Thursday, October 25, 2012

Angry For Two, Please


            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.
          

1 comment:

  1. I like your description of McTeague this is really nice. All I have to say is that Norris really liked to make woman little,delicate, brainless and gold diggers. When I was reading how delicately shaped these women were depicted I was like he was degrading women. I don't know what to say other than those times people had a weird perception of women.

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