What does Maxine stand for in gogol's life?

Maxine stands for the opposite of a nice Bengali girl that his parents want him to end up with. Maxine stands for America, the uninhibited pleasure of individuality and money. Maxine represents acceptance of self which Gogol has struggled with most of his life,

"She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way. This, in his opinion, is the biggest difference between them, a thing far more foreign to him than the beautiful house she'd grown up in, her education at private schools."