The poetics of Stephen Crane’s late novels” I. Introduction. II. The contribution of S. Crane to the development of American naturalism

3.2. Problems between humankind and environment in “ Maggie- a girl of streets” .
Meggie asarini o’qir ekanmiz , bu asarda aniq bir qahramonning emas balki butun bir shu yerda istiqomat qilayotgan aholining hayot tarzi yaqqol ko’z o’ngimizda gavdalanadi. Bundan tashqari yozuvchi o’sha davrdagi New Yorkning Bower hududini bor holicha tasvirlashga uringan. Aslida naturalistic asarlarda insonning tabiyat bilan chambarchas bog’liqligi, tashqi kuchlar oldida ojizligi , o’zi yashab turgan muhitdan chiqib ketishga urinishi besamarligi kabi g’oyaviy mavzular olg’a suriladi. Maggie asari ham shunday g’oyani olg’a suradi. Asar qahramonlarining fojeasi yashab turgan sharoitlarini yaxshilashga harakat qilishmasligi, yomon odatlarga ko’nikib qolishganligi va bu narsalar ularni tashvishlantirmasligidadir. Birgina Maggie o’z holati qanday jirkanchligi, onasining toshbag’irligi , yashash sharoitining yomonligi tufayli uyini tashlab ketishga , yangi xayot boshlashga urinib ko’radi. U uyidan tashqaridagi xayot go’zal va bu jahannamdan uni faqatgina Pete qutqaza oladi degan tushuncha bilan aldanib qoladi. Mening fikrimcha Maggiening fojeasi - o’zi yashab turgan muhitga moslasha olmaganligidadir. U boshqa ayollarga o’xshab , bunday tashlandiq qafasda bir umr yashashni tasavvur eta olmadi va oxirida nobud bo’ldi. Oila a’zolari va keyinchalik Pete uni ko’chaga haydaganida ularga qarshilik ham qila olmadi, o’z haqqi va or –nomusi uchun kurasha olmadi. Albatta kitobxon asarni o’qish jarayonida roman yozilgan davr va makonni inobatga olishi zarur. Agar bunday holat hozigi paytda sodir bo’lsa , ayollar o’z kunlarini o’zlari ko’rib ketishi mumkin, lekin o’sha paytni hisobga oladigan bo’lsak ayollar ayniqsa kambag’al ishchi ayollarning oladigan daromadi kundalik harajatlarini ham qoplay olmas edi. Shuning uchun tashlandiq ayollarning birgina yo’li fohishalik yoki o’lim bo’lgan. Like other naturalistic works, the direct and indirect influence of nature and society on people’s life is skillfully described by the writer in "Maggie". One of the most famous biographer of Stephen Crane John Berriman wrote that “ The society against the person will do; he uses the term “environment” in regard to Maggie… “ [ John Berryman , p 283 ]While reading the work, we realize that Maggie is one of the major works to criticize the environment of late 19th century New York City becomes obvious when the reader notices that the protagonist Maggie does neither occur in the first, nor in the last chapter of the novella.
Looking more closely at the word "environment" itself one can observe that the term is ambiguous. On the surface the term seems to describe the external living conditions, namely where and under which circumstances the characters live. But it is not the life in the Bowery and the tenements Stephen Crane is referring to since Maggie does not die of starvation or diseases, but of the mental influences, such as the Church and the theater that constantly affect the people. Exactly this environment, Crane argues, "is indeed a ’tremendous thing in the world’ and it frequently shapes the lives of children who grow up in it".
Nevertheless, the external living conditions determine the way people are and act. "Crane depicts the influence the city exerts upon the perception of reality of its inhabitants, and this perception differs very much already from one member of the Johnson family to the other" . This is the reason for me to argue that the bad circumstances in the Bowery of New York City contribute to the decay of the moral values and shape lives, as well. The very title of the 1893 version illustrates that the city is also an important factor in the novella: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York). Therefore, the living conditions are worth being ranked as one criteria to be among the head word environment and thus, also being analyzed.
Stephen Crane immersed himself in the New York Bowery and the experiences he gained in the East Side slums created his first novel. In theory, Crane can be regarded as a realistic writer because he tried to be as accurate and detailed as possible in his descriptions of the settings and the presentation of the slang. But in practice, he went beyond realism. His message was clearly naturalistic when stating that the people were determined by their environment and heredity.
Industrialization, urbanization and a growing sense for materialism created the great gap between rich and poor and was responsible for the development of the East Side slums as "a district that in Crane’s day was becoming synonymous with poverty and the attendant vices of filth, drink, crime, and degradation" [Ziff xvii]
Having argued that the external living conditions contribute to the collapse of moral conventions, first of let’s have a look New York City around the 1890s and then turn to the mental influences.
To begin with I will give a short introduction to the topography of the city and secondly I will describe the Bowery and tenements of the protagonist Maggie and her family in order to understand one small, but important part of why Maggie was driven into prostitution.
Moreover , article gives answers to why the mental influences are such an enormous matter. I will analyze the mental determinants in order to show how they control not only Maggie’s life, but also the life of her family and neighbors . Furthermore, in a last step I will give an overview of Maggie’s family and Maggie herself to show how her life is influenced and how she deals with it .
Set in the Bowery district of 19th century Manhattan, it vividly conveys the poor living conditions of the lower classes. Due to rising immigration rates and urbanization during the so-called ‘Gilded Age’, the social character of New York had undergone dramatic transformations. Thus, the realistic description of the heroine’s poor living conditions in Crane’s Maggie serves as a vivid illustration of the urban 19th century “residential segregation according to . . . social class “.Despite its evident realistic elements, Crane’s novel cannot merely be categorized as a work of realism. In fact, the dominant techniques of characterization militate in favour of its categorization as a naturalistic novel rather than a realistic one.
Since the original title of the novella is not only Maggie: A Girl of the Streets but also: A Story of New York, the city itself plays an important role. Indeed, New York City is the place which shapes Maggie and all the other characters, but it is also the place which survives her. This can be seen in the way Stephen Crane deals with the city. He gives her a soul and personifies her. Another indicator for the importance of the place is the description of the Bowery and the locations mentioned in the novella. Whereas the characters are only implicitly characterized, the city is described in every detail: The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed animated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift, machinelike music, [Crane 76)
The novella is set in Manhattan, the most densely populated of the five boroughs. It can be subdivided into Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions. West- bound the Hudson River divides the city from New Jersey and East Manhattan is separated from Long Island by the East River.Maggie and Pete visit several places located in and around the borough of Manhattan:
First of all, there is the Bowery, the home of Maggie and her family, "a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the streets and gutter" (Crane 7). Then Pete promises Jimmie "to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg" (Crane 23), a part of Brooklyn. Furthermore, East River, the place of Maggie’s death, is mentioned: "At their feet the river appeared a deathly black hue" (Crane 78). In Midtown Central Park and the Fifth Avenue are locations visited by Maggie. Rich people tended to settle in Midtown and the poor workers lived Downtown at Maggie’s timeThe title of Jacob Riis’s book How the Other Half Lives illustrates clearly that this was only one side of the coin. “The poor tenement dwellers had to live in areas ..made up of cheap, unsafe, wooden shakes or brick houses lacking proper sanitation and adequate heating …. (Ahnebrink page 3 #1).
This development came about when America changed into an industrial nation with successful factories and the establishment of the transcontinental railroad. The cities became bigger and the so-called "Gilded-Age" started. According to H. Spencer , only the fittest would survive this change, which fostered an elbow society in which old morals and values collapsed. But due to a growing number of immigrants to the United States, the first slums came into existence, which stood in great contrast to the noveaux riches, who displayed a life in wealth.
To sum up, New York around the 1890s consisted of a “ wasteful social chemistry” This is in contrast to what is promoted by the American people, that New York is a "city free from social economic distinction" .What we find here is the exact opposite, a city divided into two parts by an invisible line: Midtown accommodates the rich, Downtown is the home of the underprivileged people.
The place, the novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is set in, derives its name from the Dutch word ”bowerij ” and means "farm". During the 17th century, it was a farming area north of the city, whose governor was Peter Stuyvesant. It remained on the outer fringe of the city until about 1800. At that time, the Bowery was a very fashionable place and well known for its entertainment program. The streets were full with taverns, oyster bars, minstrels and theaters. It even housed the largest auditorium on the continent. After the Civil War, the Bowery had to compete with Broadway and Fifth Avenue as new addresses and so, it was more and more associated with cheap entertainment.When the new elevated line was placed over 3rd Avenue, the once so popular boulevard was doomed. The pedestrians were showered with oil and coal and from then on avoided the street and went along Broadway. This event, and the great number of immigrants from Europe and Asia, who could not find enough room to live in, made the Bowery the place like we encounter it in Crane’s story:

Throughout the novel, the impression is conveyed that Maggie’s life is inevitably determined by her social circumstances. Maggie and her family live in a shabby tenement While reading this books first chapter few lines give the reader a short glance at how people used to live at the end of the 19 th century. It is a dark place with children playing in the dirt. It does not smell very pleasant and the reader can only hear from reading the lines the creaking and noisiness of the place. But there is more to the Bowery.It is depicted by other images, as well. Reading the first three chapters of the novella ,it opens with a street battle between rival gangs in the impoverished Bowery. Nothing less than the “honor of Rum Alley” is at stake, lead by Maggie’s brother, Jimmie Johnson. A small boy, “livid with fury, Jimmie hurls invectives against the Devil’s Row mob. The scene is at once interminably violent

and blindly savage. “On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins.” When Jimmie finally ends up at the bottom of a pile of attackers, it is the angry and \arrogant Pete, “with an air of challenge over his eye,” who comes to his rescue. “Between his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance.” But his “rescue” notwithstanding, Jimmie is soon embroiled in a far worse struggle when his abusive father arrives on the scene, only to bring him home to an equally destructive domestic situation. In the larger context of this novel, it is simply not possible to be rescued from the devastating effects of urban poverty in New York’s Lower East Side.
Asarning II- bobi boshlanishidan Bowery haqida kitobxonda tushunchalar paydo bo’la boshlaydi. When Jimmie and his father return home , we enter the terrify world of the Lower East Side tenement.
“Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels.
Matndagi “dark region” , unhandy places “, “formidable women “ , “uncombed hair”, “disordered dress” “withered persons “ , “the building quivered and creaked” so’zlarining o’zi ham voqea sodir bo’layotgan joyning va u yerda yashovchi odamlarning qanday holatda ekanligini yaqqol tasvirlab beradi. Yozuvchi tomonidan mahorat bilan ishlatilgan bu kabi sifatlar o’quvchida voqealar qanday tarzda davom etishi va bundan keyin nimalar yana sodir bo’lishligi haqida osongina taasurot uyg’otadi. Stephen Crane “dark region” and “unhandy places” so’z birikmalaridan Maggie va uning oilasi qanday darajada qashshoqligini tasvirlashda ustalik bilan foydalangan. U yerda yashayotgan odamlarning qashshoqligiga yana bir misol yuqoridagi “formidable women “ , “uncombed hair”, “disordered dress” “withered persons “ so’zlari bo’lib , bundan biz ularning xayot tarsi haqida yanada mukammal ma’lumot olamiz. Oldinroq eslatib o’tilganidek Crane o’zi shu muhitda biroz muddat yashab , Bowery xayotini o’z ko’zlari bilan ko’rgan. , Matndagi quyidagi bino tasviriga oid “the building quivered and creaked” so’zlarni tahlil qiladigan bo’lsak, Bowery aholisi yashayotgan bino ham ularning xayot tarzi va turmushuning og’irligidan dod deb yuborgudek ahvoldaligini anglab yetamiz. Lekin ularning o’zlari huddi buni sezmayotgandek, yoki sezsa ham qo’llaridan hech nima kelmasligini bilgandek. Bu parchadan anglashiladiki , Boweryning tashqi ko’rinishi ham inson ruhiyatiga kata ta’sir ko’rsatadi. The return home is anything but a place of safe haven but, rather, a world of interminable fighting and swearing and physical violence. Indeed, “gruesome” is an oft-repeated word
for Stephen Crane expressing both the horror and the inhumane conditions of life in the Bowery slums. As soon as he enters his tenement, a structure which itself is threatened by “the weight of humanity stamping about its bowels,” the relentlessly combative Jimmie gets into a fight with his sister Maggie
Endi so’zni Maggie va uning oilasi yashhaydigan boshpana haqida davom ettirsak.
“Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome doorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls. At last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a large woman was rampant”.
Asardagi bu parcha Maggie va uning oila a’zolari yashaydigan muhitni tasvirlab beradi. Albatta bir joyni tasirlash uchun yozuvchilar bir yoki ikki betni qoralashlariga to’g’ri keladi. Lekin bulardan mustasno tarzida Kreyn ikki qator gap bilan mohirona tarzda Johnsonlar yashayotgan boshpana haqida o’quvchiga to’la ma’lumot beradi. Parchadagi “ gruesome doorways “ , “”dark stairways “’ , “cold ,gloomy halls “ so’z va so’z birikmalar yozuvchi mahoratiga misol bo’la oladi. Hech bir so’z oshiqcha emas , biror so’zni qo’shish ham mumkin emas. Bu parchadan biz Boweryning tashqi ko’rinishining davomi sifatida ichki ko’rinishiga o’tamiz. Biz oilaning boshpanasi ham huddi ular yashaydigan tumandek iflos, ko’rimsiz va tartibsiz ekanligini yuqoridagi so’zlardan anglab olamiz.
Keyingi sahifalar bundanda ayanchli tarzda davom etadi. Ya’ni uyda qahramonlarni ichkilikka berilgan ona yarim hushyor holda qarshi oladi. Uyning ko’rinishiga hamohang ayolning ham tashqi ko’rinishi kishini cho’chitadi. Onalarni doimo asarlarda mehribon , oq ko’ngil, ozoda va bir qancha ijobiy sifatlar bilan o’qib o’rgangan kitobxon uy bekasining bunday ahvolidan dahshatga tushadi. Oila a’zolarining o’zaro munosabatlarini , bolalar ham ota onasidan o’lguday qo’rqishini , doimo janjallar ularga yot bo’lib ketganini yozuvchi quyidagi parchalarda yozib o’tadi.
“ At home, their drunken mother Mary goes on throwing herself upon Jimmie and later also on Maggie because she has broken a plate. At last the parents themselves begin to quarrel with each other . Both her father and mother are constantly drunk, break the family’s furniture and beat each other up.”
O’zaro janjallar Maggiening otasini ham joniga tekkanligini quyidagi parcha isbotlaydi.
During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially:" My home reg` lar livin` hell! Damndes` place! Reg` lar hell! Why do I come an` drin` whisk`here thish way? ` Cause home reg` lar livin` hell!"
Following his father’s departure, “[t]he little boy ran to thehalls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake.” And, though the frightened Jimmie is offered some temporary sanctuary by an elderly neighbor, “a gnarled and leathery personage who could don, at will, an expression of great virtue,” there is scant reason to have any faith or credence from such a person. The old woman is part of the brutal reality of the slums (Chapter 3)
with a criminal history of her own. “Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled woman grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity beneath her cloak.” Indeed, Crane is making a strong statement that slum life offers no hope of escape and that this environment is devoid of any spiritual relief. And to compound both our distrust and lack of confidence in her ability to shelter a child, she sends Jimmie on a dangerous mission to buy her some beer from a saloon where, not surprisingly, he is soon assailed by his own father, a “lurching figure” set within a “gruesome doorway.” His father wants nothing more than to steal the beer
from his young son. “The father wrenched the pail from the urchin.... There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was gone.” When Jimmie finally returns home, both parents are drunk, exchanging “howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging.” Indeed, life in the slums is an unending tragedy, and the use of the word chorus here could even be can seen as analogous to the chorus in a Greek tragedy which had the function of both participating in and commenting on the events taking place.
Further, Crane is also implying that the reality of the slums resembles life in a jungle in that the abject fright in which the children are forced to live makes them akin to animals who must hide in fear of those who seek to devour them. In her mother’s presence, Maggie is seen eating “like a small pursued tigress,” and both she and her brother are huddled in abject fright, “crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at the window.”
Maggiening bundan keying holati yozuvchi tomonidan quyidagicha tasvirlanadi. “The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Her features were haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear. She grasped the urchin`s arm in her little trembling hands and they huddled in a corner. The eyes of both were drawn, by some force, to stare at the woman`s face, for they thought she need only to awake and all fiends would come from below”.
After the passage of some considerable, but unspecified time, we learn that both the unremarkable father and his infant son, Tommie, have died for some vague reason (Chapter 4). Their demise is reported in a tragically deadpan and unremarkable style and, thus, their presence quickly and tragically evaporates from both the world of the tenement and the consciousness of the reader. “The babe, Tommie died. He went away in a white, insignificant coffin.”
During this time, Jimmie continues to grow up into a brooding young man, “sullen with thoughts of a hopeless attitude where grew fruit,” that the sum total of his life experiences had presaged, a downtrodden human being
gainsaid whatever happiness he perceives more fortunate men to enjoy. Chapter 4 provides a glimpse of the consequences of a deteriorating character when Jimmie takes a job as a teamster driving horses through lower Manhattan, scouting trouble wherever it exists and readily becoming embroiled in any available ruckus. “In revenge, he resolved never to move out of the way of anything, until formidable circumstances ... forced
him to it.” Indeed, this job makes Jimmie even more belligerent and alienated, so much so that he shuns all religion and faith. Devoid of all hope of a better way of life, Jimmie is spiritually lost, “for he himself could perceive that Providence had caused it clearly to be written.” And, as seen in a multitude of instances in Maggie wherein Crane uses animal analogues to describe his characters’ emotional responses, Jimmie’s awestricken reverence towards the world of mechanical objects, which he cannot overpower with brute force, is likened to the
response of a dog. “A fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thing that he loved with a distant dog-like devoting.”
As writer mentioned , they are perfectly adapted to their cruel living conditions. Jimmie,Maggie’s brother, also fits neatly into this lower class environment since he does not evince respect for anyone apart from himself. “ Qush uyasida ko’rganini qiladi’ deyiladi o’zbek xalq maqollaridan birida. Bu maqolda olg’a surilga g’oya huddi Jimmiega mos qilib aytilgandek. U o’z otasining yomon odatlaridan hulosa chiqarmaydi . Aksincha u huddi otasi kabi aroqho’r , johil erkakga aylanadi
“The inexperienced fibres of the boy`s eyes were hardened at an early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red years without laboring. During that time his sneer became chronic. He studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived a respect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that it had smashed……..When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction with existence was the greatest thing in the world. So, eventually, he felt obliged to work. His father died and his mother`s years were divided up into periods of thirty days. He became a truck driver.
Uning bunday odamga aylanib qolishiga ikki narsa sababchi mening fikrimcha .
Birinchisi – irsiyat , ya’ni otasining odatlari , kundalik turmush tarsi , qo’polligi va shunga o’hshash harakterlari genetic jihatdan unga o’tgan. Genetikada buni irsiy belgilarni avloddan avlodaga ko’chib o’tilishi deyiladi. Bu irsiy belgilarni odamzot ota bobolaridan me’ros qilib oladi. Heredity refers largely to our genetics. It includes the genes we are born with and other hereditary factors that can impact how our personality is formed and influence the way that we develop from childhood through adulthood.