McTeague
AuthorFrank Norris
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreNaturalism
PublisherDoubleday & McClure
Publication date
1899

McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, otherwise known as simply McTeague, is a novel by Frank Norris, first published in 1899. It tells the story of a couple's courtship and marriage, and their subsequent descent into poverty and violence as the result of jealousy and greed. The book was the basis for the films McTeague (1916) and Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924). It was also adapted as an opera by William Bolcom in 1992.

Plot summary

McTeague is a dentist of limited intellect from a poor miner's family, who has opened a dentist shop on Polk Street in San Francisco (his first name is never revealed; other characters in the novel call him simply "Mac."). His best friend, Marcus Schouler, brings his cousin, Trina Sieppe, whom he's courting, to McTeague's parlor for dental work. McTeague becomes infatuated with Trina while working on her teeth, and Marcus graciously steps aside. McTeague successfully woos Trina. Shortly after, the two have kissed and declared their love for each other, Trina discovers that she has won $5,000 (roughly $181,000 in 2023 values) from a lottery ticket. In the ensuing celebration Trina's mother, Mrs. Sieppe, announces that McTeague and Trina are to marry. Marcus becomes jealous of McTeague and claims that he's been cheated out of money that would have been rightfully his if he had married Trina.

The marriage takes place, and Mrs. Sieppe, along with the rest of Trina's family, moves away from San Francisco, leaving her alone with McTeague. Trina proves to be a parsimonious wife; she refuses to touch the principal of her $5,000, which she invests with her uncle. She insists that she and McTeague must live on the earnings from McTeague's dental practice, the small income from the $5,000 investment, and the money that she earns from carving small wooden figures of Noah's animals and his Ark for sale in her uncle's shop. Secretly, she accumulates penny-pinched savings in a locked trunk. Though the couple is happy, the friendship between Marcus and McTeague deteriorates. More than once, the two men come to grips; each time McTeague's immense physical strength prevails, and eventually, he breaks Marcus's arm in a fight. When Marcus recovers, he goes south, intending to become a rancher; before he leaves, he visits McTeague, and he and McTeague part apparently as friends.

Catastrophe strikes when McTeague is debarred from practicing dentistry by the authorities. It becomes clear that before leaving, Marcus has taken revenge on Mac by informing city hall that he has no license or academic degree. McTeague loses his practice and the couple is forced to move into successively poorer quarters, as Trina becomes more and more miserly. Their life together deteriorates, with McTeague escalating in his abuse until he steals all of Trina's domestic savings of $400 (roughly $14,000 in 2023 values) and abandons her. Meanwhile, Trina falls completely under the spell of money and withdraws the principal of her prior winnings in gold from her uncle's firm so she can admire and handle the coins in her room, at one point spreading them over her bed and rolling around in them.

When McTeague returns, destitute once more, Trina refuses to give him money even for food. McTeague angrily beats her to death. He then takes the entire hoard of gold and heads out to a mining community that he had left years prior. Sensing pursuit, he makes his way south towards Mexico. Meanwhile, Marcus hears of the murder and joins the manhunt for McTeague, finally catching him in Death Valley. In the middle of the desert, Marcus and McTeague fight over McTeague's remaining water and Trina's $5,000. McTeague mortally wounds Marcus, but as he dies, Marcus handcuffs himself to McTeague. The final, dramatic image of the novel is one of McTeague stranded, alone, and helpless. He's left with only the company of Marcus's corpse, to whom he's handcuffed, in the desolate, arid waste of Death Valley.

Background

Frank Norris wrote McTeague in the San Francisco of the 1890s, and much of the book uses the local detail of this setting. He began the novel when at the English Department of Harvard University in 1895, although the bulk of the work was written in 1897. McTeague's murder of Trina is believed to be based on the murder of Mrs Sarah Collins, who was killed in late 1893 by her husband after she refused to give him money.[1][2] He was also greatly influenced by the realism and plotting of the novels of Emile Zola. In researching the terminology and practises of dentistry, Norris predominantly used Thomas Fillebrown's A Text-book of Operative Dentistry.[3]

Adaptations

Fania Marinoff and Holbrook Blinn in Life's Whirlpool (1916).

References

  1. ^ Pizer, Donald (1966). "The Genesis of McTeague". The Novels of Frank Norris. Indiana: Indiana University Press. pp. 52–63.
  2. ^ "A Brutal Murder". The Morning Call, San Francisco. 10 October 1893. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
  3. ^ Kaplan, Charles (1954). "Fact into Fiction in McTeague". Harvard Literary Bulletin (VIII): 381–385.

Further reading

  • Bender, Bert (1999). "Frank Norris on the Evolution and Repression of the Sexual Instinct", Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 73–103.
  • Campbell, Donna M. (1993). "Frank Norris' 'Drama of a Broken Teacup': The Old Grannis-Miss Baker Plot in McTeague", American Literary Realism, 1870–1910, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, pp. 40–49.
  • Collins, Carvel (1950). "Introduction" to McTeague. New York: Rinehart.
  • Cowley, Malcolm (1947). "Naturalism's Terrible McTeague", New Republic, Vol. CXVI, p. 31–33.
  • Dillingham, W.B. (1977). "The Old Folks of McTeague". In: Donald Pizer (ed.), McTeague. New York: Norton.
  • Freedman, William (1980). "Oral Passivity and Oral Sadism in Norris's McTeague", Literature and Psychology, Vol. XXX, pp. 52–61.
  • Graham, Don (1980). "Art in McTeague". In: Critical Essays on Frank Norris. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., pp. 75–84.
  • Hochman, Barbara (1986). "Loss, Habit, Obsession: The Governing Dynamic of McTeague", Studies in American Fiction, Vol. XIV, No. 2, pp. 179–190.
  • Hug, William J. (1991). "McTeague as Metafiction? Frank Norris' Parodies of Bret Harte and the Dime Novel", Western American Literature, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 219–228.
  • Kaplan, Charles (1954). "Fact into Fiction in McTeague", Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. VIII, pp. 381–385.
  • Lardy, Leonard Anthony (1959). "McTeague: A Study in Determinism, Romanticism and Fascism", (M.A. Thesis) Montana State University.
  • Litton, Alfred G. (1991). "The Kinetoscope in McTeague: 'The Crowning Scientific Achievement of the Nineteenth Century'", Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 107–712.
  • Mahin, Sarah Jane (1944). Formative Influences on Frank Norris's Novel McTeague. (M.A. Thesis), University of Iowa.
  • McElrath, Jr., Joseph R. (1975). "The Comedy of Frank Norris's McTeague", Studies in American Humor, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 88–95.
  • Miller, Edwin Haviland (1979). "The Art of Frank Norris in McTeague", Markham Review, Vol. VIII, pp. 61–65.
  • Morris, Ethiel Virginia (1928). Frank Norris' Trilogy on American Life. (M.A. Thesis), University of Kansas.
  • Johnson, George W. (1962). "The Frontier behind Frank Norris' McTeague", Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, pp. 91–104.
  • Pizer, Donald (1997). "The Biological Determinism of McTeague in Our Time", American Literary Realism, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 27–33
  • Shroeder, John (1981). "The Shakespearean Plots of McTeague", American Literary Realism, 1870–1910, Vol. XIV, No. 2, pp. 289–296.
  • Spangler, George M. (1978). "The Structure of McTeague", English Studies, Vol. LIX, pp. 48–56.
  • Ware, Thomas C. (1981). "'Gold to Airy Thinness Beat': The Midas Touch in Frank Norris's McTeague", Interpretations, Vol. XIII, No. 1, pp. 39–47.

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