The Image of the City in Stephen Crane's Novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and in Naguib Mahfouz's Novel Midaq Alley

Abstract

This comparative study aims at presenting the image of the city drawn by Stephen Crane in his novel Maggie: A Girl of tile Streets (1893) and by Naguib Mahfouz in his novel Midaq Alley (1947). The thesis shows aspects of similarity and difference in the themes and style of the two novels. Both novelists believed in the existence of violence in the city but differed in the way of tackling it, they also believed that survival in the city is for the fittest. Their cities are coloured by falseness of appearance and ethics. Indifference, whether man's or Nature's, is one of the issues handled in their novels; Other issues are presented in Maggie and Midaq like love, hatred, religion and death. Both writers presented the main figure of the city novel which is the dreamer and believed in the importance of marginal characters. They significantly chose the names of their characters. The two novels differ in their plot types. Crane and Mahfouz used the same type of imagery but the former is more successful, yet, the latter is more successful in his use of language. Both authors used the spatial viewpoint of narration, especially the street level. Crane's novel is naturalistic while Mahfouz's is realistic. Finally, Crane's image of his city is pessimistic whereas, Mahfouz's image is neutral for he presented both good and evil.