de their family. Maggie and girls like her are forced into submission, because they have nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to.
             Childhood plays a major factor in Maggie's development into a woman. Although she seems to have "blossomed in a mud puddle" (Crane p. 16), Maggie's beauty withers in comparison to Nell's-"a woman of brilliance and audacity" (Crane p. 58). Due to Maggie's lack of confidence stunted by her submissive upbringing, her beauty lies only skin deep. In many ways Maggie is marked with the same traits as women of today who are humbled by media-idolized sex icons. Maggie's traits of self-consciousness, vulnerability, alienation and dependency are so extreme, they are directly correlated with her fall from grace.
             It may be true that Maggie's weak character and fallible traits aid in her fall from grace, but Maggie's fate-alone, abandoned, used, rejected-is not a product of her own doing. Maggie is abused and mistreated by the very family and lover who she expected to care for her and protect her unconditionally. The verbal abuse inflicted by her mother, the cross-pressure induced by Jimmie, and the questionable intentions of Pete are all networked in a web of cruelty and rejection. However, their vices and abuses are masked by society as acceptable behavior, because Maggie's sin is considered a far greater offense in the public eye. Even as a young woman Maggie could not protect herself from the malicious verbal attacks that were completely uncalled for by her mother. On Maggie's first innocent date with Pete, her mother called her "a reg'lar devil" (Crane p. 21). She "blasphemed her and gave her a bad name" (Crane p. 22). Maggie and the readers who sympathize for her want to believe that she's going to remain innocent and prove her drunkard mother wrong. The irony springs from the inadmissible truth-...