The urban space and the female characters in L’Assommoir and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Abstract

Could we recognize some influences of French naturalism as represented by Émile Zola in the works of American naturalist such as Dreiser and Norris? Stephen Crane, one of the American naturalist, denies the influence of Zola's works in his master-piece, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893). However, reading this short novel of this American writer, one can find some motifs similar to that of Zola's works, thus contradicting his claims. There seems to be some intertextual relationships between his works and some novels of Zola. Thinking this idea as the starting point, we will examine the representation of the urban space, in particular, Paris in L'Assommoir as well as the female character of this novel in order to clarify the importance of the idealization of the rural life. In this way, we would like to compare Zola's novel with Crane’s novel under similar topics, i. e., the representation of New-York and the female character. Finally, this reflection on the subject enables us to consider the particularities of the naturalism on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.