![]() Middle-class morality significantly influences the values of these characters and seeps into Bowery culture through the religion of the mission church and through the entertainments found in the theatres and music halls that the characters visit. Mary seems to be mimicking the rhetoric and the ideology of benevolence of many female moral reformers. Through scenes which present a performance of grief and a spectacle of insincere emotions, Crane effectively criticizes the false morality of certain characters, like Maggie's mother Mary Johnson, while at the same time causing his readers to contemplate the plight of the poor. This article analyzes the belief system of the Bowery people in Stephen Crane’s city sketches and Maggie, A Girl of the Streets and considers how the values imposed on them by the performance of morality in both the theatre and the mission church clash with their lived experiences and actively shape their lives. ![]()
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