The Red Badge of Courage and the Blue Hotel: The Singular Love of Stephen Crane Stephen Crane has firmly established himself in the canon of American romance with the success of works such as The Red Badge of Courage and "The Blue Hotel". His writing served to plumb the fundamental depths of the genre by enumerating themes vital to the movement's aesthetics. Topics such as sincere respect for the beauty and ferocity of nature, the general exaltation of the emotions over reason and the senses over the intellect, the self-examination of the personality and its moods and mental possibilities, a concern for genius and the heroic archetype in general, a focus on passions and inner struggles, and an emphasis on the imagination as a gateway to transcendence, as well as a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, and popular culture are all characteristics of his stories. However, the more traditionally "romantic" aspects of his artifice manifest themselves most fully in a series of private correspondence between him and a certain high-society maiden named Nellie Crouse. It is these letters that serve to illustrate Crane's writing skill as it transcends the traditional Romantic generation. Through these letters, which serve as an informed testimony to Crane's distinct skill as a writer, we begin to examine Crane in the context of his own existence, free of the fictional trappings of his most acclaimed achievements. What is most notable in Crane's series of letters to Mrs. Crouse is the tone of his amorous supplications. He gracefully exploits his growing fame and growing success as a published artist with a good-natured self-deprecation and a penchant for undermining his own efforts. The series of letters begins with a carefully constructed statement to provoke a sympathetic response from Mrs. Crouse. Employing "internal" reactions to his celebrity to impress, he relies on an aura of exotic settings and playful humor to elicit a response. Having managed to obtain an apparently satisfactory answer, he enthusiastically raises the temperature of the correspondence with his second letter. Without compromising further relationships with Mrs. Crouse, his words adopt a sharper degree of intimacy, with Crane even going so far as to volunteer to take her literary advice. The third letter cuts to the heart of Crane's correspondence, as he begins to seriously try to convince Mrs.