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Gendered space, racialized space: nativism, the immigrant woman and Stephen Crane's 'Maggie.' (novel 'Maggie: a Girl of the Streets')

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From: College Literature
Date: 19931001
Author:Irving, Katrina

The themes of nativism, femininity and immigration in Stephen Crane's novel 'Maggie: A Girl of the Streets' reflected contemporary cultural and social racialism. Nativist attitudes at the end of the 19th century reflected fear of an immigration surge. The immigrant woman embodied the threat of an extension of working-class immigrants beyond the confines of tenement housing. Her occupation as prostitute exacerbated the sexual threat. However, Maggie's suicide represented containment of the problem.

The anxiety that attaches to the figure of woman is that of a difference

that escapes ...

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