Petruso has a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in screenwriting. In this essay, Petruso compares and contrasts the characters of Maggie, the purported heroine of Crane's novel, and Jimmie, Maggie's brother who also plays a large role in the novel. Both are creatures of the street for different reasons, and their differing sexes and lives result in very different life paths.

In Crane's novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, he writes of circumstances both very familiar to contemporary audiences, but also very specific to his late nineteenth-century readers. Set in a slum in an urban area, the naturalistic novel describes in detail the effect of living there—with alcoholic parents, no real direction in life, and many other issues—on Maggie, Jimmie, and other young characters. Siblings Maggie and Jimmie seem to be about the same age, and both face many of the...