SOURCE: McFatter, Susan Prothro. “Parody and Dark Projections: Medieval Romance and the Gothic in McTeague.” Western American Literature 26, no. 2 (summer 1991): 119-35.

[In the following essay, McFatter argues that in McTeague Norris intended to create a parody of the medieval romance genre.]

More than one Norris critic has commented on the obtrusive craftsmanship of McTeague, a work characterized by conspicuous animal imagery and an intrusive narrator who insists that heredity and environment control the characters' actions. Other commenters note the obvious resemblance between the characters of Polk Street and those that people Zola's naturalistic works.¹ If we read the novel as a strict work of naturalism, however, we may overlook Norris's skillful interweaving of genres, dismissing the work, as does Perry Westbrook, merely as an “interesting showcase of naturalistic attitudes and conventions.”² But McTeague is actually a carefully structured work divided into two equal parts:³ the first half of the novel, culminating in chapter eleven with the fight between McTeague and Marcus Schouler in Schuetzen Park, develops around the ironic use of the conventions and characters of medieval romance to epitomize a segment of turn-of-the-century western urban society; the final eleven chapters, focusing on McTeague's regression to atavism and his ultimate disintegration in Death Valley, rely heavily on Gothic elements to create a much darker reality than is presented in the first half. Integral to the parodied medieval romance and the Gothic which emerge in the novel is the humor which threads its way through the work from beginning to end. Although I deal only tangentially with Norris's use of humor, still it becomes apparent that the burlesque that prevails in the first half is a vehicle for the satire that dominates that section; whereas, the introduction of a gruesomely ironic Poesque humor prevails in the second half, obscuring the intermittent travesty that continues to occur.⁴

Turning first to the initial chapters of McTeague, it is not surprising to find that Norris incorporated elements of medieval romance into his earliest novel: his youthful interest in the subject is well documented,⁵ and one can only imagine the perverse delight with which he may have sought to undermine his boyish enthusiasm for the genre by “naturalizing” it within the confines of late-nineteenth-century San Francisco's Polk Street. But the result of his ironic use of the genre may have surprised even him in its capacity to emphasize what he recognized as the ills of American society at the time.

If we recognize the work as a parody of medieval romance, Marcus Schouler and McTeague appear as twin-buffoon knights, and several of the male/female relationships become ridiculous versions of courtly love. By taking the most cursory look at the important principles of this convention, the ironic possibilities open to Norris in creating a court romance in the shoddy apartment building on Polk Street become clear. To make my point, I borrow John E. Stevens's concise rendering of these principles which were originally set forth by Andreas Capellanus in his De Arte Honest Amandi:

Love derives from sudden illumination; it is private and must be kept a secret from the world; it is intensified by frustration and difficulty; and it lifts the lovers on to a new level of being.⁶

Application of these principles to the relationship between Miss Baker and Old Grannis supplies the key to the couple's importance in the theme of the novel: their love affair represents a contrasting parallel to McTeague and Trina's. William Dillingham recognizes this parallel, suggesting that Norris uses it to illustrate that the “same forces [chance and instinct] which destroy his main characters also can create happiness.”⁷ The old couple's affair does end happily; however, the two appear to be motivated more directly by their posturing as courtly lovers than they do by chance and instinct. Mr. Grannis is an English gentleman educated in veterinary medicine, and Miss Baker, certain of his nobility, advances as fact a fairytale-like rumor which helps to explain his presence on Polk Street. Early in the novel, she tells McTeague, “They say that he's the younger son of a baronet; that there are reasons for his not coming to the title; his stepfather wronged him cruelly.”⁸ From this point forward, the two operate within the framework of a ridiculous but endearing parody of medieval romance.

The old people have lived in adjoining apartments for years, but they do not speak to each other until they are introduced on the evening that Trina wins the lottery.⁹ Up to that point, they have contented themselves with maintaining their “secret” love affair by engaging in a daily ritual that includes pulling their chairs close to either side of the thin partition separating their apartments, Miss Baker sipping tea while Mr. Grannis binds his journals, both finding fulfillment in “listening and waiting, they did not know exactly for what, but near to each other” (10). In terms of courtly love, their relationship is ludicrous on several levels, their ages being the most obvious.¹⁰ And though they believe that their love is a secret—after all they admit it to no one, not even each other—ironically, it is one of the main topics of discussion among the apartment dwellers. But while their courtship is a mockery of courtly love conventions, especially the glaringly superficial ones, it also exemplifies the best that the tradition offers. As evidenced by the fact that they have long found contentment in merely being near each other, it is clear that theirs will be an enduring love: a love that sprang from a mutual attraction, but one that is rooted in the need for companionship and that blossoms into a relationship of mutual selfless concern. In obvious antithesis to the old couple's love are McTeague and Trina's impulsive and sexually-based relationship and Zerkow and Maria Macapa's avarice-based union.

In terms of an important theme in the novel, one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Grannis-Baker relationship lies in its absence of avarice. In fact, after Mr. Grannis sells his bookbinding apparatus, he is concerned that he has interrupted his and Miss Baker's daily routine and that “they would drift apart now” (181). His anxiety over what might change between them convinces him that “[h]e had sold his happiness for money; he had bartered all his tardy romance for some miserable bank notes” (181). Avarice is taboo in the convention of courtly love,¹¹ and Mr. Grannis's capacity to subordinate material wealth to his love for Miss Baker transports him beyond the clutching confines of Polk Street and into the realm of courtly lovers. He is joined in that domain by Miss Baker, whose concern for his welfare takes precedence over any other consideration in her life, even her exaggerated sense of propriety.

While Old Grannis and Miss Baker's relationship operates as a gentle mockery of courtly love, McTeague and Trina's is more clearly a perversion of it. Though McTeague seems to follow the traditions of the code, the traditions themselves become absurd parodies. McTeague does have what could be termed a “sudden illumination” while he works on Trina's teeth, but the focus of his ardor, her mouth rather than her eyes,¹² and the foul atmosphere of his Dental Parlours, overheated and heavy with “the smell of ether, creosote, and stale bedding,” make ludicrous McTeague's “first idyl” (17). Nonetheless, for the unlicensed dentist who seems on his way to realizing the American Dream, Trina's daily visits “had all the charm of secret appointments and stolen meetings under the moon” (17).

With the stage set for a twisted medieval romance, Norris proceeds to manipulate his characters through the motions of a decidedly undignified one. In the Dental Parlours while McTeague is working on Trina's teeth, the best and worst in him surfaces. He feels a “positive anguish” when he causes Trina the slightest bit of pain, and it is “harrowing” for him to be “forced to torture her of all women in the world” (17). (This, of course, becomes bitingly ironic later in the novel when Trina is forced to have two fingers amputated because of McTeague's abuse.) But it is also while the dentist works on Trina's teeth that the animal in him emerges. As Trina lies unconscious, anesthetized by ether, McTeague fights back the impulse to rape her. Never again in the novel is McTeague described in terms more animalistic than in this scene: he is the brute, the panther with bared fangs, the monster, and the young bull in full fury. But amid all of this animal imagery, we are told that the dentist holds the beast at bay because he somehow “dimly” realizes that the consummation of his passion for Trina will result in some mitigation of his feelings for her. He resists his baser instincts, reasoning that

should he yield now he would never be able to care for Trina again. She would never be the same to him, never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an instant. … It would be a sacrilege, an abomination.

(18)

His reasoning is both moral and unusually courtly, hardly thoughts attributable to a raging bull. His rationale transforms Trina into the idealized lady of medieval romance who was her suitor's object of devotion and unobtainable desire, a position insured by the lady's superior social class, by her marriage or bethrothal to another, or by a purity of nature that prevented her from succumbing to her lover's suit.¹³ Trina fulfills this role in several ways: she is as much as engaged to her cousin, Marcus Schouler; she, initially at least, is sexually naive and is frightened by McTeague's ardor and consistently resists his suit; and she is, regardless of how ironic it may seem, socially superior to the car boy/dentist. Therefore, McTeague's seducing Trina would be a crime against a lady, truly a “sacrilege, an abomination” in the world of medieval romance.¹⁴ Because these parallels operate so subtly beneath the surface of the narrative, readers tend to accept unquestioningly the narrator's assertions that McTeague is controlled by his baser instincts, particularly when our senses are being overloaded with animal imagery. McTeague's reasoning and actions, however, often prove him to be considerably less than rigorously naturalistic, as is the case in the scene with Trina in the Dental Parlours. The scene ends with McTeague unable to resist all temptation, kissing the helpless Trina “grossly, full on the mouth” before he fully regains his self-control (28).

Interesting parallels between McTeague's life and that of Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval are recognizable in the early chapters of McTeague and the dentist's stolen kiss brings them into focus. Perceval, best remembered as the Arthurian knight whose purity of nature allowed him the privilege of searching for the Holy Grail, was initially much like McTeague the car boy/dentist. He began his career as an uncouth country bumpkin who, unfit as a knight, was remanded to undergo various levels of instruction to prepare him as one and to ready him as a Grail quester. He, like McTeague, left his boyhood home, uneducated and unprepared for civilization in order to achieve the “ideal.” Both Perceval and McTeague's mothers are largely responsible for their sons' ineptitude. Perceval's mother, who had already lost a husband and a son to knightly pursuits, perpetuates her son's ignorance of arms and chivalry in an effort to keep him safe by her side in the forest. McTeague's mother, on the other hand, literally pushes her son, ignorant and ill-prepared, out of the mines to seek the dream she has for him. And in both young men's situations, their lack of training leads them to commit indiscretions. One of Perceval's early blunders bears a striking resemblance to the scene between McTeague and Trina in the Dental Parlours. Perceval, due to his inadequate instruction, enters a tent that he mistakes for a church, discovers inside a sleeping lady, takes from her a finger ring, and roughly kisses her, awakening her and causing her extreme distress.¹⁵ Upon Trina's regaining consciousness after McTeague grossly kisses her, the dentist, with “unreasoned simplicity” and “childlike directness” entreats her to marry him (19). Trina, bewildered and frightened at his insistence and affected by the ether, responds to him as any lady of Polk Street might under the circumstances—she vomits. When she leaves the Dental Parlours, McTeague is not left empty handed, for he, like Perceval, has claimed a love token from his lady: concealed in newspaper and tucked away in his pocket is the little tooth that he had previously extracted from Trina's pretty mouth.

After this session of lovemaking, Polk Street-style, Norris takes his nineteenth-century version of the courtly lover to its absurd extreme, and, in doing so, it becomes obvious that, despite the narrator's protestations to the contrary, McTeague is not merely a beast controlled by heredity and environment. Brutes do not suffer the emotional pangs of love melancholia, romantic lovers do, and McTeague agonizes characteristically like many of the classic cases described by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy.¹⁶ McTeague's early symptoms begin “by gradual, almost imperceptible degrees” as

the thought of Trina Sieppe occupied his mind from day to day, from hour to hour. He found himself thinking of her constantly. … Often he took out [her little tooth] and held it in the palm of his immense, horny hand, seized with some strange elephantine sentiment, wagging his head at it, heaving tremendous sighs.

(16)

As the illness advances, the “memory of her was with him constantly,” and

[n]ight after night [he] lay broad awake thinking of Trina, wondering about her, racked with the infinite desire of her. His head burnt and throbbed. The palms of his hands were dry. He dozed and woke, and walked aimlessly about the dark room, bruising himself against [the furniture]. …

(23)

Sympathy accompanies our amusement at McTeague's torment, and his early physical and emotional distress, caused by his feelings for Trina, serve to magnify his moral regression in the second half of the novel.

Besides his lovesickness, McTeague is plagued further by his jealousy of Marcus Schouler who accompanies Trina and her family on their weekly Sunday excursions to the park. Because this is his first experience in love, McTeague is unprepared for such a “miserable complication,” and he is bewildered that he cannot easily overcome any obstacle that stands in his way:

It seemed so simple to him since he loved Trina to take her straight to himself, stopping at nothing, asking no questions, to have her, and by main strength to carry her far away somewhere, he did not know exactly where, to some vague country, some undiscovered place where every day was Sunday.

(24)

The irony of McTeague's version of an idyllic, Camelot-like region is not lost upon the reader who remembers that, for this Polk Street champion, Sunday includes drinking steam beer, playing lugubrious tunes on his concertina, and napping in his dental chair, all of which will undergo the elevating influence of Trina once the dentist overcomes the requisite obstacles impeding his suit for the lady.

Marcus Schouler functions as McTeague's primary impediment. Though he shows little romantic interest in Trina beyond enjoying long Sunday outings with her and the Sieppes, it is still understood that eventually the two will marry, and McTeague has dutifully kept his love for Trina a secret from his friend because of this. Finally, however, he breaks the code of silence and tells Marcus that he must have Trina. Marcus magnanimously gives up that which he seems to own in the fashion of a feudal lord—McTeague may have Trina. In breaking the code of secrecy, McTeague ultimately gains a wife, but he also gains an enemy: Marcus eventually sees himself as a cuckolded lover, and, consequently, he seeks vengeance against McTeague.

This episode in Chapter 4 between McTeague and Marcus is central in establishing the two as doubles. The relationship between them becomes clear when they are compared to Damon and Pythias or David and Jonathan. Norris avoids the most obvious analogy, however, by failing to mention Perceval and his “shadow” figure, Gawain. In their work The Grail Legend, Emma Jung and Marie-Louise Von Franz take a psychological approach in their study of the relationship between Perceval and Gawain, recognizing the two as “the contrast between introversion and extraversion,”¹⁷ a description that well suits McTeague and Marcus. Marcus is all precipitous action and bombast, serving often as the dentist's mouthpiece, either speaking directly for him or through McTeague's mimicry of his hollow political polemics.

Because Marcus surrenders his most prized possession to his friend, ironic though the surrender is, the two men (note that they call one another Mark and Mac, virtually a single letter away from being the same name) are suddenly bound by “mutual affection and esteem.” Now “nothing could ever estrange them. Now it was for life or death” (33). These binding terms on their relationship have a dual meaning. On the one hand, the men appear to be bound in a kind of marriage, the close affinity between “now it was for life and death” and the traditional wedding vow of faithfulness, “til death do us part,” is obvious. Significantly, the words “for life or death” also refer to the life and death struggle engaged in by bitter enemies in medieval tournaments.¹⁸

After this verbal bonding ceremony, the two coarse knights of Polk Street engage in a curious contest which adumbrates their two subsequent combats, the final one a death struggle. Marcus, after popping a billiard ball into his mouth, closing his lips over it, and then removing it, challenges McTeague to do the same. This ridiculous feat is treated as a one-on-one medieval contest by the dentist who gravely slips the same ball into his own mouth, but, unable to remove it, begins choking.¹⁹ At this point, it becomes obvious that Marcus, the extroverted, loquacious side of McTeague, is in ascendancy; whereas, after his battle with Marcus in Schuetzer Park in Chapter 11, his dumb, brute side once again claims him. Ironically, integration of the two sides of McTeague's character would not result in a tutored, tested, and proved nineteenth-century knight, but simply in a bombastic, hyperactive lout, thus providing an interesting comment on Norris's bringing of age the medieval courtier in the era of naturalism.

Drawing a closer relationship between the two men, Norris parallels many aspects of their lives. Neither man is capable of achieving his version of the American Dream because the dreams themselves are based on lies. McTeague is a car boy whose true calling is in the mines of Placer County: he is not a trained, licensed dentist, but is a poser merely going through the motions of achieving the dream. Marcus, who is a “bungler in the profession” of veterinary medicine (7), plays at being a businessman and a politician and dreams of being a cowboy. And both men equate superficial symbols with the achievement of their goals. McTeague believes that once he owns the huge, gilt tooth that he lusts after, he will be a dentist. He is astonished later in the novel when Trina tells him that he is prohibited from practicing dentistry because he has no college education. Incredulously he asks, “Ain't I a dentist? Look at my sign and the gold tooth you gave me” (147). Marcus, similarly, decides that he wants to become a cowboy and thinks that when he dons silver spurs and sits astride a bronco, he will have earned that distinction.²⁰

McTeague usurps another part of the dream when he marries Trina Sieppe, the lady whose ennobling influence on him is an ironic version of the medieval lady's role in her lover's life. Trina broadens McTeague's art appreciation to include pieces of sentimental popular art in addition to his devotion to his stone pug dog and his engraving of the de Medici family. In addition, she buys him a top hat which she insists he take off to the Polk Street ladies, she changes his taste from steam to bottled beer, and she oversees the weekly changes of his thick, red flannel underwear. Of course, all of McTeague's refinement appears ludicrous when compared to the medieval courtly lover who, inspired by his devotion to his lady, becomes “courteous, gentle, humble, generous, and courageous.”²¹ But within the environs of Polk Street, Trina's effect on the dentist seems surprisingly elevating.

Trina is also responsible for the purchase of the huge, French, gilt tooth that McTeague has wanted for years. As a kind of perversion of the Grail symbol, the tooth becomes especially ironic. The Grail of medieval romance can be found only by one who is absolutely pure. Perceval passes through various stages of development before he achieves a level of refinement sufficient to enable him to quest in earnest for the holy relic. For McTeague, who has undergone none of the formal training necessary to become a dentist, the gilt tooth serves as the perfect symbol of his pose as Dr. McTeague. He thrills at the thought of the licensed dentist in the neighborhood suffering “convulsions of envy” when he notices “this marvelous molar run out from [his] bay window like a flag of defiance” (85). As icon becomes heraldic emblem for McTeague, the significance of the tooth's function as an ingenious parody of the Grail symbol increases. The Grail of Arthurian legend, a token of mercy and generosity, brings healing and food to those who touch it. Teeth in McTeague symbolize base sexuality, greed, and sadomasochism. As such, the enormous gilt tooth is not only an ironic comment on the dentist's false dream, but it can also be regarded as a scathing indictment of the values of industrialized America at the end of the century.

McTeague's quest comes to an abrupt end after the picnic at Schuetzen Park where he and Marcus engage in single combat. The picnic begins as an idyllic Sunday excursion embarked upon by several couples, including Trina and McTeague, who are joined at the last minute by Schouler. Marcus's grudge against the dentist, based upon the distorted belief that somehow McTeague has cheated him out of the ＄5,000 lottery won by Trina, has been festering for months; consequently, it is no great surprise that the two clash in this middle chapter of the novel. Norris creates a scene at the park that is an obvious mockery of the medieval tournament. As the men participate in little feats of agility and strength, the ladies sit on the “slope of the grass, their hats and gloves laid aside, watching the men as they strove together” (129).

The men, urged on by the cries of wonder and applause at their deeds, begin to show off their athletic abilities. Marcus's agility is countered by McTeague's strength, and, as the dentist beats man after man in tests of physical prowess, he takes center stage. It is interesting to note that, at this point, he adopts Marcus's loquacity, retelling and embellishing his cow-killing story, while Marcus, as he is forced into the background, becomes more McTeague-like, muttering under his breath. Finally, the competition narrows to a battle between the two men which is stopped after Marcus bites through McTeague's earlobe and McTeague breaks Marcus's arm. However, the enmity between the two is so intense at this point that there is no question that their struggle for supremacy is merely delayed. As the party disperses after the contest, any illusion of the romance associated with medieval tournaments is dispelled as the perspective of the scene narrows to the “torn and trampled bit of turf, the wrestling ring; the picnic baskets, together with empty beer bottles, broken eggshells, and discarded sardine tins” (135). This scene sets in motion the rapid disintegration of the central characters of the work.

After this chapter, the mood of the novel changes. Medieval romance, even as distorted as it has been, no longer accomplishes Norris's goal. In the second half of the work, Gothic devices and elements take the place of the parodied romance as McTeague begins in earnest his descent to the atavistic state. Depravity permeates the section: Zerkow, who has married Maria Macapa because of his bizarre obsession with her tale of the gold dinner service, slits the woman's throat after she loses all memory of the legend and follows her murder with his own suicide; Marcus betrays McTeague, which causes the dentist to lose his practice and leads to his murdering Trina; Trina, prior to her death, falls prey to her avarice and loses touch with reality; and, finally, McTeague, handcuffed to Marcus whom he has beaten to death, awaits imminent death on the hell-hot surface of Death Valley.

Amid this degeneration and mayhem, one flower in the mud puddle blossoms. In Chapter 17, set after the murder of Maria Macapa and before the murder of Trina, Miss Baker and Mr. Grannis's relationship culminates in love between the ruins. The little seamstress, intuiting Mr. Grannis's distress after having sold his book-binding machine, breaks the code of courtly love and goes to her secret lover's apartment to offer him comfort. Though, at first, the woman anguishes over her impropriety, Mr. Grannis reassures her that she has broken no code of decorum, and the two are left holding hands:

After all these years they were together; they understood each other. They stood at length in a little Elysium of their own creating. They walked hand in hand in a delicious garden where it remained autumn. Far from the world and together they entered upon the long-retarded romance of their commonplace and uneventful lives.

(185)

Norris reconciles the idea of courtly love and the reality of existence on Polk Street with the fulfillment of Miss Baker and Old Grannis's courtship: while undermining the strictures of courtly romance, he demonstrates the reaches that human love can achieve when the natures of the lovers are sufficiently elevated above the basest human instincts.

After this brief catharsis, Norris returns to the task of destroying his protagonist. It has been noted that the combat between McTeague and Marcus in Chapter 11 marks the metamorphosis of the double concept from that of the mere shadow image, one whose path closely parallels that of the hero, to one more commonly associated with Gothic literature: often a more profoundly sinister aspect of the self, and one whose presence marks the inevitable doom of the protagonist. Norris plants the seeds of the Doppelgänger in the first half of the novel, but the relationship between Marcus and McTeague is not fully developed until the second half. After the fight in the park, Marcus succeeds in breaking the fragile thread that attaches McTeague to civilization by divulging to the authorities the facts concerning the dentist's lack of education. This results in the closure of McTeague's dental practice and his inevitable regression to the uncivilized state from which he first emerged. It is interesting to note that Norris never hints at the source of Marcus's knowledge concerning McTeague's background, thus fostering the notion that Marcus knows the latter as well as he knows himself.

By way of the Marcus-McTeague relationship, there is the suggestion of incest in the novel. Incest is implied through the Marcus-Trina-McTeague relationship, and it relies on the Marcus-McTeague Doppelgänger together with the Marcus-Trina blood tie for its validity. Marcus's surrender of his cousin to the dentist and the subsequent vow between the two men, one that may be taken as both a marriage and a death covenant, provide proof of the strange entanglement of the three characters and hint of the inevitable disintegration of the members of this odd trinity.²²

Disintegration of the self is closely associated with the physical environment of the character in Gothic fiction. The early English and Continental form of the genre relied heavily on decaying castles, winding staircases, and dark dungeons to project the characters' psychological states. Early U.S. author Charles Brockden Brown Americanized the Gothic setting by adding to architecture the tangled wilderness, labyrinthine paths, dark enclosed areas, and caves.²³ Norris, in a distinctively West Coast setting, utilizes both the American cityscape and the surrounding landscape to mirror the moral and psychological demise of McTeague.

In the early chapters of the novel, McTeague's isolation within the Dental Parlours resembles other alienated Gothic protagonists, several of whom, Poe's William Wilson and Brown's Edgar Huntly, for example, are also plagued by doubles. McTeague's isolation is observed as he “watched the world go past” from the bay window of his Dental Parlours; yet, it is his close proximity to the Polk Street scene which serves to humanize him (5). As he gazes down on his view of the bustling city, he is not exactly a part of society, but neither is he completely apart from it. When he marries Trina, a room is added to the Parlours and he becomes somewhat more refined, slightly more socially integrated. But after McTeague loses his dental practice, a rapid deterioration of his character occurs concurrently with the changes in his physical environment. Almost immediately after he is prohibited from practicing (is it significant that this notification comes in Chapter 13), miserly Trina insists that they move to a cramped, dingy, upstairs room, located in the back of the flat, from which McTeague can no longer overlook the drab but humanizing Polk Street scene; instead, he now looks down upon “the flat's dirty backyard and upon the roofs of the hovels that bordered the alley in the rear” (152). It is in this environment that McTeague becomes sadistic and begins physically abusing Trina, pinching her and biting her fingers so viciously that she must have two of them amputated.²⁴

Soon, Trina's strict austerity program forces the couple to move to the squalid quarters once inhabited by the murdered Maria Macapa, and, in doing so, the miser seals her own as well as McTeague's fate. In the “back room in that wretched house with its grisly memories, the one window looking out into a grimy maze of backyards and broken sheds,” the McTeagues begin “to sink lower and lower” (188). In this room the gilt tooth, icon of a dead dream, becomes a table on which Trina piles and stores greasy dishes after meals. When McTeague eventually sells the tooth to the neighborhood's licensed dentist for ＄5, his own pose as a legitimate member of civilization is vitiated. Soon after this, with a black cat as witness, the dentist brutally murders Trina in the school building where she both lives and works, and he leaves her mangled body to be discovered the next day by the little school children. After sinking as low as he can in the city, McTeague must return to the wild scene of his boyhood to continue his cycle of regression.

The dentist, we are told, instinctively returns to his boyhood environment in Placer County, a terrain characterized by deep canyons that suggest limitless voids, thickly-wooded forests, and high, jagged mountain peaks, all “savage, sullen, and magnificently indifferent to man” (213). This landscape perfectly projects the mental state of McTeague who is at this point fairly bereft of any vestige of humanity. McTeague burrows down into the Big Dipper mines in an obvious attempt to return to the safety of the womb-like caverns from which he was expelled prematurely into a world both alien and hostile to him. But the mine provides no haven: the cave's rot, decay, and mold mirror McTeague's corrupted nature and suggest that he will not be exempt from the laws of civilization. Though he was only a brief participant in society, McTeague must realize that he is subject to redress his crime, even if his underdeveloped conscience inures him against any profound sense of guilt for that crime. Hence, it is more than mere natural impulse that awakens dread in McTeague, even though the narrator repeatedly insists that the dentist, through some strange animal instinct, senses that trouble is near. As he awakens nightly from sleep, lighting his miner's candle and “throwing the light into the dark corners [of the bunkhouse], peering under all the beds, including his own” (218), we are reminded more of “The Tell-Tale Heart's” tortured protagonist than we are of Godzilla. In a hopeless effort to run from his sense of guilt, McTeague retreats further from civilization and enters the periphery of Death Valley where the “air was like the mouth of a furnace” (225).

The mouth of hell is opened to McTeague, and, as he continues his descent into the maw, he appears more Satanic than animalistic: he spends a sleepless night on a hilltop, “a motionless, crouching figure, inky black against the pale blur of the sky” (232), anticipating the encroaching enemy. It is not instinctive fear but dread of the unknown that prompts his entreaty, “If I could only see something—somebody” (232). But McTeague is not yet prepared to confront himself, and, although he resolves to remain where he is and meet the enemy face to face, he moves further into Death Valley in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable. As he draws closer to self-realization, his struggle against the imminent confrontation becomes tortured:

It was as though he were climbing a hill that grew steeper with every stride. … By degrees the dentists's steps grew slower; he stopped, went forward again cautiously, almost feeling his way, like someone approaching a pit in the darkness. … He hastened on furtively, his head and shoulders bent. At times one could almost say he crouched as he pushed forward with long strides; now and then he even looked over his shoulder.

(234)

As he retreats deeper into the wasteland, he encounters a rattlesnake, and, after the two remain a full thirty seconds looking into one another's eyes, the snake surrenders to the higher evil and slithers swiftly into the sagebrush. This western-style showdown anticipates McTeague's penetration into his own heart of darkness. As Marcus relentlessly advances, McTeague, aiming his rifle at “every denser shadow,” begs the unknown assailant to “come on and have it out” (237). And, finally, in this “awful sink of alkali [that] was openly and unreservedly iniquitous and malignant” to man, McTeague confronts his double (239). Marcus closes in on the dentist, and, remaining true to his character, shouts, “Hands up. By damn, I got the drop on you” (241).

Playing out their ironic nineteenth-century knightly roles, Marcus, the loud-mouthed, self-appointed law officer and McTeague, the champion who vowed to get even if he ever saw Marcus again, spend the next several hours turning Death Valley into “chaotic desolation” as they chase the crazed mule around in the glaring afternoon sun. The enmity between them flares up after the animal is shot and the focus of their hatred returns. Their feud is brought full circle as each claims Trina's lottery winnings, money that is absolutely worthless to the two men caught in the middle of Death Valley without water. McTeague kills Marcus in their final combat, and, in so doing, he confirms his own destruction. In the vast isolation of Death Valley, so much like the expansive ocean that serves Ahab as a psychoscape, McTeague confronts himself and finds that he is not fit to survive. The little canary that he has carried with him throughout his sojourn serves as a symbol of all that is valid in his life,²⁵ and when its feeble chittering ceases, both it and McTeague will be released from their unnatural environments.

Notes

1. Lars Ahnebrink, The Influence of Emile Zola on Frank Norris (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1947), 25-36. Ahnebrink provides an in-depth study of the influence of L'Assommoir and La Bête Humaine on McTeague. He finds close parallels in characters, scenes, and motivations between the two.

2. Perry D. Westbrook, Free Will and Determinism in American Literature (Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson UP; London: Associated UP, 1979), 134.

3. George M. Spangler, “The Structure in McTeague,” English Studies, 59 (February 1978), 48-56. Spangler also suggests that the novel is divided into two parts but sees “the point of division being McTeague's inexplicable return to sexual dormancy after a few months of marriage to Trina.”

4. See James E. Caron, “Grotesque Naturalism: The Significance of the Comic in McTeague,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 31 (1989), 289-317. Though I do not agree with Caron's reading of McTeague as a strict work of naturalism, he does provide a thorough and convincing study which reconciles the comic aspects of the novel with the genre.

5. See Ahnebrink, Influence, 10. Ahnebrink writes that while Norris was an art student in Paris he “steeped himself in medievalism.” He notes that Norris's first published work was “Ancient Armour.” Ostensibly, Norris's father brought him home because he was writing medieval romances and sending them to his brother instead of studying art. See also on this subject W. M. Frohock's article, “Norris” in Seven Novelists in the American Naturalist Tradition, ed. Charles Child Walcutt (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1974), 55-91.

6. John E. Stevens, Medieval Romance: Themes and Approaches (London: Hutchinson U Library, 1973), 34.

7. William B. Dillingham, “The Old Folks of McTeague,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 16 (1961), 171.

8. Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, ed. Donald Pizer (New York: Norton, 1977), 11. Further references to this edition will be included in the text.

9. Dillingham, “The Old Folks,” 177, points out that the lottery celebration is a turning point for the major characters, but most strikingly, it brings Miss Baker and Mr. Grannis together while it marks the beginning of the deterioration of McTeague and Trina.

10. Baldesar Castiglioni, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin, 1987), 121. Castiglioni states the matter quite succinctly: “in old men [and women] love is altogether ridiculous.”

11. See William George Dodd, “The System of Courtly Love,” in Troilus and Criseyde and the Minor Poems, eds. Richard J. Schoeck and Jerome Taylor (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1961), 6. Dodd explains that courtly love is “constantly associated in the literature with courtesy and ‘larges.’ Andreas declares that love is ‘ever banished from the domicile of avarice.’”

12. A comparison between McTeague's oral fixation and that of Poe's protagonist Egaeus in the tale “Berenice” begs to be made here, even if Egaeus's obsession drives him to do considerably more extensive dental work on his cousin/wife's teeth than McTeague's impels him to undertake on Trina's.

    The parallel between McTeague and Trina and Egaeus and Berenice is also interesting if one recognizes, as I do, the implication of incest in McTeague. I comment on this implication later in the essay.

13. See John E. Stevens, Medieval Romance, 37-38.

14. See C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (London: Oxford UP, 1951), 35. Lewis explains the difference between “ladies” and “women,” indicating that while a knight may force himself sexually on a woman, he must serve all ladies. See also John E. Stevens, Medieval Romance, 59. Stevens discusses the issue of courtly love and rape, stating that “rape is exceedingly unknightly and uncourtly.”

15. See Madeline Pelner Cosman, The Education of the Hero in Arthurian Romance (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1966), 50-100.

16. See Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy: What It Is, With All the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes and Severall Cures of It, ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York: Vintage, 1977), 3.2.3:128; 1.4.1:431; 3.2.3:133. McTeague certainly appears to suffer the symptoms of love melancholia described by Burton in his seventeenth-century work:

    They [love melancholiacs] cannot look off from whom they love, they will impregnare eam ipsis oculis, deflower her with their eyes, be still gazing, staring, stealing faces, glancing at her. … They can take no rest in the night, nor sleep, or if they do slumber, fearful dreams astonish them. In day-time they … cannot be quiet an hour. … They pine away, and look ill with waking, cares, sighs … which are too frequent.

17. Emma Jung and Marie-Louise Von Franz, The Grail Legend, trans. Andrea Dykes (New York: Putnam, 1970), 216.

18. See A. R. Hope Moncrieff, Romance and Legend of Chivalry (New York: Wise, 1934), 53. Moncrieff explains that though most tournament combats were fought mainly to provide a spectacle for the audience, “it was in exceptional cases of bitter enmity that combats were fought à outrance, for life or death, as in war.”

19. William Freedman, “Oral Passivity and Oral Sadism in Norris's McTeague,” Literature and Psychology, 30 (1980), 58. In his Freudian interpretation of this incident, Freedman recognizes that it prepares us for “Marcus's fateful conflict with McTeague.” See also David Wyatt, “Norris and the Vertical,” Southern Review 19 (1983), 753. Wyatt asserts that the incident is proof of the “intimacy” between the two men, suggesting that Marcus is McTeague's “buried self.”

20. Glen A. Love, “Frank Norris's Western Metropolitans,” Western American Literature 11 (1976), 3-22, especially 10. Love discusses Marcus as a “western anachronism,” a fumbling, would-be cowboy who receives his appropriate fate at the end of the novel.

21. Dodd, “System of Courtly Love,” 9.

22. Norris's version of incest divests itself of any positive Romantic overtones; it does not even hint at the possibility of reconciliation of the self. Instead, being particularly Gothic in nature, it incites brutal violence. See on this subject William Patrick Day, In the Circles of Fear and Desire: A Study of Gothic Fantasy, (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1985), especially page 120.

23. See Donald A. Ringe, “Charles Brockden Brown,” Major Writers of Early American Literature, ed. Everett Emerson (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1972), 273-294. Ringe's discussion of Brown's use of the “psychoscape” as a Gothic device is especially insightful. See also Norman S. Grabo, The Coincidental Art of Charles Brockden Brown (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1981). Grabo's chapter on Edgar Huntly proves useful in looking at the Gothic landscape in McTeague.

24. Day, In the Circles of Fear, 19. Day points out that the “relationship to the self and Other [In this case McTeague's projection of himself is Trina, otherwise it is Marcus.] is defined by the struggle to domination and the impulse to submission. … The pattern of all relationships in the Gothic fantasy … operates on the dynamic of sadomasochism.”

25. Keith S. Sheppard, “A New Note for McTeague's Canary,” Western American Literature 9 (1974), 217-218. Sheppard points out that the canary was used in the mine shaft as a method of gas detection: if the canary stopped singing, death was imminent for the miners. I agree with Sheppard that the bird is a “remnant of [McTeague's] mining past,” and, as such, it represents the real McTeague. In its gilt cage, it is out of place on Polk Street, just as the dentist is. It is fitting that it should predict the dentist's death.