Domestic Violence: Dynamics of Masculinity and Femininity in Frank Norris’ McTeague

Abstract

In McTeague, Norris shows a shift of paradigm from the physical pow er-based to financial power-based society in nineteenth-century America. For the survival of fittest, people are required to be agile and adaptable to new circumstances. Men have to equip themselves with financial capabil ity in order to achieve masculine and patriarchal authority. Women are put under more complicated conditions when they are empowered to be inde pendent from men by earning money. If they intrude on the masculine realm with financial power, females are likely to be punished for infiltrat ing the long-standing sanctity of masculinity and patriarchy. Financial power earned through industrialization and capitalism endows its holder with masculine authority, which drives gender dynamics, debilitating tra ditional gender lines of masculinity and femininity. McTeague and Trina are the “missing links” that explain the transition from an agricultural society to an industrialized and capitalized economy. Although they con tain features of the two societies, the protagonists clash in their struggle for survival in the new culture due to their unfitness to adapt successfully. Both McTeague and Trina fail to adjust to the new paradigm due to the heavy influence of traditional gender ideology of the time. They are not “the fittest” to move into the new economy of industrialization and capi talism. Falling behind the game of social selection, they degenerate to animal states, a predator and his prey. Physical violence is a brutal expression of masculinity that failed males adopt to compensate for their economic castration.