Where It All Goes Down
The Bowery, New York City, 1890s
Crane pulls no punches when it comes to the setting of Maggie. From the gravel heaps of Rum Alley to the "gruesome doorways" (2.1) of the tenement near the East River, there's no escaping the grimness—except maybe by ducking into the music halls, but we'll get to those in a minute. First, let's take a closer look at the Bowery in NYC at the end of the nineteenth century:
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 dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. […] 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. (2.1)
Not exactly inviting, eh? The tenement is overpopulated, and children are ignored, uncared for, and abused. The building is coated with filth, while strange odors swirl in the air. The reference to "bowels" assures us that the dwellers of this tenement are living amid excrement and foulness. This is as slummy as it gets.
But if Crane is invested in showing poverty in all its unrestrained glory—seems like a cool enough thing to do—he's also dabbling in pretty negative stereotypes. How so? Well, he also mentions that Maggie and her fellow Bowery tenement dwellers are Irish immigrants. Being Irish in the U.S. during this era was a much different experience than it is now, and Irish people were looked upon with scorn, stereotyped as lazy, violent drunks who were threatening the country. Click here to see some political cartoons of the day to catch our drift.
It's fine and dandy to mention that Maggie and her tenement cohorts are Irish immigrants, but the violence and drunkenness that Crane depicts takes on a different tone when placed in the context of the negative stereotypes about Irish people swirling around at the time. Yes, he paints a pretty honest picture of the terribleness of poverty, but he also depicts the Irish inhabitants as barbaric animals—an attitude many Americans took toward Irish people at this point. In other words, while Crane exposes the reality of tenement life, he's still pretty prejudiced.
What's unique about Crane's Irish, however, is their utter rejection of religion. Jimmie clearly despises the believers at the church—which he sees as strictly a soup kitchen. So whereas many Irish immigrants held on to their fierce Catholic beliefs, these characters are beyond faith—though, of course, that doesn't stop Mary from judging Maggie as a sinner.