Brown ADMNo, No— 3 May 1993Self Control & Destiny in Frank Norris’s McTeague

“Julien’s eye followed mechanically the bird of prey. Its calm, powerful emotion impressed him, he envied such strength, he envied such isolation. It was the destiny of Napoleon, was it one day to be his own?”

—Stendahl, The Red and the Black

Julien’s strength, like Napoleon’s and like that of all other men, is relative to those

around him. The hawk is powerful only in that it can fly above all other creatures.

Its strength is equivalent to its isolation. Loss of either is loss of both. For Julien,

though, strength must be an expression of his control over his surroundings.

Escape is not an option. Strength, really, is the ability to control that destiny, to

bring it upon oneself without reliance on chance or providence. It is with some

telling irony, then, that Stendahl links isolation, destiny, and strength in his novel,

and it is appropriate that in his afterword to Frank Norris’s McTeague, Kenneth

Rexroth posits The Red and the Black as a “precedent” for Norris’s effort.

McTeague is a text filled with characters trapped in destiny who are too weak to

escape or too brutish to change, or even understand, their fate. Nearly all the

prominent characters eventually lose or are robbed of their ability to reason,

which doubles as their means of comprehension and their one link to free will.

Not surprisingly, Norris’s tale ends not with a romantic vision of a diligent but

slow-minded young man who works himself to prosperity, but with the senseless,

nearly absurd, image of a world gone mad, bedeviled by the love of possession and

the drive for control. The characters seek to be great as Napoleon, to be the

masters of their worlds, but their pursuit of such mastery inevitably fails as a

result of their thoughtless, stubborn greed. Norris binds his characters to their

respective class limitations, and in so doing conflates their social strata with their

human identities, but at the same time he is critical of their misdirected ambition

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and their attempts to alter their destinies as members of a certain class. Because

their wealth originated from chance, and not from labor, Norris dismisses his

characters’ forays into higher culture. Norris’s firm generalizations — the Jew is

born into avarice, McTeague is born into brutish stupidity, the old Englishman is

born into complacence — hinder any attempts the characters make to rid

themselves of their respective constraints until those attempts result in madness.

Although he regularly uses stereotypes such as these to emphasize heredity and

environment’s role in determining the fortunes of his characters, Norris does not

attribute their failure solely to these factors. McTeague, for example, is born into

a lower class, but becomes a dentist of sorts, and manages to marry a woman he

thought was “too good for him, too delicate, too refined” and meant “for some

finer-grained man” (43). But his all-consuming desire for possession pushes him

to attain his goals, and then grown increasingly disillusioned with them. The

struggle for self-control1 , in all meanings of the term, becomes for Norris’s

characters a consuming, but finally futile effort.

This is a fundamentally ironic device, if we are to believe Norris’s synoptic

biographer who writes that “Norris was...intensely self-willed” (Norris,

frontispiece). It is evident from Norris’s language and treatment of his characters

that were they properly motivated (as, perhaps, he was), they could solve most of

their problems. But since, according to Rexroth, Norris employs a

“refreshing...moral earnestness” (341) and since, according to the biographer,

“naturalism was...the foundation of Norris’s artistic credo” (frontispiece), the

reader could somewhat safely assume that Norris intended to portray a group of

people whose intrinsic low class and lack of proper direction lead to its downfall

1 Self-control, for purposes of discussion, will here refer to control both over one’s own behavior in particular circumstances and over one’s general destiny. For McTeague, holding back from kissing a gassed Trina would be an exercise of his self-control, as would have been keeping his dental practice. Involved with the latter is a somewhat nebulous goal called “success,” the meaning of which the reader perhaps can infer from Norris’s own life and his tone towards his characters.

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as a victim of “unconquered....savage...indifferent” (293) nature. They are never

meant to find success, and so the work is not, as the synoptician would have the

reader believe, “unsparing in its objectivity” (back cover). It is naturalism, not

realism, and, if Rexroth is right, Norris’s audience should reap some lesson, or at

least some pointed advice, from the novel. Understanding this is crucial to seeing

the novel as Norris’s fictive interpretation, and not just his scientific or journalistic

documentation, of social mobility and nobility in the early 20th-century America.

The novel indicates Norris believed the most prevalent concern among Americans

was control of one’s destiny, control of one’s self. “The masses must learn self-

control, it stands to reason,” Marcus declares. “Understanding never a word” and

not even in control of his own mental faculties, McTeague responds, “Yes, yes,

that’s it—self-control” (14).

Despite the words that flow unchecked from his mouth, McTeague lacks

self-control with regard to his professional and personal lives. Consideration of

his professional path illustrates the full-circle path McTeague and other

characters follow over the course of the novel, and is emblematic of Norris’s

apparent belief in regression to class. McTeague began his life of labor as a boy

working in the mines. It was, no doubt, physically grueling labor appropriate to

the towering and exceptionally strong young man, and it required little mental

effort. This is the kind of work, Norris suggests, in which McTeague belongs.

Strong, slow-minded men should work in such jobs that require strength and slow-

minds, while those of intelligence but weaker frames should confine themselves to

positions of a less physical nature. Interestingly, Norris suggests not merely that

McTeague’s attempting to leave his “intended” position is a difficult and

dangerous enterprise, but also that it is in large part responsible for his undoing.

Had he remained a miner, had he never bothered with silk hats and expensive

tobacco, McTeague would have lived a happier and more fruitful life.

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From his mining job, McTeague learns the dental trade “mostly by watching

the charlatan operate. He had read many of the necessary books, but he was too

hopelessly stupid to get much benefit from them” (6). This is to say that

McTeague is a dentist in a physical capacity only. He has no degree, no diploma

to symbolize his education or intellectual training. He is, to Norris, as much a

dentist as a type-writing monkey is an author. Worse still, McTeague apparently is

not blessed with the mind necessary to a true dental practice; in fact, Norris’s

language indicates McTeague’s status as a true man. Norris presents his

protagonist as a character barely worthy of the title “man.” He is a man as he is a

dentist, i.e., on the physical plane only. “McTeague’s mind was as his body,

heavy, slow to act, sluggish...Altogether, he suggested the draft horse, immensely

strong, stupid, docile, obedient” (7).

Opening his dental business with money his mother left him (6), allows

McTeague to fancy himself a dentist, and by extension, a “success” (7). It is

immaterial to him that his only qualifications for dental practice are having

watched a fake and coming into a small sum of money. He opened his Dental

Parlors, which was “in spite of the name...but one room” (7). McTeague was, in

spite of the name “Dentist,” but a miner, a draft horse. The one possession that

prevents McTeague from complacence is as meaningless to essence of dentistry as

naming one’s office “Dental Parlors.” McTeague does not feel whole as a dentist

until he realizes his dream of having “projecting from that corner window a huge

gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive.

He would have it some day, on that he was resolved” (8). This proposition

exaggerates signification to absurdity. McTeague believes he is a dentist because

he has a giant (exaggerated) tooth outside his office. That tooth makes him a

dentist; it is the essential, not accidental, feature of his office. The better his

tooth, the better his practice. Notably, McTeague’s labor as a dentist does not

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gain him the tooth. When he finally obtains his giant molar, it is through means

similar to how he originally opened his practice. Through some chance, his fiance

wins the lottery and bestows upon him his dream. The whole process is, Norris

suggests, unnatural.

When Marcus turns McTeague into the authorities, they shut him down not

because he practices badly, but because he practices illegally. In the minds of the

authorities, he is not really a dentist. McTeague reduces the job of the dentist to

one of brute force, not one of finesse. He pulls teeth with only his fingers, he

performs only “passable” bridge work on Trina. “The letter...informed McTeague

that he had never received a diploma from a dental college, and that in

consequence, he was forbidden to practice his profession any longer” (201).

Believing that behaving as a dentist is tantamount to being a dentist, McTeague

cannot understand this mentality. He can control the way he pulls teeth, the way

he uses his physicality to perform, but the mental part of the job is beyond his

control. Again, he falls back on superficialities to qualify his dentistry. “Ain’t I a

dentist? Ain’t I a doctor? Look at my sign and gold tooth you gave me. Why, I’ve

been practicing nearly twelve years,” he argues (202). The notion of real,

objectively judged work, as indicated by a diploma, does not operate in his

outlook. “What’s that—a diploma?” Trina, afflicted by the same blindness, can’t

answer him. Her husband is a dentist because she gave him a sign that said so,

and she can’t explain beyond its physical aspects, just as McTeague couldn’t

define dentistry beyond a behavioral proscription. “I don’t know exactly,” she

responds. “It’s a kind of paper that—that—oh, Mac, we’re ruined” (202) Lack of

any objective qualification as a dentist “ruins” McTeague, but he sees the diploma

only as “a piece of paper.” “I ain’t going to quit for just a piece of paper,” he

laments (205). The loss of his status as dentist is complete, however, when

Trina’s tears wipe away the remaining appointments. “That’s it,” Trina says.

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“That’s the way to rub it out, by me crying on it...All gone” (208). Instantly,

McTeague reverts to his physical stature, the part of himself he can control, as

consolation. “McTeague heaved himself up to his full six feet two, his face

purpling, his enormous malletlike fists raised over his head...‘If ever I meet

Marcus Schouler—’” he growls (208-9).

Abandoning his practice, McTeague works briefly for a surgical instrument

manufacturing company. In many ways, this job is the elimination of the mental

part of his dental practice. He need concern himself only with the most physical

parts of the trade. The tools that do the work, that scrape, build, slice, are what

he must concentrate on, not on the delicate use of these tools, not on talking and

working at the same time. This kind of manufacturing job, were it not so

grounded in precision, would be exactly with what McTeague should occupy

himself. Again, though, circumstances are beyond his control. He is laid off

because “times were getting hard an’ they had to let [him] go” (224). He, a

member of the labor class — the labor mass — is incapable of exercising his will or

his might to secure himself a job on that level. As a dentist, he had some authority

over himself until Marcus inspired the government to step in. In this case, his

employer may as well be his government, and McTeague cannot learn, as Marcus

suggests he should, “self-control.” McTeague is in this case a victim of

capitalism and capitalists, who according to Marcus, are “ruining the cause of

labor” (14).

It is this small instance of McTeague losing his manufacturing job that

exemplifies the trials of labor and the curses of capitalism better than does

McTeague’s experience as a dentist. The white-collar management class,

comprised of intellectual aristocrats, perhaps has grown top-heavy and must cut

excess away from its bottom tier, rather than eliminate themselves. It is at times

difficult to determine exactly how Norris feels about this situation, since by

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Rexroth’s account Norris was “a California aristocrat if there ever was one” (344).

He could believe that his own class was cruelly hypocritical in victimizing the

laborers, or he may have adopted the naturalistic and social Darwinistic approach

he exhibits in other parts of the novel and reasoned that because of their superior

intelligence, and consequent superior class, the managers are justified in

controlling their own destinies by controlling those of others. This feat is one of

which so many of the lower class characters in the novel are incapable. But the

characters of higher class seem able to control their destinies and those others

only by virtue of their being born into that higher class. In some sense, then, they

cannot control their fate any more than McTeague can control his. The higher

classes are bound into that class as much as McTeague is into his. Like

Steinbeck, Norris, Rexroth notes, chose to write about what he didn’t live, about

what he was not a part of — the lives of the working poor in California. In this

way, Norris through his writing denies higher class as the essence of his

character. He has the advantage of the aristocrats who, unlike the lower classes,

can manipulate those around (or below) them to their own advantage, further

securing their own place in the aristocracy. McTeague, however, cannot

successfully mimic the upper class. He is a miner, not a dentist, and despite his

insistence to the contrary, Norris and other members of a higher class such as

McTeague’s employers, can “make small” of him. He has no control over that.

Having lost his job as a manufacturer, McTeague attempts to find a job in

public service as a police officer. Once again, McTeague’s physical prowess is

sufficient, and his friends help him as much as possible, but McTeague lacks

motivation. “If McTeague had shown a certain energy in the matter, the attempt

might have been successful; but he was too stupid...McTeague had lost his

ambition” (235). It is now that Norris seems to become bitterly unsympathetic

toward his protagonist. Earlier in the story, Norris’s narrative would poke fun at

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and mock McTeague, but Norris’s “intensely self-willed” personality turns against

his character. The reader senses that if there is one trait Norris cannot tolerate, it

is lack of motivation. He seems to feel as though a character who has lost his

ambition has lost his vitality, his life, his self-control. Once McTeague decides

that he “did not want to better his situation” (235) McTeague descends into an idle

malaise and begins returning to his origins. He experiences labor vicariously by

watching others work, he lives by watching others live. The difference between

these circumstances, and when he watched the charlatan perform operations is

that this time around, McTeague is even more idle and has no intention of

translating what he sees into an education. He is not learning from what he sees,

he is not working. He “spent the days with his wife...watching Trina at her work,

feeling a dull glow of shame at the idea that she was supporting him. This feeling

had worn off quickly” (235). Trina, though extreme and perhaps marginally

psychotic, is right in telling McTeague that she is supporting him and therefore

has the right to say where and how they will live. Norris suggests that if

McTeague doesn’t like that fact, he should motivate himself to change it. Instead,

“McTeague found interest and amusement in...watching...a gang of

laborers...digging the foundations for a large brownstone house” (235). He gets to

know the foreman well, but never uses this relationship to procure a productive,

physical job for himself. Instead, he ends the day “with some half dozen drinks of

whiskey at Joe Frenna’s saloon” (235).

This kind of life continues until McTeague kills his wife and flees the law.

He eventually finds brief work as (appropriately) a miner. It is for McTeague, the

return to the beginning. He is back where he started, back to the depths of the

earth in a purely physical job intended and designed for those of great strength

and feeble minds. The painting in the foreman’s office, Millet’s “Angelus,” depicts

monumental peasants in a field, stooped over collecting the offerings of the earth.

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This reflects on the foreman’s image of himself, but is ironic in considering the

naturalistic tone of Norris’s novel. The miners are more victims of the mine than

cultivators of it. There is no abstraction in the mine, it is rocks and hammers, no

diploma necessary. The only requirement, apparently, is good hands, no Cornish

ancestry, and a name. The last needn’t even be real. McTeague, back in his

element, went to work “straight as a homing pigeon and following a blind and

unreasoned instinct...Within a week’s time it seemed to him as though he had

never been away. He picked up his life exactly where he had left it the day when

his mother had sent him away with the traveling dentist.” (296-7) Like all his

other jobs, this one has a developed routine to control him. McTeague does not

establish the routine; it establishes him. From the first line of the novel to this

final job, McTeague is steeped in a routine and procedure that allow him to

sacrifice control of himself. He is swept into the tide of what is already

established, and there is no need for him to ponder it. Swing the hammer, mine.

He leaves the mine only when his “sixth sense” alerts him to the nearing

presence of his pursuers. In Death Valley, his routine vanishes. Nothing is

predictable, nothing is superable. He thoughtlessly wanders from place to place,

toting along his tell-tale canary, a sign of his unwillingness to depart from routine,

to depart from his past. McTeague, the fugitive miner and charlatan dentist, ends

his story with a removal from those around him, with isolation, but there is no

strength in his isolation. It is only a sad, dying destiny over which he has no

control.

3085 words

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