Assignment Four -- Frank Norris
McTeague


Frank Norris

Although, as Donald Pizer notes in his Preface to the Norton Critical Edition of McTeague, Frank Norris's books often focused on "human degradation and violence" (ix), Norris came from a financially comfortable family and spent two years studying art in Paris before being educated at Berkeley and Harvard. The first draft of McTeague was written as part of a writing course at Harvard and later revised in light of Norris' observations as a reporter in San Francisco. When McTeague was published in 1899, it caused a sensation equal to the reception of Stephen Crane's Maggie, A Girl of the Streets six years ealier. Ernest Marchand's summary of the initial reviews of McTeague (Norton Critical Edition pp. 301-305) provides a sense of the outrage that many felt toward "the most unpleasant American story that anyone has ever ventured to write" (301). Norris published six novels before he died of peritonitis in 1902 at the age of thirty-two. Other than Mcteague, Norris's best regarded novel is The Octopus, the first volume of a trilogy he was working to complete when he died.

During his junior year at Berkeley, Norris was influenced by the novels of Emilé Zola. As Lars Åhnebrink explains in "Naturalism in France" (Norton Critical Edition pp. 263-270), literary naturalism is often identified as beginning with Flaubert, but "Zola became the champion of the new literary tendencies" (263). Norris became the "foremost theorist of American literary naturalism" (xi). The section titled "Norris' Definition of Naturalism" (Norton Critical Edition pp. 271-280) provides a summary of Norris theoretical beliefs and examples of his writing about naturalism. For Norris, naturalism was a synthesis of realism and romanticism. "Naturalism incorporated both the concern for surface detail of realism and the sensationalism and depth of romanticism. It differed from both, however, in occupying itself with all levels of contemporary life, particularly the low, rather than confining itself to one class or to the past" (271).


Emilé Zola

Joseph Le Conte

At Berkeley, Norris was also influenced by Professor Joseph Le Conte, a theistic evolutionist who in Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought argued that God is immanent in nature, is resident in the natural forces which account for evolution, and uses evolution as His method of creation. For Norris and other naturalists evolution undercut the idea of free will, suggesting that human behavior was controlled by forces of heredity and instinct that were beyond individuals' control

Herbert Spencer
Norris' novels and naturalist writing in general reflect the ideas of Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer, the widely read Victorian biologist and social philosopher who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" and popularized the term "evolution." Spencer is most often remembered for his application of evolutionary theory to psychology and sociology. Social Darwinism often was used as defense of laissez-faire economics by American Apologists and other defenders of the status quo, but anarchists as well as political conservatives sometimes embraced Spencer's spirited defense of individualism and capitalism. As the linked passage "New Ways of Thinking" from Blackford and Kerr's Business Enterprise in American History (3rd edition, pp. 196-198) explains, the Apologists were opposed by a group of younger economists who founded the American Economic Association.
As Robert D. Lundy explains in "The Polk Street Background of McTeague" (Norton Critical Edition pp. 257-262), Norris used many observed details of actual San Francisco places in the novel. One was the spectacular Cliff House to which McTeague and Marcus walk in Chapter 4. The third version of the Cliff House, pictured to the right, was built in 1896 and burned down in 1907.
Andrew Smith Hallidie began construction of the first cable car line in San Francisco in 1873. He was supposedly inspired by watching drivers whipping horses which were unable to pull wagons up the steep, cobblestoned streets.

San Francisco Cable Car 1887

During the second half of the nineteenth century the American economy was beset by a series of increasingly devastating economic recessions as explained in the article "Depression of the 1890s" from Who Built America (pp. 122-124). The unpredicatability of the economy also increased support for government regulation of business, as explained in "Government Regulation of Business" from Business Enterprise in American History (pp. 207-219).

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updated June 5, 2006