A Shelter for Maggie

 Stephen Crane was a large proponent of the American realistic fiction movement. He explored the true, gritty and dirty life of the inhabitants of New York City in the late 19^th century. Even though he was a well-to-do child from New Jersey, he was compelled to depict the real lives of immigrants. I spent this past January interning at a child/adolescent shelter in my hometown. The vivid description of Maggie’s life once ousted from her family made me think of the many children today that find themselves defenseless and alone.

                       

Founded in 1978, Kids in Crisis was only a shelter for the teens of Greenwich, Connecticut. Over the last thirty-three years the organization has grown immensely. Now the shelter provides free, round-the-clock help for Fairfield County children, teens and parents. They also have a counselor on staff at all hours to help with interventions, family therapy, and short-term counseling for the children and teens at the shelters. In 1998 the shelter expanded to serve children newborn to age 12 with the Crisis Nursery located on the same property. This was an irreplaceable addition because now teen mothers can live right next to their children and siblings of mixed ages do not need to be separated.   These homes, complete with a fully staffed, professional medical clinic, provide therapeutic care for up to twenty children at any one time. In just last year alone, Kids in Crisis served 6,400 children last year.

Instead of having an opportunity to restart her life in a shelter like Kids in Crisis, Maggie was left to die. Alone she wanders the street and in her final appearance in the novel Crane describes a man following her in the night. “ Chuckling and leering, he followed the girl of the crimson legions. At their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue… The varied sounds of life, made joyous by distance and seeming unapproachableness, cam faintly and died away to a silence” (65).  Whether this man kills Maggie or she commits suicide out of despair is unclear, but either way there were not the support systems that there are today.

This text only reiterates the same conclusion I gathered after my experience at Kids in Crisis – shelters and other safe outlets are necessary for children without stable home environments and without these organizations many more children would be lost like Maggie was in this novella. 

Twain: Comedic or tragic?

One of the main questions I am left with after reading “The $30,000 Bequest” is whether Mark Twain was attempting comedy or tragedy? In class we discussed the dark aspects of his character Tilbury and the moral decay that occurs with wealth, but we also touched upon the comedic aspect of the role reversals and the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy.

           

After reading some of the other blog posts from our class, I stumbled upon Kelsey’s interpretation of the short story “The $30,000 Bequest”. She calls attention to the passage “all four of [the family’s] members had pet names, Saladin’s was a curious and unsexing one—Sally; and so was Electra’s—Aleck” (2). After only introducing the names of his protagonists, Twain effectively reverses the expected gender roles. This choice adds a comedic twist to the entire story. Sally, the feminine, infantile husband, is a laughable character, unable to see past his day-to-day actions and constantly yearning to spend beyond his means. Humor is also created in the interactions between Sally and Aleck, the responsible wife. Their banter reminded me much more of a mother and child than that of husband and wife.

Even though on the surface this short story is light hearted, especially when read in conjunction with Maggie: Girl of the Streets, in fact I think the opposite. The deeply negative undertones that run throughout this story depict both the weakness and the cruelty of human nature. Without ever inheriting any physical principal, the Foster family is brought to basic shambles in their fantastical life. Instead of being happy with their two beautiful daughters and stable life, Aleck and Sally become obsessed with upward mobility. In fact, there are extremely morbid moments in the text when the couple yearns for the death of another human being.

Ultimately, Tilsbery is the reason this short story is a tragedy. His character can easily be read as the devil, tempting the innocent Foster’s into sin. He knowingly passes down his fortune with the intent of destroying their lives, “Tilbury now wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its malignant work” (2). He is an evil figure in this text and proves how money can alter one’s perspective. Even though the story ends with the Fosters getting a second chance, I believe that if they found money again their corruption would happen in a similar fashion. 

The Demonic Matriarch

                 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.