In Maggie: A Girl of The Streets the author uses the dialect of the region to enhance the audience's understanding of the text. This is similar to what Karolyn Kohrs Campbell discussed in "Agency: Promiscous and Protean" Campbell points out that Sorjourner Truth would not have spoken in the dialect of a typical Southern woman but the fact that she speaks in such a way adds to the drama and helps make the point of the piece. The southern diction: "ar'n't I a woman" is more powerful to readers than would have been her Dutch accent. It puts a certain image into the reader's head which Gage wanted to do. In a way Gage became an Agent for Truth.
This is a similar technique used in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. The Author Stephen Crane uses the dialect of the region to make the image of the poor, region more vivid for readers. It adds something to the story that would be missing if it wasn't written with the colloquial diction of streets. Crane gives agency to his characters by making them talk in the way they do, it allows for the characters to make a greater impact and show the scene in which they live more vividly for a reader.
I agree that the use of dialect makes the imagery of the novel more real and vivid for the reader. I also think that it may serve a more important purpose. The actions taken by the individuals who live in these slums are often quite awful, violent, and outside of what a normal standard for behavior would have been for the day. I think the use of dialect helps the reader to reach an important conclusion: that these people are a product of their circumstances. Much like dialect is not something someone chooses, instead it is a result of what one hears and experiences growing up, the lives the people of the Bowery live are not of their choosing either. Faced with a difficult situation, they react the way they are compelled to act by the subculture in which they live. I think that this humanizes them, and allows the reader to feel that they are people who are left with few choices in life, and do the best they can with their poor situation.
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