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In the famous opening scene of his first novella, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, published in 1893, Stephen Crane writes:
A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him.
His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths.
"Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child.
"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run."1
This is the reader's introduction to the streets of Crane's lower Manhattan and to the people who inhabit them, most notably Jimmie Johnson, Maggie's brother. We are not alone in witnessing the battle described: "From a window of an apartment house . . . there leaned a curious woman." Fifty-three years later, in 1946, Ann Petry includes a strikingly similar scene in her first novel, The Street. This street is in Harlem, and this "desperate battle" is waged not with rocks but with garbage:
Kids were using bags of garbage from the cans lined up along the curb as ammunition. The bags had broken open, covering the sidewalk with litter, filling the air with a strong, rancid smell.
Here, as in Maggie, a woman watches from a window. Mrs. Hedges, who runs a house of prostitution from her apartment, "was leaning far out of her window." Whereas Crane's onlooker is silent, Mrs. Hedges speaks, "urging the contestants on." The name of the child to whom she calls out suggests that the echo of Crane's Maggie is more than coincidence:
"That's right, Jimmie. . . . Hit him on the head." And then as the bag went past its mark, "Aw, shucks, boy, what's the matter with your aim?"2
This is a deliberate invocation of Crane, I believe, indicating a multifaceted, heretofore unnoticed dialogue between Ann Petry's The Street and Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.3
The Street holds the distinction of being the first novel by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies. The novel's success brought Ann Petry widespread praise and immediate fame. Translations appeared around...