The Biological Determinism of "McTeague" in Our Time Author(s): Donald Pizer Reviewed work(s): Source: American Literary Realism,

1870-1910, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Winter, 1997), pp. 27-32 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27746686 . Accessed: 22/07/2012 19:52
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The Biological Determinism of

McTeague inOur Time

Donald

Pizer

McTeague has had its admirers and detractors since its publication, but even those who praise the novel have had little to say in favor of its inherited alcoholism biological determinism. In suchmatters asMcTeagues and brute-like criminality andMcTeague and Trina's sexual natures, Nor ris appears to be simplistically translating a mix of contemporary pseudo science and folk belief into sensationalistic fiction. I do not wish in this brief paper to tackle the complex issue of the fictional success or failure of this material. I wish rather to note the various ways inwhich research in the biological and social sciences in our day tends toward at least a partial confirmation of the biological determinism dramatized in the novel. All three of themajor themes of biological determinism are introduced inherited alcoholism and his early in McTeague, Two of these?McTeagues inherited criminality?are interrelated both in their common emphasis on the genetic transmission of behavior and in their common source in the the ories of Cesare Lombroso, the late nineteenth-century founder of the field of criminal anthropology.1 In the opening pages of the novel, we are intro duced to the uncontrollable and violent alcoholism of who, father, McTeagues was a steady, shift-boss "For thirteen days of each fortnight... hard-working of themine. Every other Sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazywith alcohol."2 As his father's son, exhibits a sim McTeague ilar capacity to lapse not only into alcoholic brutality but also into violence
on mous when any occasion scene when he his emotions are

that "below the fine fabric of all thatwas good in him ran the foul stream of The vices and sins of his father and of his father s hereditary evil, like a sewer. to father, the third and fourth and five hundredth generation, tainted him."3 27

responds

sexually

So, engaged. powerfully to the anesthetized Trina,

in the

infa

we

are

told

28

American Literary Realism 29,2

Morris Chafetz summarize inThe Encyclopedia of Alcoholism (1991), "a famil ial link has long been recognized in alcoholism, and research over the last 30 years has begun to confirm that much of the phenomenon is due to heredity, rather than solely to environmental factors."4This research has been along two lines?studies of children of alcoholics who have been sep arated from their biological parents at birth; and efforts to isolate a specific gene, or group of linked genes, responsible either for a propensity for alco hol or an incapacity to adequately process alcohol. The first kind of research?conducted initially in Scandinavia and thenwidely elsewhere? has conclusively demonstrated a far greater propensity toward alcoholism than by children of non-alcoholics. The second has produced a number of hotly debated specific studies and the belief among a number of molecu lar biologists that a gene linkage to alcoholism will eventually be found.5 Much of the conceptual foundation and specific findings in Lom broso's theory of the "born criminal" have been discounted. Lombroso a now discredited Lamarckian version of evolutionary change, in accepted which behavior could affectgenetic material, and themethodology bywhich he posited certain physical characteristics as distinctive to the criminal has been attacked. But Lombroso's basic premise?that criminal propensity is inherited and is physically measurable?has in the last thirty to fortyyears attracted much attention despite the understandable reluctance of many criminologists to countenance the possibility of a genetic basis for crime because of the highly sensitive issue in the twentieth century of the link between genetic theory and social and political oppression.6 Thus, Ysabel Rennie, in The Searchfor Criminal Man (1978), reports that the effort to discover genetically transmitted and physically observable causes of crime has continued and has produced significant results. In her section on "Phys iology and Crime: The Return of the Born Criminal," she cites studies in
by children of alcoholics, even when raised in an alcohol-free environment,

drunken father and "tainted" genetic Norris's accounts of McTeague's two of belief. He both subscribes to thewidely contain strands heritage held folk belief that the propensity toward excessive alcohol consumption runs in families, and he accepts aswell Lombroso's elaboration of this belief, one which Emile Zola had indeed already exploited to great effect in his Humaine. Lombroso novel La B?te Alcohol, held, caused the degeneration of genetic matter. The child of an alcoholic thus exhibited not only his par ent's alcoholism but also the physical and psychological characteristics of an earlier stage of human evolution because of the genetic damage the child has inherited?characteristics which often express themselves as a violent the son of an alcoholic par criminality. In Lombrosian terms, McTeague, ent, bears the "stigmata" of this heritage inhis brute-like physical and emo tional nature, and he eventually murders his wife while in a drunken rage. Where do we stand today in Norris's dramatization of the role of in alcoholism and criminality? In the first,as Robert O'Brien and heredity

Essays (Pizer)

29

the variable number of sex chromosomes and in the physiology of the brain, among others, as evidence of the inheritance of criminality. She also notes, as do many researchers in the field, that this evidence "is disquieting to say the least. It has been attacked, explained away, argued with, dismissed, and of the issue, Lee Ellis, after commenting on the considerable statistical support for inherited criminality present in studies of adopted children of criminal parents, concludes that "there is now a great deal of evidence that genetic factors influence propensities toward criminality, although this is always in interaction with environmental variables."8 In the last several years,most research into the possible genetic transmission of criminal ten dencies, as in a much-publicized studywhich appeared in Science inmid 1993,9 has sought to locate specific gene defects which result in specific chemical anomalies which themselves stimulate socially disruptive actions. The quest for a genetic source of socially undesirable aggression, in short, is now centered in the area where biology and chemistry interactwithin the human organism to affectbehavior. This research activity, however, has by no means ended the vigorous debate among criminologists and biologists over the nature and role of genetic factors in criminal behavior.While James Q? Wilson and Richard Herrnstein, for example, can confidently conclude in Crime and Human Nature (1985) that "individuals differ at birth in the degree towhich they are at risk from criminality," the skeptical response to this claim by Janet a very different Katz andWilliam from J. Chambliss, perspective, is that "the history of biological intervention in the control of crime is a history of political decisions. The choice of crimes and criminals to be researched is a political decision; the definition of crime is a political decision."10 In brief, though this area of research is fraughtwith difficult and often emo tionally laden issues, there has been in recent years a renewed and ener getic interest in the subject and a willingness by most researchers to rec ognize the importance of the genetic approach to criminality. The second major area of biological determinism in McTeague?that of the sexual feelings and actions ofMcTeague and Trina during their also introduced early in the novel. McTeague courtship and marriage?is has called on Trina and they arewalking near the B Street Station inOak land.McTeague repeatedly asks Trina tomarry him, and when she replies "'No' instinctively, in spite of herself," he suddenly took her in his enormous arms, crushing down her strugglewith
his immense buried; but it keeps returning to haunt us."7 In an even more recent survey

ing her head to his. They kissed each other, grossly, full in the
mouth.... The instant that Trina

strength.

Then

Trina

gave

up,

all

in an

instant,

turn

him to kiss her, he thought less of her. She was not so desirable, after all.... Perhaps he dimly saw that this must be so, that it

gave

up,

the

instant

she allowed

30

American LiteraryRealism 29,2 belonged to the changeless order of things?the man desiring the woman only for what shewithholds; thewoman worshipping the man for that she yields up to him.With each concession gained
the man's desire cools; with each surrender made the woman's adoration increases.11

Norris in this passage both echoes conventional folk wisdom about the nature of sexual pursuit and capture and anticipates the contemporary field of inquiry known as evolutionary psychology.12Relying on anthropologi cal and sociological observation and analysis, evolutionary psychologists hold thatmany basic human emotions and beliefs, especially those related to mating, have their origin in mankind's evolutionary past. As Donald Symons, one of themajor figures in this area, succinctly notes inThe Evo lution of Human Sexuality (1979), "Men and women differ in their sexual natures because throughout the immensely long hunting and gathering of human the sexual desires and dispositions that phase evolutionary history were sex were to reproductive obliv for either for the other tickets adaptive ion."13 The male within this schema of conflicting sexual desires seeks to increase his chances for reproductive success by impregnating more than one sexual partner. His underlying impulse is thus to conquer and then to on to another sexual relationship. The female, however, seeks to push increase her chances for reproductive success by guaranteeing the well being of her offspring. She therefore seeks the protection and support of a single strongmate. As David M. Buss states in his recent The Evolution of Human Mating (1994), "Because sex is one of themost Desire: Strategies of
valuable

chological mechanisms
inately."14

reproductive

resources

women

can

that cause them to resist giving it away indiscrim

offer,

they

have

evolved

psy

ual interaction,McTeague, in accord with "the changeless order of things," "cools" in his interest inTrina, while her "adoration increases." Later, in his depiction of the mating of Annixter and Hilma in The Octopus, Norris deals with the reproductive instincts inherent in sexual pur suit in a positive light. InMcTeague, however, he emphasizes the baleful consequences implicit in a mating resulting from the joining of a man and woman who enter into their relationship out of such strikingly different

and Trina act out with some precision during their courtship McTeague an evolutionary is psychology model of feeling and behavior. McTeague in since he is sexual Trina reluctant, pursuit, instinctively seeking initially and therefore reproductive success, she is instinctively testing his commit ment and strength and thus her reproductive success. Their kiss at the B Street Station?"grossly, fullon themouth"?is, within the late nineteenth century coding of sex in fiction, a sexual surrender on her part and a vic tory on his.With thismajor shift in the evolutionary politics of their sex

Essays (Pizer)

31

sexual impulses. Summarizing the scene at the B Street Station, Norris writes, "The very act of submission that bound thewoman to [McTeague] forever had made her seem less desirable in his eyes. Their undoing had already begun.... Chance had brought them face to face, and mysterious instincts as ungovernable as the winds of heaven were at work knitting their lives together."15 Norris' tone in this passage indeed strongly echoes David Buss' in his comment that "The picture [of conflicting male and female sexual instincts] is not a very pretty one, but humans were not designed by natural selection to coexist in niceness and matrimonial bliss. They were designed for individual survival and genetic reproduction. The are often psychological mechanisms fashioned by these ruthless criteria
selfish ones."16

It is of course a commonplace that every generation reads theworks of the past in part in the light of its own preoccupations?that when we in the 1990s we are also reading ourselves at thismoment. read McTeague the last several decades there has occurred a notable shiftwithin During the permanent debate over the relativeweight of heredity and environment in the shaping of an individual's life.On the one hand, many of the vast social improvement projects undertaken since the 1950s have not fulfilled their expectations, leaving a widespread belief in the intractability of some areas of social dysfunction. On the other, the immense strides forward in the understanding of molecular biology?and especially in the ability to relate many specific attributes in an individual's make-up and behavior to as the increased range and specific genes?as well sophistication of anthro our real have and increased research, sociological significantly pological ization of the importance of the genetic transmission of human traits. There appears to be, in otherwords, a pendulum of belief within the complex and perhaps ultimately indeterminable issue of the relative weight of genetic and environmental factors in the conditioning of experience, with the pen dulum having swung from the genetic absolutism of the late nineteenth century to the great stress on environmentalism of all kinds during the mid-twentieth century to various recent attempts to discover the possible an anom genetic basis of social behavior. McTeague, in this context, is less alous and idiosyncratic endorsement of some of the more bizarre aspects of late nineteenth-century pseudo-science and folk belief than a sugges tive anticipation of several strains in the biological conditioning of expe
rience that are

drama and ethical awkwardness in Norris's depiction of the theme of most part be McTeague, his account may for the biological determinism in
true?at least in our time.

again

attracting

great

attention.

Whatever

the fictional

melo

?Tulane

University

American LiteraryRealism 29,2 32

Notes
1. I discuss the influence of Lombroso's ideas onMcTeague in The Novels of Frank Nor Indiana Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 57-63. ris (Bloomington: ed. Donald Pizer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 2. 2. McTeague, 3. McTeague, p. 19. 4. Robert O'Brien andMorris Chafetz, The Encyclopedia of Alcoholism (New York: Facts on File, 1991), p. 110. 5. For an excellent summary of the present state of research in this area, see "The Institute onAlcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, No. 18 Ph 328, of Alcoholism," National Genetics

Oct.

1992. 6. David P. Farrington notes in his essay "Implications of Biological Findings forCrim a inological Research" that "In many ways, biology is taboo topic formany sociological crim et al. inologists" (The Causes of Crime: New Biological Approaches, ed. Sarnoff A. Mednick [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987], p. 61). 7. Ysabel Rennie, The Searchfor Criminal Man: A Conceptual History of the Dangerous et al., "Genetic Offender (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1978), p. 265. See also Sarnoff A. Mednick Factors in the Etiology of Criminal Behavior," in The Causes ofCrime, pp. 74-91. 8. Lee Ellis, "The Evolution of Violent Criminal Behavior and Its Non-Legal Equiv alent," in Crime in Biological, Social, and Moral Contexts, ed. Lee Ellis and Harry Hoffman (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. 62. "Evidence Found for a Possible Aggressive Gene,'" Science, 18 9. See Virginia Morell, June 1993, pp. 1722-23; and H. G. Brunner, et al., "Abnormal Behavior Associated with a

Human Mating 14. David M. Buss, The Evolution (New York: ofDesire: Strategies of Basic Books, 1994), p. 45. The work of Symons, Buss, and others in seeking to correlate states of mind within the mating process and the conditions of evolution should not be confused with efforts to validate traditional notions of man's physical and mental superiority towomen or on evolutionary grounds. Thus, for example, Ruth Bleier, in her Science and Gen biological der: A Critique ofBiology and Its Theories onWomen (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), does not find it necessary to include the mating theories of contemporary evolutionary psycholo gists within her critique. 15. McTeague, p. 51. 16. Buss, The Evolution

in the Structural Gene for Monoamine Oxidase A," Science, 22 October 1993, Point Mutation pp. 578-80. and Richard Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature 10. James Q? Wilson (New York: F. Chambliss, "Biology and Crime," Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 70; Janet Katz andWilliam ed. Joseph F. Sheeley (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Criminology: A Contemporary Handbook, 1991), p. 171. 11. McTeague, pp. 47-48. 12. Evolutionary psychology has its roots inDarwin's discussion of human sexual selec Man. Darwin, however, limits himself largely to obvious tion at the close of The Descent of as male strength and female beauty when describing the evolu physical characteristics such as do modern evolutionary tionary role of sexual selection. He does not discuss, psycholo states of mind and codes of behavior in factors of the by evolutionary conditioning gists, human mating. Human Sexuality (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 13. Donald Symons, The Evolution of 1979), p. v.

Desire, of

p. 152.