Ancient Evil in McTeague

In McTeague, once the dentist has become self-aware of the brute within himself during one of Trina’s many consultations, a sort of brooding evil is presented as a commonality in man’s disposition throughout his evolutionary history. Describing this sense of fraternal belonging awakened in McTeague, Norris writes, “The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins” (Norris 24). Now of course, the presentation of McTeague as an oafish simpleton in his daily life could be considered a play on Darwin’s presentation of Man; but this mysterious evil Norris evokes seems like an imaginative notion of Darwin’s savages who lack the evolutionary development of utilitarian mutual aid. I find these sort of ‘ancient evil’ sentiments to be dramatized to the point of distraction in McTeague, offering only an ambiguous explanation of gender relations for the story’s sake rather than reacting to Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Perhaps, I just don’t understand the point of elevating these transformative reflections, as we readily see the complications in the courtship between Trina and McTeague without Norris noting Trina is apprehensive due to the “intuitive feminine fear of the male” (Norris 26). Is this evil that provokes the “intuitive feminine fear of the male” essentially the notion that men throughout the ages have hurt women physically and emotionally? I tend to think this may be the case, but again, I don’t really know how to handle these ancient sentiments that react to a Darwinian conception of inheritance while attaching the stigma of a longstanding ‘evil.’

Through Savage Eyes: McTeague's Bestial Perspective

Throughout the novel, Norris constantly portrays McTeague as a none-too-bright, slavish, uncommunicative brute. These character traits are more than a result of poor education or a poor understanding of the world--they are actually produced by the way McTeague views his environment. He only understands things in terms of his brutish nature, and he has a strict worldview that allows few deviations. Things like currency and directional orientation confuse him, such as in the theatre episode in which McTeague must organize a show and dinner for the Sieppe family. While he tries to buy tickets, “…McTeague got into wrong entrances; was sent from one wicket to another; was bewildered, confused; misunderstood directions” (74). This menial task is confusing for him because it deviates from his normal schedule of: eat, smoke, sleep, and play the concertina (2).

McTeague also stumbles sluggishly in his conversation, especially when he speaks with Marcus or Trina. His speech is marked with repetition of what he hears, stammering of phrases, uneasiness of answering, and confusion of any abstract thought. After hearing a political rant by Marcus, McTeague can only reply with a lone phrase or word he hears: “Yes, yes, that’s it—self-control—that’s the word” (10). Oddly, later in the novel, he is enraptured by the sound of the lilting language used by the comedy performers in the theatre. He understands almost none of what they’re saying, but he’s entertained nonetheless, like a dog listening to his master’s commands.

The novel recalls Darwin at several points, but one salient example that stood out to me was when McTeague is lodged in Sieppe’s house, in Trina’s room. His sense of smell is remarkably keen in these moments, as he picks up the pungent aroma of Trina’s perfume on her clothes. His sense of smell is directly connected to his memory faculties. The scent of Trina immediately takes McTeague back to when he first met her in his office, in her black dress. These moments are some of the most evocative in the novel, as McTeague is filled with such a primal delight as smelling the female pheromones. Darwin remarks in The Descent of Man that the sense of smell in his so-called savages is more developed than that of the cultured man (187). McTeague absolutely displays evidence of being more savage than the other characters.

It’s strange, though, that McTeague works as a dentist, a profession that requires extensive knowledge and practice. One would think he would be unqualified for such a job. Perhaps he has learned the trade through rote memorization and muscle memory, for the sheer amount of abstract knowledge required of him is fundamentally outside his mental powers. There must be something savagely satisfying in having agency over human teeth, which are used for the most primal survival instincts—eating.

Freudian Influences in Franks Norris's McTeague

In Frank Norris’s novel McTeague the reader is exposed to a continuum of behaviors that range from the overly socialized and self-conscious attempts at sophistication by the characters to the brutish displays of hostility amongst men and beasts; but an interesting pattern that emerges from this display of “social instincts” is Norris’s investigation into the psyche of his characters. This investigation, in several ways, mirrors the trends of another prominent investigator of psychosocial tendencies of people: Sigmund Freud. Freud’s fully developed and most influential work was achieved early in the 20^th century, just after the first World War--too late to have influenced this novel (published in 1899) but the earliest stages of Freud’s work, and the beginning of the “psychoanalytical” discussion, actually began much earlier in the 1890’s. Freud first used his term “psychoanalysis” in the year 1896 and had started a controversial and very public discussion of this psychological approach to understanding hysteria and other psychological conditions with the 1895 publication of Studies on Hysteria, in which Freud discusses hysteria in women as a treatable condition and one that results from, as Peter Gray puts it, “sexual malfunctioning.”¹ I point to these dates to show that it is quite possible to think that perhaps Frank Norris was aware of this psychoanalytic discussion that was taking place during this time and to suggest that we can read its influence in his novel.

The first instance of the influence of Freud’s psychoanalytical theory that I was struck by was the way in which Norris describes his two main protagonists, McTeague and Trina. The syntax of his sentences when describing these characters' disposition and mental qualities struck me as very odd--as being almost diagnostic or list like: “McTeague’s mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish […] Altogether he suggested the draft horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient” (Norris, 3). At first, I thought perhaps that this was simply Norris’s descriptive style, but as the book progresses we find that this list like categorization of qualities typically only appears in reference to McTeague and Trina, and that as we gather a better understanding of their mental qualities during the progression of the novel Norris eventually abandons this descriptive listing approach. For me the effect was as though he were categorizing these character’s dispositions and displaying them as background information preceding their “symptomatic” and precipitate actions-- a very Freudian approach to character explanation and description.

In these two characters Norris also exposes to us their mysterious “second selves,” who possess better or worse qualities than the ‘true selves’ that are on display for the social world to register--a pattern which hints directly at Freud’s eventual idea of the Id, Ego, and Super Ego. These Freudian drives were not published in his work until later in the 20^th Century, but to what degree they were discussed prior to this publication or whether Norris preempted, in this rudimentary form, Freud’s definitive characterization of impulses I cannot say--certainly however, the resemblance is worth noting.

Other instances of this psychoanalytical influence in Norris’s novel comes in the character Maria Macapa, who’s hysteria (or possibly truthful childhood memories...) of the “Golden service” and her flying squirrel would have made for a very interesting case in Freud’s study of hysterical women--and is one that, interestingly enough, is resolved (if it is indeed a hysteria) by a restoration of her sexuality after her marriage to Zerkow.

These brief examples are all given to highlight the resemblance of Norris’s treatment of his character’s psyche to the contemporary psychoanalytical discussion that was being led by Sigmund Freud; and provides an interesting extra-dimension for the explanation of social instincts and actions that had been lacking or rudimentary in form in literature hitherto this influence.

*1. I reference here Peter Gray’s introduction to the Norton Standard Edition of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents

The Voyage of the Snark

In 1907, at the age of thirty-one, Jack London undertook a grand Pacific voyage with his second wife and a few crewmen in a small ketch of his own design and construction. The Cruise of the Snark is a non-fictional account of that voyage. London includes a great number of photographs from the voyage as illustrations to the book, with pictures of the landscapes and inhabitants of many of the strange islands in which they made port. The following post will offer what little I have gathered from a skimming of that account, and from secondary sources available online, and will hopefully give everyone a notion of London's adventuresome personality, which seeps through into the writing of his works of fiction, like The Call of the Wild.

London gives two main reasons for setting sail. For one, the voyage would serve as a personal fitness test for London himself. He writes that the "achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment to a sternly exacting environment," and that "the more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment." He wanted to test himself. He had rather risk his life, like a man who "leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool," instead of "the fellows who sat on the bank and watched him. The second reason London wanted to make the journey was one of curiosity. "Being alive, I want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to see than one small town or valley," London writes.

The Snark was a forty-five foot long sailing boat, which cost London "three hundred and ninety-five dollars" to build. Its named comes from Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark, so-named, says London, "because we could not think of any other name." It launched from San Francisco on April 23, 1907, eventually visiting Hawaii, where London learned to surf, the Marquesas islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Bora Bora, the Soloman islands, and finally, Australia, where London took ill for five weeks, suspending the journey. According to the foreword to The Cruise, the journey was to have been truly epic in scope had London's health kept up; they had intended to visit "New Guinea, Borneo, and Sumatra, and go on up through the Phillipines and Japan," to continue south and west along Asia's southern coast, visiting "Korea, China, India, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean." London intended it as a world voyage, planning to spend "from one to several months in every country in Europe," and to take the Snark inland onto the waters of every major river on the globe, "up the Nile," "up the Danube to Vienna," "up the Thames to London," "up the Seine to Paris," and so on. The itinerary would eventually even bring the little bark back to American waters, where they would "go up the Hudson, pass through the Erie canal, cross the Great Lakes, leave Lake Michigan at Chicago, gain access to the Mississippi by way of the Illinois River and the connecting canal, and go down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico."

"We'll know something about geography when we get back to California," wrote London.

The journey was not as successful as it was ambitious, but nonetheless London, his wife Charmian, and the crew visited numerous exotic locales, and almost certainly put London's survival instincts to the test, as he wanted. I suppose his journey-ending illness is a sign that ultimately, based on his own criteria, the self-described "fallible and frail" Jack London was unfit for such a voyage, something which surely must have bothered him.

Within Call of the Wild, Where is Darwin's Mark?

As discussed in class, it is difficult to view this brief novella as anything other than a tale from a dog's point of view. However, as I was reading it for Monday, I noticed rather quickly that Darwinism did influence the text. I do not mean that term as a pejorative. I do not believe this book would have been written if it were not for the existence of the theory of Natural Selection and all that jazz.

What follows is an account of my observations of more subtler aspects of the tale of Buck. Firstly a non-Darwin related scene, I will start with page 62 of my editon (which unfortunately is a Harper-Collins DS cartridge), on this page it reads, "Buck wondered where they went, for they never came back; but the fear of the future was so strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected." This is happening as the man in the red sweater is selling off the dogs. The story is symbolic of 'death.' Yes, as throughout generations of humankind, we have wondered "where they went" in relation to the dead, and we 'fear' the unknown, not wanting to be 'selected.'

Now, to the meat and bones, I want to focus on Darwin's hand in this work. Firstly, I will point your attention to the text's language. In various places dehumanizing language is geared toward humans themselves. The best example comes at the end of chapter 2, when the narration refers to the gardener's wife and his 'divers copies of himself.' Wow, this language is quite strikingly Darwinian really, and also take away the warm feeling that the more appropriate word, "children" might have if inserted in lieu of London's choice of words.

Next, there is a striking passage which lasts 5 DS pages, but hopefully I can condense it. To me, its content is Natural Selectionesque, and exists only because of the author's awareness of the Origin of Species. In relation to Buck's first theft the author writes that it, "marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death.' This passage remarks on the idea of species having to adapt to meet their conditions, lest they perish. Now, this may not seem entirely Darwinian as of yet, but the London goes on to write that this 'marked, further, the decay...of his moral nature, a vain handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.' Wow, I feel as if I had just been reading our Darwin texts, and so should you. As the passage goes on, London starts describing this "decivilising of Buck as "his development (or retrogression), as if humoring a reader by adding a contrary adjective to describe Buck is going through. Without a doubt, these passages come from years of the phrases 'survival of the fittest,' and 'natural selection' being harolded across the globe. By London's time, I'm sure that Darwinian thought has become as cultural as it is today.

I conclude here. I hope I have left the impression that I have read Darwinian thought into the text. Its there as clear as day in chapter 2 in the very least. Most of the previous paragraph was developed on that chapter.