In
the beginning of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague,
a young bachelor lives out his life quietly and contently as an uneducated
dentist. Throughout the most of the first quarter of the book a docile, and
overall mute, McTeague ends up falling in love with a woman named Trina, who
doesn’t love the monstrous man until he embraces her, and that’s when it’s
decided the couple will get married. And at first, the couple is happy: “There
she was, his little woman… her adorable little chin thrust upward with that
familiar movement of innocence and confidence” (Norris, 98). Both McTeague and Trina
find themselves increasingly attached, so much so that they tell themselves it
would be hard to imagine being with anyone else. I believe Norris sets up this
romantic scene in order to detour the audience away from what is down the road
for each person. It keeps the readers immersed in the seemingly ordinary and
natural world the newly wedded couple exists in, and yet later this seemingly
impenetrable love dies away and anger, with the help of greed, fills in the gap
for both spouses that once held their eternal appreciation for one another.
After
being married for a year, Trina becomes frustrated by her rash decision to
marry McTeague. She soon rationalizes her way out the conflict by giving up
what little self-determinism is left and professes to being entirely McTeague’s: “it was only AFTER her marriage with the
dentist that she really begun to love him… She loved him because had given
herself… unreservedly; had merged her individuality into his… she belonged to
him forever” (Norris, 112). This sudden switch of mentality into a submissive demeanor,
one so salient that Trina literally “merges her individuality” and no longer
cares how McTeague acts, but instead only knows she will never abandon him I
think Norris uses this scene to demonstrate the slow but sure shift of the
couple’s relationship. Even more so, it seems to relate to what was going on
between men and women during the early twentieth century: men were, as they
frequently still are today, considered to be the “bread-winners” of the
household; women simply existed as a sort of pleasurable object that, if
well-bred and capable enough, should be able to meet any and every desire thrust
upon her by the husband. Fast forward to where McTeague loses his job as a
dentist and it’s obvious where the marriage is head: complete erosion.
Zooming
near the end of chapter nineteen the audience witnesses the abrupt disappearance
and reappearance of McTeague, who, before taking a short sojourn, steals all of
Trina’s hidden savings. Her uncontrollable ire boils hotter than ever as the frail
wife finds her money stolen: “I could have forgiven him if he had only gone way
and left me my money… I could have forgiven even THIS’—she looked at the stumps…
But now… now—I’ll—never—forgive—him—as-long—as—I—live” (Norris, 214). Trina no
longer feels any love toward her brutishly stupid husband who has taken from
her what she values most, what has planted itself and grow into an indomitable
force like her affection for McTeague used to be, and vows to never help the
asinine giant ever again (not that she did very much in the first place). As the
wife’s rage solidifies into lasting bitterness, McTeague becomes savagely cruel
toward his wife, i.e. biting her fingers, pinching her incessantly, and smacking
her with a hairbrush.
Circling back to the
original wedge between the spouses, consuming greed caused the division between
Trina and McTeague that then kicked into motion the angry felt by both; Trina
hates her husband for stealing the four hundred dollars and the dentist hates
his wife for being an over-the-board miser. True to the pessimistic style of
Naturalism, the audience later on reads about the dentist’s raging behavior and
his destroying of Trina: “[McTeague] all at once sent his fist into the middle
of her face with the suddenness of a relaxed spring… his enormous fists,
clenched till the knuckles whitened, raised in the air” (Norris, 224). Finally
through dealing with his wife, the inebriated husband finds Trina’s trunk of
cash, and picking the canvas sack, goes out into the street, void of any
remorse for the death of Trina. I believe that Norris presents these cruel
details to his audience because he wants them to realized being angry will only
end in death for everyone, or perhaps worse in some aspects, people will their
lives feeling bitterness toward another person because of a disagreement or
conflict that should have been dealt with in a more healthy and productive
manner. Even near the beginning Norris seems to hint at this: Marcus Schouler
acts as a nasty caricature of what tragedies are soon to befall both Trina and
McTeague, and even though the dentist has a chance to make amends he chooses
not to which, I believe, seals the unfortunate fate of him and his wife. Needless
to say one should probably stray from sequestering negative emotions like
angry.
For
me one of the most intriguing facets of Johnson’s novel is that never once is
any character given a proper name, and while at first it can be less engaging
to read, the idea behind only giving nicknames allows for the reader to focus
on something more salient: the idea that the white man’s perspective and way of
life can be just as convoluted and pressuring as the black man’s own. Growing
up as a child the main character acts as if he is white—even though it becomes
clear this is false via the school staff separating him from the other white
children— and yet he struggles with issues of trying to pass through life as a
respectable boy: “I shall never
forget the bewilderment, the pain, the heart-sickness, of that first day at
school. I seemed to be the only stranger in the place” (Chp1, Johnson).
Regardless of whether you’re white black, or blue, you’re still going to have
to face the same problems that every person encounters growing up; and I think
that theme, that everyone goes through life trying to overcome the same or
similar situations, is what Johnson is trying to impress upon his readers: he
doesn’t want them to fixate on a specific character or their behavior, so he
simply cuts out their names and pastes in a quirky pet name. 
