A Child of the Big City traces the heroine Mon'ka's evolution from a poor innocent seamstress to a monster of depravity and egotism. Her "rise" is paralleled by the fall of her idealistic admirer, Viktor, who finally commits suicide in face of her callous disregard. Film historian Miriam Hansen has noted this unusual variation on the familiar melodrama schema of the male aggressor and female victim: "Bauer's contemporary urban and upper-class settings display male ruin and inadequacy as an effect of the real or imagined revenge of a powerful woman."