Monday, April 9, 2012
Anti-Sentimentalism in "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"
In Crane's book, there is an abundance of anti-sentimentalism. He writes very objectively, with lots of description. He does not add any unnecessary emotion to the story, and does not include blatant appeals to pathos. However, after reading the book, I get the feeling that the reader is supposed to and expected to sympathize with Maggie. I think Crane does an excellent job of combining anti-sentimentalism and objectivity with the message he is trying to get across to the reader. He means for the story to come off as unbiased and as a real-life account, but he also wants to send the message that Maggie is a victim of her environment and that it is impossible for her to improve her social situation, no matter how hard she tries. Thus, Crane successfully convinces the reader that society is to blame for Maggie's downfall, all the while presenting the story in an objective fashion--something that is very difficult to accomplish.
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I believe that the evidence you provided about the reader being 'supposed to and expected to sympathize with Maggie' goes against th claim of the novel being entirely anti-sentimentalist. If the novel were completely anti-sentimental, we as the reader would not be expected to sympathize with Maggie, rather we would be expected to create our own reaction to the character. Contrary to the above claim, I believe Crane's writing in 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets' tends to be rather sentimentalist at points in the novel. Particularly in chapter 3 on page 7, the footnotes say that Crane 'draws on dramatic form-tragedy and melodrama-in Maggie' in the text of the novel that says, "The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy." As we can see, this scene is not entirely free of emotion, as the term anti-sentimentalism suggests. I am not completely contradicting the claim above but merely suggesting that the abundance of anti-sentimentalism found in the novel does not entirely drown out the potential for sentimentalism in Maggie's story as well.
ReplyDeleteIn Anti-sentimentalism, making the reader empathize with any character or any situation within the novel is not the main priority. While Crane may seem somewhat objective in his narrations, there is a ton of sentimentalism in the book. The characters themselves are sentimental. For example, when the mother hears of Maggie's death, she cries over her baby shoes. Maggie used to be her little girl. She loved Maggie, and forgave her for everything she supposedly had done. In the end of the novel, if one is supposed to sympathize with Maggie, one is not reading an anti-sentimental novel. One is reading a novel rife with sentiments and emotions.
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