Research Paper on:
Crane/Maggie: A Girl of the Streets & Naturalism

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Americas novelists "gave way to naturalism" (Bell 109). These writers were highly influenced by the publication of Charles Darwins ideas on evolution and their work reflects the idea that an  individuals social circumstances have a prevalent influence over their behavior. Yet, it is quite possible to read scholarly written opinion in which novelist Stephen Crane is termed both a  realist and a naturalist, and this raises the question how to accurately classify Crane, as a naturalist or a realist? This examination of Cranes novel Maggie: A Girl of the  Streets investigates both Cranes text and scholarly sources in order to answer this question. This information reveals that Crane was primarily a naturalist and it suggests that Maggie was  intentionally crafted to avoid the problems associated with realism and to express a naturalistic point of view. Critic Henry Golemba argues that nineteenth century authors, such as Crane, faced  the problem that their endeavors to produce an objective point of view that offered pure realism would also serve to objectify their characters, "transforming groups of people into statistics, changing  individuals into things" (Golemba 235). The stated aim of realism was to provide the reader with a sense of "photographic realism" (Golemba 235). Contemporary reviewer and fellow novelist Frank Norris,  in his review of Maggie, vented his "frustration at realism," as he complained that realism "seemed written from the outside" (Golemba 235). It is ironic that Norris would emphasize this  aspect of realism in fiction when reviewing Maggie, as there is considerable evidence in the short novel that it was Cranes intention to humanize his heroine, by offering a perspective  quite different from the moralizing fiction of that era that reflected a Protestant mainstream ethos of blaming "sinners" for their situations, rather than society. In her review of Keith