Chap 5 - Fashion, class and identity Flashcards
Fashion, class and identity
Maggie is always trying to be respectable using outside elements : outfit… she doesn’t feel respectable as a self but when she is wearing one or another outfit.
Fashion, class and identity quote
« Prostitution, Primitivism, Performativity The Bare Life in Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle » by Jordan L. Von Cannon,
“Maggie falls under the illusion that she can achieve respectability through fashion, while men like Pete and Jimmie delude themselves into believing they actually are respectable.”
“Tatters and grime”
Crane describes Maggie, not even mentioning her outfit as a child but rather hinting at her social status:
→ “When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt disguised her.
→ Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.” (V, 22)
=> Contamination between her environment and her looks.
However, from the start, we guess that she differs from the rest of her community because of her good- looking attitude when growing up:
→ “Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker.”
→ About this period her brother remarked to her: “Mag, I’ll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh’ve edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!” (22)
Performance & Status
For Maggie, fashion is about trying to elevate herself from her social status.
Beauty and appearances matter as commodities are tools to climb the social ladder.
Hints at her physical beauty are made from the beginning as we are told that she unexpectedly “blossom[s] in a mud puddle”
She is sensitive to beauty and appearances, working in a factory which produces cuffs and collars but she sees the place as a “dreary place of endless grinding.” (VI, 27)
When she goes to the theatre, it is the only moment when she forgets about her job. However, she is obsessed with her look and the image she projects
Costumes
At the theater, Maggie wears a “worn black dress,” and is mistaken when she thinks theater-goers form an aristocratic audience: As the narrator remarks & grotesque performance
Maggie is amazed at the “some half dozen skirts” worn by the dancer. Costumes give these performers their value in Maggie’s eyes
Beauty as a commodity
Intense loathing of her clothes.
Keeps evaluating herself calculating the price of silk and lace when seeing “the well- dressed women she met on the avenues. She envied elegance and soft palms.”
⇒ Being well-dressed = an ally for women !
Beauty as a commodity
quote Jordan L. Von Cannon
“Maggie commodifies her beauty. She resolutely believes that her clothes remain key to a middle-class identity that will make her Pete’s equal. When working girls adopt the mannerisms of upper-class ladyhood, the act becomes a process of consumption. Above all else, Maggie recognizes that the display of fashionable clothes becomes a physical display of privilege.” Jordan L. Von Cannon
Maggie’s misjudgement of Pete
Mostly cautious about Pete’s looks
On their second meeting, she again notices the “fascinating innovations in his apparel” assuming that the man, like “his wardrobe[,] was prodigiously extensive” (28).
→ Maggie naively judges the quality of Pete’s character according to the quality of his clothes.
Maggie’s invisibility
Maggie is not able to compete with Nellie, her rival, whose outfit is an object of admiration
Her failure to mask her social status is due to her inability to be dressed according to higher standards. Her imitation of other women is a fiasco and leads Pete to dismiss her. She cannot cover up her genuine identity and remains the “unseen” girl she was in her childhood.
Nellie completely ignores her as Maggie remains invisible:
Stripped and unrecognisable
Maggie is no longer seen as a respectable woman in her community and her banishment metaphorically strips her from her social status. As Pete remains respectable in his “white jacket”, Maggie’s ascent in life is cut short by Pete’s dismissal.
She spirals down to prostitution, losing respect from her lower-class fellows and living as an outcast.
Her descent into prostitution was foreshadowed by the two options her brother stated at the beginning: factory or hell.
After Pete dismisses her, she is completely lost, and her final words are puzzling as they reveal a questioning about her identity.
A man → missed encounter, she looks for help but nobody help her
As we know, she goes from Maggie to a nameless “girl of the painted cohort”, being stripped of all social markers.
