The end of Maggie’s life is questionable because we are not sure what happened to her. Though the author doesn’t depict clearly her death, Jimmie and Mary seem to accept her death in the next chapter. In the class, my mates said it is related to the purpose of degradation and devalue; to guess her character more; to make it more realistic for giving long impact (which is mine). After coming back to dorm and sleeping quite a lot, I re-thought about the effect of the way in Ch XVII (1893 edition) and how does it affect to the goal of pragmatism.
First, the readers are naturally tempted to guess the result of her condition, once they read ChXVII and XVIII. Living prostitute and wandering the sullen part of the city, is she dead at last or worse than dead? If readers don’t catch the clear answer same as me, they might ask and then about the cause of her wandering which made us guess, let alone whether she’s dead or alive. It’s just like passing to the next question when we are faced a difficult and ambiguous question in the math exam.
Second of all, by not showing her clear result, we can substitute the environment around us to Maggie. It is kind of making Maggie just like a white sketchbook and start to paint the color on it. Because Crane sketches the structure of her life path and her background, it is we, the readers that read and make independent and creative response ourselves.
Third, we simply assume and expect Maggie’s future. If she’s dead, then where goes her body? If not, Jimmie’s lying to her mother which shows more severe malfunction of a family. Not saying makes more questions to her existence and this is continued to the most ironic chapter. Not making it close to the tragedy or melodrama or Cinderella types or Pamela styles which generally show clear result of the plots, it emphasizes the importance of family in economic tragedy season, rather than showing an individual's tragic end.
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As Gi Hyun explained in his post, it would be really ambiguous about Maggie's end. Although I cannot resolve the questionable idea that there are some possibilities as her end, I believe that she kills herself because I also believe her suicide can indicate that the idea of naturalism is enabled to overturn by people's free will.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear a lot that the reason why she is forced to pass the tragic life is because of her environment. Especially because of her mother, she always has no choice except the idea which she not adopts but obeys the circumstance, even the choice which she runs away from her reality. Even though she tries to avoid and run away from any severe environment, then new severe environment involve Maggie in the tragic story many times. This situation is just based on naturalism, in other words fatalism.
However, after the mother accepted Maggie's death, she seems to forgive Maggie and her presence finally even after abusing her own daughter. This might have one of the possibilities that Maggie overturn the thinking of her mother by her suicide. That is, her death might be able to break the theory of fatalism because if fatalism exists on Maggie exactly, the change must not be considered as her end. Therefore, I believe she died in the end of the story in order to protect her own life and her identity by herself.