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1893 novel by Stephen Crane

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is an 1893 novella by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). The story centers on Maggie, a young girl from the Bowery who is driven to unfortunate circumstances by poverty and solitude. The work was considered risqué by publishers because of its literary realism and strong themes. Crane – who was 22 years old at the time – financed the book's publication himself, although the original 1893 edition was printed under the pseudonym Johnston Smith. After the success of 1895's The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie was reissued in 1896 with considerable changes and re writing. The story is followed by George's Mother.

The story opens with Jimmie, at this point a young boy, trying by himself to fight a gang of boys from an opposing neighborhood. He is saved by his friend, Pete, and comes home to his sister, Maggie, his toddling brother, Tommie, his brutal and drunken father, and mother, Mary Johnson. The parents, Irish immigrants, terrify the children until they are shuddering in the corner. Years pass, Tommie and his father die as Jimmie hardens into a sneering, aggressive, cynical youth. He gets a job as a teamster, having no regard for anyone but firetrucks who would run him down. Maggie begins to work in a shirt factory, but her attempts to improve her life are undermined by her mother's drunken rages. Maggie begins to date Jimmie's friend Pete, who has a job as a bartender and seems a very fine fellow, convinced that he will help her escape the life she leads. He takes her to the theater and the museum. One night Jimmie and Mary accuse Maggie of "Goin to deh devil", essentially kicking her out of the tenement, throwing her lot in with Pete. Jimmie goes to Pete's bar and picks a fight with him (even though he himself has ruined other boys' sisters). As the neighbors continue to talk about Maggie, Jimmie and Mary decide to join them in badmouthing her instead of defending her. Later, Nellie, a "woman of brilliance and audacity" convinces Pete to leave Maggie, whom she calls "a little pale thing with no spirit." Thus abandoned, Maggie tries to return home but is rejected by her mother and scorned by the entire tenement. In a later scene, a prostitute, implied to be Maggie, wanders the streets, moving into progressively worse neighborhoods until, reaching the river, she is followed by a grotesque and shabby man. The next scene shows Pete drinking in a saloon with six fashionable women "of brilliance and audacity." He passes out, whereupon one, possibly Nellie, takes his money. In the final chapter, Jimmie tells his mother that Maggie is dead. The mother exclaims, ironically, as the neighbors comfort her, "I'll forgive her!"

Crane uses alcohol to continue a cycle of poverty that the characters cannot break from. Through alcoholism, Joseph Brennan believes that Crane demonstrates that the characters' fates are all inevitable and that their lives cannot be changed. While all the inhabitants of the Bowery drink excessively throughout the book, Crane uses Maggie's mother as a main depiction of the destructive power of alcohol. In her drunken rages, Mary Johnson is described as incredibly violent, abusing Maggie and breaking everything around her. Dingledine sees this in Maggie's attempt to improve her life and rise above her situation, as Maggie decorates and hangs a lambrequin, hoping to attract and impress Pete. Since Maggie receives no love from her mother or society, she seeks a better life with Pete. Maggie is represented as forced by her environment into prostitution rather than by sexual desires; prostitution is not a choice. Paul Stasi adds that this philosophy of determinism is evident in the style of Crane's writing as well. Although Stephen Crane denied any influence by Émile Zola, Gandal claims that Maggie's sexuality also reflects an alternative class based morality that views sexuality differently from upper class ideas of sexual morality. He argues that the shared reaction to the melodramas displays an alignment in the beliefs of the Bowery residents. In Maggie, the majority of low class residents drink, gamble and fight each other. Yet, Maggie, a low class woman herself, does not engage in this behavior. Instead, Crane writes, "The girl, Maggie, 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." Due to these differing portrayals of low class citizens, critics debate if Crane's intentions for the novella were to critique a social caste system and its effect on those within it, or to point to the failings of a family unit, resulting in the downfall of one member. The United States, a country shaped by agriculture in the 19th century, became an industrialized nation in the late 1800s. Moreover, "an unprecedented influx of immigrants contributed to a boom in population," created bigger cities and a new consumer society. By these developments, progress was linked with poverty, illustrating that the majority of the US population was skeptical about the dependency on the fluctuation of global economy.

Jimmie Johnson: An eldest brother of Maggie and Tommie's brother, who first appears in the beginning scene fighting a gang war of some sort with the Rum Alley Children. Serves as a foil to Maggie. Pete: A teenager, in the beginning, who is an acquaintance of Jimmie, and saves Jimmie in the fight. Later, he seduces Maggie and breaks her of her romantic viewpoints. Father: The brutal, drunkard father of Jimmie, Maggie, and Tommie. Maggie Johnson: The Johnsons' middle child, protagonist of the story, apparently immune to the after effects of the negative family. She is seduced by Pete and is seen as effectively ruined. She is implied to have become a prostitute at the end of the novel and dies an early death. Tommie Johnson: The youngest Johnson child who dies an early death. Mary Johnson: The drunkard and brutal mother who drives Maggie out of the house. Nellie: Pete's friend, who convinces him to leave Maggie.

The Works of Stephen Crane edited by Fredson Bowers is regarded as the definitive text of Crane's works, although several textual critics regard the editorial principles behind the first volume (containing Maggie) to be flawed. Crane, Stephen Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979) Edited with a preface and notes by Thomas A. Gullason. Contains the 1893 text, as well as contemporary reviews and modern criticism. Crane, Stephen Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Tales of New York. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000) Selected and with an introduction by Larzer Ziff, with the assistance of Theo Davies. Also includes George's Mother, and eleven other tales of New York.

Åhnebrink, Lars. The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction (Uppsala: A. B Lundequistka Bokhandeln, 1950). Bergon, Frank Stephen Crane's Artistry (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975).

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets was adapted by Stephen Douglas Burton as one of three one act operas in his 1975 trilogy, An American Triptych.