ar you stickin' your nose for?"
The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and
the urchin in the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him (8).
Mary creates extreme fear in her children and the tragic scene progresses throughout the novella. Ultimately, she shames her daughter out of the house and her alcoholic nature turns her into the laughing stock of the tenement community. Mary is only able to forgive her daughter for slandering the family name as a fallen woman once she finds out that Maggie has died. Mary is a great example of moral and physical decay: she drinks constantly, fights with her husband and child, but yet she expects so much of her daughter. Her unrealistic expectations destroy her family. At the end of the novella, two of the Johnson children are dead, the only surviving son is becoming an alcoholic like his parents, and they are still trapped in the tenement life. The demonic matriarch is just one aspect of the hopeless life that Crane depicts in his realist novella.
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