Maggie, a street girl by Stephen Crane Stephen Crane's first novel, Maggie, a street girl, is a story of uncompromising realism. The story follows the protagonist Maggie, a girl who lives on the Bowery with her emotionally abusive parents and brothers Jimmie and Tommy. The novel revolves around the trials and tribulations of Maggie and her family on the Bowery. Highlights of the story include the deaths of Maggie's father and brother Tommie which push Pete to turn into a cold and harsh person at the end of the novel. Maggie desperately tries to escape life on the Bowery, but Maggie ultimately succumbs to the Bowery and dies a broken woman. Crane is considered a naturalist and in his naturalist world no one escapes their biological chains. Maggie's parents are both unfit parents: they are emotionally and physically abusive and have alcoholic tendencies. Despite Maggie and (to a lesser extent) Jimmie's desire to escape the bleak world of the Bowery, they do not. With the novel Crane makes a statement about the negative effects of industrialization and urbanization. Industrialization and urbanization on the surface create jobs and strengthen businesses, but upon closer examination it disenfranchises the very people it promises to help. Many of the families on the Bowery are immigrant families who become wage slaves. Maggie's family is no different; because of their dependence on big business they have been disenfranchised and unable to thrive. This idea of ​​being set in a world where there is no escape from one's biological inheritance that Crane showcases in the novel mirrors Darwin's survival of the fittest theory. According to Darwin, only biologically strong individuals would survive in the world, while the weakest specimens would die. In Crane's novel people are not inherently weak; it is the environment that shapes them and prevents them from growing. Ultimately, all of Maggie's characters are victims of Bowery life. Crane uses a unique writing style in the novel, particularly in the way he structures the chapters. Each chapter contains strong images that Crane reinforces through repetition and (sometimes) unique parallel structure. A great example is the opening chapter where Pete saves Jimmie from a fight with the local children of Devil's Row. The chapter opens with an already battered Jimmie defiantly standing in place of the other retreating children stating “these micks can't make me run” (752). Jimmie uses the derogatory “mick” to refer to his opponents' Irish origins.