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Time can be a ruthless judge. Some great novels are soon forgotten, while other novels become landmarks even though they are not necessarily great. _McTeague_ (1899) is an example of the latter. The novel has not aged well. Many of its characters are caricatures, the symbolism is often heavy-handed (the miserly Trina’s teeth click “like the snap of a closing purse”), and like many works of realist/naturalist fiction it tends to portray human beings as mere victims of their environment. And yet, _McTeague_ has many redeeming qualities. The story itself, which is based on a real-life case, is compelling, and it paved the way for later American tragedies such as Dreiser’s _Sister Carrie_ (1900) and Fitzgerald’s _The Great Gatsby_ (1925).
If one is to appreciate _McTeague_, one is required to transport oneself to the time when the novel was published, a time when, under the influence of European realism/naturalism, American authors turned to themes that seemed lurid to respectable readers. The gigantic figure of Henry James looms over this epoch, but this is also the age of Kate Chopin and Stephen Crane. _McTeague_ appeared the same year as _The Awakening_. Crane’s _Maggie: A Girl of the Streets_ was published in 1893; _The Red Badge of Courage_, in 1895. The previous decades had seen the appearance of Mark Twain’s _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ (1876) and _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ (1884). Naturalistic tragedies were by no means a new thing (Rebecca Harding Davies’ _Life in the Iron Mills_ was published in 1861), but by the end of the nineteenth century the dark side of the industrial world was simply impossible to ignore. In his brief introduction to American literature, which he co-write with Esther Zemborain, Jorge Luis Borges comments that Frank Norris was a Romantic until he “converted to the naturalism of Zola.” Borges gives credit to Norris, however, for immersing himself in real life (he worked in the fields as part of his research for the “wheat trilogy”) instead of getting his information from libraries.
_McTeague_ is, at first sight, the story of a self-proclaimed dentist. This simple, bear-like man falls in love with Trina Sieppe, a lady who is a little more sophisticated than he is. Marcus Schouler, Trina’s cousin, completes the love triangle. The plot is set in motion when Trina purchases a lottery ticket and wins $5,000. _McTeague_ is a story of money and what it does to people. (Erich von Stroheim adapted it to film in 1924 under the title of _Greed_.) Norris prefigures the Lost Generation in its criticism of the mindless pursuit of wealth that characterized post-industrial American society.
Norris’ world is a gray, dirty place where one must dominate or be dominated. McTeague is not a real doctor, and what he calls his “Dental Parlor” is “cheap and shabby.” Trina is initially his patient, and he finds her particularly arousing when she is lying helpless on the dental chair, under the effect of anesthesia. “Suddenly he leaned over and kissed her,” we are told, “grossly, full on the mouth. The thing was done before he knew it.” One can only imagine how such a scene would have been received at the time the novel was published. Later on, Trina will accept McTeague’s kiss, but this will produce a negative reaction in him. “The instant Trina gave up, the instant she allowed him to kiss her, he thought less of her.” A textbook case of what Freud termed the Madonna-whore complex. According to Norris, “the changeless order of things” consists in “the man desiring the woman only for what she withholds; the woman worshiping the man for that which she yields up to him. With each concession gained the man’s desire cools; with every surrender made the woman’s adoration increases.” And yet Norris knew about the human ability to accept and even become addicted to abuse. Eventually we learn that “in some strange, inexplicable way [McTeague’s] brutality made Trina all the more affectionate; aroused in her a morbid, unwholesome love of submission, a strange, unnatural pleasure in yielding, in surrendering herself to the will of an irresistible, virile power.” An over-the-top, self-indulgent description, perhaps, but the problem described is an unfortunate reality, for both sexes. I was reminded of Charles Dickens justifying his character Nancy from _Oliver Twist_ (1838) to readers who would refuse to believe that a woman would remain with her abuser.
Secondary characters, especially “ethnic” ones, are mostly caricatures. Listen to the description of Zerkow, the Polish Jew who runs a “junk shop”: he is “a dry, shriveled old man of sixty odd, [with] the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris; and claw-like, prehensile fingers--the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses. It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed--inordinate, insatiable greed--was the dominant passion of the man.” Maria Macapa, the Mexican maid, is the Other, “a strange woman of mixed race […] unusual, complex, mysterious, even at her best.” Zerkow loves to hear Maria describe the service of gold plate her family supposedly owned. “Were her parents at one time possessed of an incalculable fortune derived from some Central American coffee plantation,” the narrator muses, “a fortune long since confiscated by armies of insurrectionists, or squandered in the support of revolutionary governments?” The (imaginary) Central American fortune is more likely to have been sold to multinational interests, but never mind that…. Trina’s family, the Sieppes, are a stereotypical German family. They only appear in the first third of the novel, but the reader gets the chance to hear about Mr. Sieppe’s brutal treatment of his young son. In the densest darkness, however, a light shines through; this one is provided by Mr. Grannis and Miss Baker, the older residents of the building, who secretly yearn for each other. They suggest that not everybody suffers in this world, but at one point the narrator decides to leave them to themselves.
As I noted above, the main problem with naturalism (into which realism quickly degenerated) is that it takes away human free will. Humans are moved by forces beyond their control: money, power, the environment, the struggle to survive. Norris chose to structure his unfinished masterpiece (the trilogy, of which he completed the first two volumes) not around humans, but around a commodity: wheat. There is some truth to this Marxist perspective: the forces around us are important, and they do shape us. They do not, however, abolish our free will. The best proof of this is in the moral variety one may find throughout the socio-economic spectrum. To deny individual freedom is as simplistic as refusing to believe that the environment in which we exist has some effect on our character.
It may seem that I have mostly criticized _McTeague_, and yet I have given it four stars. I simply want to make clear that this is not necessarily a great novel. It may be a good novel, or at least a good example of naturalism. It is a good story, and I happen to agree with its thesis: money corrupts. It is also an important novel, a necessary step before Dreiser and the Lost Generation. Few people would deny that _McTeague_ would make it into a list of the ten most influential American novels of the nineteenth century.
A final thought. Norris criticized Stephen Crane for paying more attention to style than to “life.” Crane is much more literary than Norris. (He was a poet, after all.) There is still quite a bit of “life” in Crane’s work, if you ask me. As usual, what A says about B tells you more about A than about B.
I will give _The Octopus_ (1901) and _The Pit_ (1903) a try someday.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!
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Customer reviews
Excellent Novel, And Made Into An Epic Cinematic Masterpiece.
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2018
The basis for Erich von Stroheim's infamously butchered epic Greed, McTeague: A Story Of San Francisco, is a good read, and goes into more detail about the wife's stinginess than the stills in the reconstructed 239 minute version does, though it's highly probable that the lost footage, rumoured to be anywhere from four to eight and even ten hours long, contained this material. Having seen the masterpiece a few months ago was a great advantage for me, as I had most of the images in my head while I was reading the novel. Read the novel, and see the cinematic photoplay, if you have XFinity via Comcast; the 239 minute reconstructed version is available On Demand for $3.99 in High Definition. For some reason, Greed is not available on home video in its reconstructed format, it is only available on videotape in its truncated 140 minute version.
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2018
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H. Tee
Realistic, dark but lacking a certain something
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Kindle edition is full of errors
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 7, 2021Last Gabriella Marlesford
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