CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE FRANK NORRIS and EUROPEAN NATURALISM a Thesis Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the R

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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

FRANK NORRIS

AND

EUROPEAN NATURALISM

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

English

Robert Dean Speers

January, 1984 The thesis of Robert Dean Speers is approved:

'(Marvin Klotz)

Chairman)

California State University, Northridge

ii I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Dr. Richard Abcarian for being my advisor and for all of his assistance. My thanks also to Dr. Marvin Klotz and Dr. John Stafford for reading my thesis and for their helpful comments.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• iii ABSTRACT...... v Chapter

I. ZOLA AND NATURALISM ••• 1

II. NORRIS AND NATURALISM. 8

III. L'ASSOMMOIR AND McTEAGUE. 20 IV. GERMINAL AND THE OCTOPUS. 31

CONCLUSION. 42

NOTES .••.•• 46

BIBLIOGRAPHY. • . • . . • • . • . • • • • . • • . . . . • ...... • • • • • 50

iv ABSTRACT

FRANK NORRIS

AND

EUROPEAN NATURALISM

Robert Dean Speers

Master of Arts in English

According to conventional critical opinion, the

American novelist Frank Norris can best be understood as a

follower of the French novelist Emile Zola, who in his

essays and novels was largely responsible for the creation

of what came to be known as literary naturalism. While it

is true that Norris's fiction can best be understood in the

context of Zola's theory and practice {and of European naturalism generally), the facile assumption that Norris's works are merely an example of Zolaesque and European nat

uralism obscures significant aspects of Norris's novels and his development as a writer. Indeed, as this study hopes

v to show, Norris adapted and modified the ideas of European naturalism to reflect his own unique temperament and his understanding of the realities of American life and character.

This study, then, will investigate first the theory and practice of Zola's naturalism and then seek to determine whether Norris followed Zola closely enough to justify the conventional view of Norris as merely an American exponent of European naturalism. The resulting information should allow us to arrive at some conclusions concerning the term

"naturalism" and its place within the American literary framework.

The first chapter examines Zola's "Le Roman Experi mental" and attempts to outline his principal tenets for the writing of the naturalistic novel. We discover that Zola's ideas promoted a "scientific" experiment within the novel.

He wanted the novel to attain new status and emerge as a type of sociological exploration concerning the effects of environment and heredity on determined individuals.

The second chapter discusses Norris's literary theories and finds that many of his ideas modified and criticized the sentimental works of the day, the realism of William Dean

Howells, and, of course, Zola. The chapter then focuses on a comparison of Norris's Zola's literary theories and eventually recognizes several differences which set Norris apart from Zola's shadow.

To better illustrate these differences, the third chap-

vi ter of the thesis compares two examples of each author's

fiction. Here, we see that while in their fictional practice both Zola and Norris were guided by theoretical formulations, Norris unlike Zola, tended sometimes to ignore and occasionally even contradict his abstract theories. The chapter compares Zola's L'Assommoir to Norris's McTeague and discovers that the Norris work, although at times reflects several of the author's literary tenets (and Zola's as well), for the most part rejects a Zola-type of formula for the writing of this particular novel.

Finally, in Chapter Four, this notion is further con firmed by comparing Zola's Germinal to Norris's The Octopus.

We find that Norris went beyond merely imitating zoia's deterministic novels and created works that covered a wider range of themes and plot possibilities. Moreover, in examining The Octopus we realize that Norris wrote an inconsistent and less-structured form of naturalism. This

American naturalism reflected a new country of possibilities and signaled the emergence of a new fiction devoid of strict and inflexible rules. The thesis concludes, therefore, that simply characterizing the works of Norris as "naturalism" places the novels under the shadow of European naturalism and hinders their proper evaluation as the profoundly unique

American works they are.

vii Chapter I

ZOLA AND NATURALISM

According to conventional critical opinion, the

American novelist Frank Norris can best be understood as a follower of Emile Zola, who in his essays and novels was largely responsible for the creation of what came to be known as literary naturalism. While it is true that

Norris's fiction can best be understood in the context of

Zola's theory and practice (and of European naturalism generally), the ·facile assumption that Norris's works are merely an American example of Zolaesque and European naturalism obscures significant aspects of Norris's novels and his development as a writer. Indeed, as this study hopes to show, Norris adapted and modified the ideas of

European naturalism to reflect his own unique temperament and his understanding of the realities of American life and character.

This study, then, will investigate first the theory and practice of Zola's naturalism and then seek to deter mine whether Norris followed Zola closely enough to justify the conventional view of Norris as merely an American exponent of European naturalism. The resulting information should allow us to arrive at some conclusions concerning the term 11 naturalism" and its place within the American

1 (l ' 2 literary framework. First we should examine Zola's theory

on the novel.

Directly and indirectly influenced by individuals such

as Auguste Comte, Hippolyte Taine, Charles Darwin, and

Claude Bernard, as well as Balzac and Flaubert, Zola wrote 1 "Le Roman Experimental .. in 1880. In this essay he wanted

to go beyond his formulations previously outlined in the

preface to the second edition of Therese Raquin. In that

preface he expressed the wish that the novel study tempera 2 ment and not character. By character he presumably meant

the people in a novel provided with unique qualities

revealed to the reader through dialogue and behavior.

Temperaments, on the other hand, were revealed to the

reader through physical external descriptions of people and

the surroundings. Zola's temperaments, unlike other

novelists's characters, had no unique qualities which would

individualize them. He placed the reader in a kind of

"fourth wall" position (similar to an audience's point of

view while watching a play) so that he or she seldom

realized the temperaments' motivations and feelings. The

depicted temperaments existed as unfortunate, instinctive people engulfed in determinism: "I chose people wholly dominated by their nerves and their blood, without free will, drawn into each act of their lives by the pre 3 destinations fatally imprinted in their flesh."

Willard R. Trask suggests that Zola acquired the idea

_of temperaments from certain medical people in the nine- 3

teenth century who, for their own purposes, adopted the

doctrine of the "humors," or bodily fluids, which was 4 popular during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Many

of Zola's characters represented a certain humor, or

temperament: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melan-

cholic.

Zola's characters, therefore, were "types" (as opposed

to deep, rounded characters}, so that the reader could

easily maintain objectivity and not become emotionally

involved with individuals. This objectivity was important

because Zola set up a "scientific" experiment within his

novels. The reader objectively experienced the effects of

environment and heredity on a particular temperament.

Zola explained in detail the idea of a scientific

experiment for the novel in "Le Roman Experimental." Dr.

Claude Bernard's Introduction to the Study of Medicine

(1865} convinced Zola that literature must become a science.

That is, where Bernard wanted medicine aligned with

experimental science, Zola wanted the same for the novel.

The novel thus would possess new status and would emerge as

a type of sociological experiment:

I am going to try to prove for my part that if the experimental method leads to the knowledge of physical life, it should also lead to the knowledge of the passionate and intellectual life. It is but a question of degree in the same path which runs from chemistry to physiology, then from physiology to anthropology and to sociology.S 4 The novelist's experiment, carried out with the rigor and objectivity of a scientist in his laboratory, required a full investigation into the effects of environment and heredity on a temperament (or temperaments). But Zola insisted that the novelist should be more than observer

(similar to the astronomer) and become an experimenter

(similar to the chemist) who actively varied phenomena for his own purposes. He called this new novelist the 6 "experimental novelist."

Zola wanted the experimental novelist to collect data from the environment. Like the scientific experimenter, the novelist would then arrange the data and set up conditions that would reveal a "disease" inflicted on a temperament, and ultimately inflicted on the depicted society.

• • • the experimentalist appears and introduces an experiment, that is to say, sets his characters going in a certain story so as to show that the succession of facts will reveal such as the requirements of the determinism of the phenomena under examination call for.7

Zola hoped that the experimental novelist and the reader-- presumably, people not fully controlled by a rigid determinism--might react to the experiment and arrive at conclusions concerning a social sickness and then possibly formulate ideas to change the situation. With all of this completed, the writer now emerged, as Zola termed it, as an 5

"experimental moralist" ("searching out the determinism of 8 social phenomena" ) •

Zola believed the experimental moralist to be the novelist who, through the scientific method, transcends the

Romantic imagination--which insists on the primacy of the emotions and man's uniqueness--and strives for the high truths of social reform. 9 Zola called the Romantics

"idealists."10 To him, the idealists seemed obsessed with the irrational, the unknown, the mysterious. He felt that these idealists, poets and philosophers, fruitlessly dwelt on the origins of things; the experimental moralist/ novelist, on the other hand, concentrated on the how of things:

I think that the experimental novelists equally ought not occupy themselves with this unknown quality unless they wish to lose themselves in the follies of the poets and the philosophers. It is surely an object large enough to try to know the entire mechanism of nature, without troubling one's self for the time being with the origins of the mechanism. If we some day succeed in knowing it, we shall doubtless owe our knowledge to method, and it is better then to begin at the beginning with the study of phenomena, instead of hoping that a sudden revelation will reveal to us the secret of the world.ll

In addition, Zola faulted the many writers for worrying too much about form and style. The experimental novelist mu.st not allow an elaborate form and style to hinder the straightforward scientific approach: 6

We are actually rotten with lyricism; we are very much mistaken when we think that the characteristic of a good style is a sublime confusion with just a dash of madness added; in reality, the excellence of a style depends upon its logic and clearness. 12

It seems clear, then, that Zola wished for a new kind

of literature--the naturalistic novel. A few other writers

before him could be designated as naturalists, but none of

them were so doctrinaire and vehement as Zola in rejecting

the metaphysical and the philosophical in favor of the

experimental and the physiological. He also rejected any

idea that literary naturalism should be known as a school

of literature; he wanted it to be known simply as the

scientific experimental method being applied through the

novel to humankind and its environment. What emerged was

the novel of social reform created through the scientific

method.

In much of Zola's fiction, particularly in the

Rougon-Macquart works, we can see his efforts to adhere to

his theories. Germinal and L'Assommoir show helpless

individuals virtually controlled by environment and

heredity. The slim hope is that because of the author's

experiment, the less-controlled reader may witness a

pathetic situation and then eventually attempt to change it.

American writers of this time saw problems in their

country as well. American naturalists, such as Frank

Norris, took Zola's theories and applied them (whether 7 consciously or unconsciously} to a fiction that reflected a changing country reeling from the new realities and necessities of a booming industrialism. However, these writers also applied these theories to an America experi encing a special phenomenon: a new social mobility never before heard of in Europe, or anywhere else in the world. Chapter II

NORRIS AND NATURALISM

This section explores the emerging American literary

naturalism of the late nineteenth century. Because many

label Frank Norris as the period's "purest" American

naturalistic writer, we use his criticism, and eventually

his novels, as our principal focus. First, however, to

assist in the investigation into the issue of literary

naturalism's appropriateness as a term within American

literature, and to help identify the similarities and

differences between Zola and Norris, it will be useful to

examine briefly some past American criticism of Zola's and

Norris's naturalism.

European naturalism's genesis seems relatively clear

because of Zola's "Le Roman Experimental"--a somewhat

straightforward tract. Earlier American critics simply

assumed that American naturalism was directly influenced by,

and an offshoot of, Zola's naturalism. VanWyck Brooks

stands as a model of these critics. He saw faults in the

works of Norris because they did not stick close enough to

Zolaesque standards. But, for the most part, Brooks gives

us mere isolated comments on the issue.

In his chapter on the literature of the period, Brooks

.automatically assumes Zola's influence on Norris and then,

8 t1 '

because Norris does not strictly follow Zola's ideas, he

faults Norris's work. He begins with a remark about

Norris's college days at the University of California: "As

a student in Berkeley in the early nineties, with an

unmistakable foreign air, he had strolled about the paths

of the university campus with the yellow-backed novels of

Zola under his arm • Brooks summarizes other

features of Norris's life and works and then confirms

Zola's influence: "The transition to Zola was natural . 2 enough."

Brooks makes other isolated statements on Zola's

influence on Norris before finding fault with the American's

naturalism. He suggests: "Norris 'Q1a~ Zola' s zest and thirst for the odour of stale bedding • Then he

makes his longest comment on the matter:

He was following in this the methods of Zola, whose zest for life Norris shared, and Zola would have sympa thized with Norris's indifference to the niceties of form and his scorn of the pale and the bloodless in the literature of the moment.4

But finally Brooks abruptly dismisses Norris as an

ineffective naturalistic writer. With one quick statement,

he implies that Norris's works are defective because his 5 ·naturalism was confused and that "it never ran clear."

Throughout his discussion, it never occurs to Brooks that

perhaps Norris was searching for a mode that could be

applied to American concerns rather than European, and that 10

just because his naturalism was different it was not necessarily defective.

Other earlier critics treat the subject similarly.

Granville Hicks, for example, dismisses the issue with one observation:

His reading of Zola had introduced him to determinism, which he had employed as a literary device in both McTeague and Vandever and the Brute, though he seems never to have understood its philosophical implications.6

Finally, another critic, Everett Carter, points out that

Norris idolized Zola, but then he calls Norris a "presumed

'naturalist.'"?

Where these earlier critics, and others, merely assumed

Zola's influence and Norris's defectiveness, several later critics probed much deeper into the issue. Critics such as

Richard Chase, Charles Walcutt, and Donald Pizer analyzed

American naturalism in greater detail than the earlier critics and generally felt that if an American work failed to conform to Zola's European naturalism it was not necessarily flawed and an ultimate failure. Rather, they felt that the work might stand as an American variation of the mode.

Chase, for example, places emphasis on what Norris was trying to accomplish within American literature (not

European or French), and says in The American Novel and its

Tradition8 that his naturalism rejected the moral novels of 11

Howellsian realism and their depiction of surface events.

Norris desired to search deeper below the surface of everyday life and not write about "people and their daily tragedies and adventures but abstractions, Forces,Environ- ments, Accidents, and Influences." Chase views Norris's naturalism as "ruthless realism" 9--a quest to restore dramatic actions, mysteries, and colorful events to the novel which realism generally tended to screen out.

An even more probing exploration of American naturalism comes from Charles Walcutt. In American Literary

Naturalism: A Divided Stream,10 Walcutt traces the American naturalistic sensibility from the transcendentalists down to the early twentieth century. He sees difficulty in studying literary naturalism because writers such as Zola and Norris say one thing in theory and (at times) do another thing in practice. 11 While Walcutt acknowledges Zola's influence on Norris, he nevertheless argues that the situation is more complicated than critics had hitherto perceived:

••• the exact nature of Norris's naturalism has not been studied, its influence upon the structure and technique of his novels has not been expounded, and the nature and importance of its influence at various times during his short literary career have not been traced. Least of all, perhaps, has been devoted to the exact nature of the ideology which finds expression in his work.12 12

Another later critic who studies literary naturalism

from an American perspective is Donald Pizer. Pizer even

goes so far as to see bits of optimism in what is supposed

to be the gloomy determinism of the American naturalistic

writers. Perhaps in part because of America's unprecedented

social mobility, he detects more hope and confidence in the

novels of Norris and others than in their European counter-

parts. Instead of contending that American naturalism is

a mere offshoot of European or French naturalism, Pizer

presents a definition which contains an optimism that can

only be applied to the American version. He suggests the

existence of "two tensions or contradictions" which embody

American naturalism:

The two in conjunction comprise both an interpretation of experience and a particular re-creation of experience. In other words, the two constitute the theme and form of the naturalistic novel. The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic novel and the concept of man which emerges from the subject matter •.•• The second tension involves the theme of the naturalistic novel. The naturalist often describes his characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by environ ment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also suggests a compensating humanistic value in his characters or their fates which affirms the significance of the individual and his life.l3

The first tension suggests that the American naturalistic writer's crude and lustful middle class characters display 13

traits which ironically can cause them to emerge as heroic

and exciting. The second tension reflects Pizer's interest

in the naturalistic writer's quest for meaning within the

deterministic prison in which he or she places the

characters.

We have progressed, therefore, from critics who made

vague comparisons of American naturalism to European

naturalism, to critics (such as Pizer) who view American

naturalism and its novelists as unique and in important

respects independent of European influences. These later

critics take an American perspective and see Frank Norris

as generally different from Zola and, at the same time, give

him some well-deserved credit as an influential American

novelist.

This relatively recent development in the criticism of

American naturalism and of Norris's works takes us to Norris

himself and his own "Le Roman Experimental," "The Respon-

sibilities of the Novelist." These essays and reviews,

written during several years, mostly appeared originally in

Wave, a San Francisco publication.

In one essay, Norris declares that the novelist's duty

must expand beyond simply picturing life and must, as Zola

insisted, begin the job of depicting humankind living in a

world of social injustices. For Norris, the resulting

novel " •• proves something, draws conclusions from a whole congeries of forces, social tendencies, race impulses, 14 @.nq) devotes itself not to a study of men but of man. n 14 Norris thought that a novel without this higher purpose only exists as a "flippant paper-covered thing of swords and cloaks •• "15 He had nothing but disdain for those who demanded cheerful works of fiction:

It is the complaint of the coward, this cry against the novel with a purpose, because it brings the tragedies and griefs of others to notice. Take this element from fiction, take from it the power and opportunity to prove that injustice, crime and inequality do exist, and what is left? Just the amusing novels, the novels that enter tain. The juggler in spangles, with the balancing pole and gilt ball, does this.l6

These outspoken beliefs lead to the tenet of "life not 17 literature." Norris contended that the "novel with a purpose" can only be created by the novelist living a life of action and not a life of literary cults among effetes:

One believes that the answer is found in the fact that life is more important than literature, and in the wise, wise, old, old adage that experience is the best teacher. Of all the difficult things that enter into the learning of a most difficult profession, the most difficult of all for the intended novelist to acquire is the fact that life is better than literature. • • • all the education in the world will not help one little, little bit in the writing of a novel if life it self, the crude, the raw, the vulgar, if you will, is not studied. An hour's experience is worth ten years of study- of ·reading other people's books.l8 15

Norris, with this anti-intellectual attitude, likened

progressive action (where "things got done") and moral force

to masculinity; he likened weakness and moral indecision to

effeminacy (as he saw the effete). Only in the real world

of practicalities was progress ever achieved.

Norris had no use for "realism" as a method of present-

ing this literature of purpose and practicality. The

realism of Howells and the Gilded Age stood as a literature

of external detail and depicted the everyday occurrences of

the lower or middle classes. For Howells, and other

realists, the high truths of life emanated from these

surface events. Everett Carter elaborates:

For that age had a faith in the physical world and its meaning, a faith that, in the endless complexi ties, in the cracks and joints of materiality, there was a moral force which held the palpable together and gave it its meaning.l9

Although an ardent admirer of Howells himself, Norris

regarded realism as stale and inadequate. In the essay

"A Plea for Romantic Fiction," he attacks realism and

presents his version of a romanticism (actually what we

call naturalism) that goes "straight through the clothes

and tissues and wrappings of flesh down deep into the red, 20 living heart of things." He feels that the prevalent realism of his day is merely the drama of "a broken teacup" 21 and is "respectable as a church and proper as a deacon": 0 ' 16

••• Realism stultifies itself. It notices only the surface of things. For it, Beauty is not only skin deep, but only a geometrical plane, without dimensions and depth, a mere outside. Realism is very excellent so far as it goes, but it goes no further than the Realist himself can actually see or actually hear.22

Norris's romanticism/naturalism, therefore, took into consideration the variations and improbabilities of life and went beyond the superficialities of "the tragedy of a walk down the road, the excitement of an afternoon call, and the adventure of an invitation to dinner."23 He proclaimed Zola as the head of the romanticists because of the sense of awareness in his novels of the variations of living and of the sordid and the unlovely.

But Norris desired to expand the Zolaesque static depictions of life by adding more dramatic possibilities.

Thus, in order to dramatically facilitate this probe beneath realism, and also to add more excitement to a Zola type of novel, he advocated that novels center on a 24 "pivotal event." He saw this event as a Poe-like turning point which allowed novelists flexibility in changing the course of the action:

All good novels have one. It is the peg upon which the fabric of the thing hangs, the nucleus around which the shifting drifts and currents must- suddenly--coagulate, the sudden releasing of the brake to permit for one instant the entire machinery to ·'labour, full steam ahead. Up to that 17 point the action must lead; from it, it must decline.25

Norris observed that most skillful novelists, during the

first part of their novels, arrived at the pivotal event

very gradually. Once reached, the event allowed the action

to speed up considerably. In Norris's McTeague, Trina's

winning the $5,000 is the event; in The Octopus it is the

massacre of the ranchers.

Consequently, if we piece all of these critical frag-

ments together, Norris's type of naturalism, although not a

result of a systematic tract like Zola's "Le Roman

Experimental," still has a semblance of order if we place

some of his main ideas in certain positions: (1) the novel

of purpose, (2) the primacy of life over literature,

(3) novels that go beneath realism, and (4) the pivotal

event. Nowhere in his criticism does Norris mention such

philosophical terms as determinism or free will (although

McTeague, Vandever, and The Octopus have some elements that

these terms often refer to) •

Of course, this is not to imply that Norris did not

take his literary theories as seriously as Zola did. Both wanted to "upgrade" the novel. But Zola's scientific/

philosophical pretensions would have most likely made

Norris shudder. Both novelists, however, advocated

"purpose" novels which were to be a cut above the usual

offerings of their contemporaries. That is, Zola desired to go beyond the romantic idealists and their questions 18 concerning the origins of things, and enter into another

realm of the scientific/sociological novel which points out

the ills of a society containing people caught in a

deterministic web. Similarly, Norris sought to expand on

one of the dominant literary modes of his day--in his case,

realism. Although the scientific approach never entered

into his theories, Norris nevertheless suggested a new

rigorous, complex direction for the novel to enable it to probe beneath the simple surface of everyday living in

order to study the variations and nuances of life.

Perhaps another notable distinction between their

theories is Norris's focus on dramatic possibilities within more conventional stories. While Zola seemed more concerned with his scientific experiment and what it would socio

logically expose, Norris wished to tell a dramatic story which would cause the reader not only to learn but also to enjoy himself. By adding the pivotal event (some earlier critics probably would have called this an example of defective naturalism) , Norris lessened the chance of alienating or losing his readers. Also, some of his novels possessed a certain optimism. This optimism, along with the heightened dramatic action are, as we will see, what mainly distinguish American naturalism from European naturalism.

Now that we have examined Zola's and Norris's literary theories we should study representative samples of their novels in order to further determine the distinctive traits 19

of European and American naturalism. As Walcutt pointed

out, what Zola and Norris say and what they do can be, at

times, two different things. In the writing of their

novels, both used an approach that critics call literary

naturalism. We have seen that some critics felt that the

results of Zola's and Norris's approaches were quite

similar. But if these results on occasions seem alike, the

individual components appear to be different. Thus, to

further determine whether or not the term literary naturalism is justified as a term within American litera

ture, we should investigate the following examples of

Zola's and Norris's fiction. While doing this, we should keep in mind that while in their fictional practice both

Zola and Norris were guided by theoretical formulations,

Norris, unlike Zola, tended to ignore and even contradict his abstract theories. Chapter III

L'ASSOMMOIR AND McTEAGUE

Many consider Zola's L'Assommoir and Norris's McTeague

their best work. Many critics also see these works as the

closest to pure theoretical literary naturalism as Zola and Norris ever reach.

L 'Assommoir ("the apogee of ~ola' ~ naturalistic 1 method" says Walcutt ) tells the story of Parisian slum-

dwellers during the Second Empire of France. It is con-

cerned with the effects of this sordid environment on

individuals. To begin his experiment, Zola introduces us

to Gervaise Maquart, whose husband, Coupeau, eventually

leaves her. She later marries a man named Lantier and then

finds a modicum of happiness while running her own laundry

business. But of course in a Zola novel a situation such

as this cannot last too long--uncontrollable deterministic

forces (environmental, hereditary, economic, etc.) combine

and finally destroy her. Along the way, the reader

witnesses the despair, anger, love and hate of all these

losers.

In McTeague, Norris depicts a rather clumsy, almost

oafish, unlicensed and uneducated dentist living in San

Francisco during the 1890's. One day McTeague meets a

_young woman through a friend and falls in love. What

20 21 follows in the novel are Norris's ideas on the power of

external deterministic forces as they flatten the ignorant

unsuspecting victims--McTeague and his young wife Trina.

Both characters go along their obtuse ways only to collide

with these inevitable forces which lead them to avarice and

an atavistic criminality. As in Zola's novel, they too cannot survive and are destroyed by instincts and the

conditioned habits they cannot control. Zola and Norris

show in these two books how rampant alcoholism, greed,

blind jealousy and cruelty, as a result of unharnessed

determinism, have the potential to annihilate the sometimes well-meaning but unaware individual.

As stated earlier, Zola wanted his novels to depict

temperaments and not necessarily characters. To him, this device strengthened objectivity for the experimental moralist's "scientific" experiment. In a deterministic environment a temperament can easily be described physically, and is more general than a complex, multi dimensional character. With a temperament, it becomes easier for the reader to objectify and to experience the effects of the specific environment. The importance lies not in what a particular person says or does, but in how a general temperament reacts to the setting or environment.

The author-experimenter and the reader then make some conclusions concerning a social sickness. Presumably, deep, rounded characters would hinder Zola's objective experiment and keep us from learning the true effects of 22 the deterministic forces. Apparently, Zola saw rounded

characters as being associated with free will and the

ability to alter the environment and conditions.

In L'Assommoir, three individuals and temperaments

appear within a particular setting--the slums of Paris.

The reader observes Gervaise as she gradually changes into

a hardened and defeated woman. F.W.J. Hemmings views her as

a basically decent and unassuming person:

She has what virtues she can and what ambitions she may; but the best virtue- simple good heartedness--is the soft spot through which circumstance wounds her mortally, and her modest demands of life are cruelly rejected, one by one and one in all.2

All she wants out of life is a simple existence with her

family and her laundry business. But in a Zola novel this

sometimes is too much to ask--she has no chance in the world.

Also, we find that the other temperaments around

Gervaise increase the odds that this poorly defended soul will escape her wretched existence and move on to something tolerable. Because of alcoholism and just plain ignorance, the people around her pull her down to abject dissipation and eventual death. During the course of the book, her husband leaves her and later returns after she has found another. We then have a household consisting of three pathetic victims feeding on each other's misfortune.

But for Zola the main victim becomes Gervaise. He 23

focuses on this temperament to the extent of displaying a

vicious environment impossible to contain or control. This

is a situation simply out of her hands. This fulfills

Zola's desire to establish an environment and a correspond-

ing temperament in order to reflect the power of

determinism. The following describes the temperament that

must endure his experiment:

Gervaise was only twenty-two, tall, rather thin, with delicate features already showing signs of the buffetings of life. Hair unkept, slippered feet shivering in her white dressing-jacket stained with dust and grime from the furniture, she looked as though the hours of tears and anxiety she had been through had aged her ten years.3

This passage occurs early in the novel--not a rosy picture

for one so young.

As with Zola in L'Assomrnoir, Norris uses three

principals in McTeague, and their fates are no better. He

too presents us with temperaments rather than complex

characterizations. McTeague and Trina--creatures of

instinct--seem practically like comic stereotypes of the

newly married couple. McTeague's temperament leads to

alcoholism and greed. As with Zola, Norris's setting is the

poverty-ridden and the exploitive world of the big city-

:in this case the urban San Francisco in the 1890's: "It

~cTeague's stree~ was one of those cross streets peculiar

to Western cities, situated in the heart of the residence

quarter, but occupied by small tradespeople who lived in 24 4 the rooms above their shops." McTeague, in Pizer's words,

demonstrates "that man is more circumscribed than ordinarily

assumed,"5 and in George Spangler's words, that "man's

instincts, especially his sexual desire, have great power 6 to trap and degrade him." One kind of determinism begets

another. In this situation, McTeague's obtuse personality

and lack of sophistication make him vulnerable to several

forms of outside control: environmental, hereditary, and

sexual. Norris uses Zolaesque detail in describing his

physical appearance:

For McTeague was a young giant, carrying his huge shock of blond hair six feet four inches from the ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle, slowly, ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a feel of stiff, yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, strong as vices, the hands of an old-time car boy. Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head was square-cut; angular, his jaw salient, like that of the carnivora. (Ch. 1, pp. 6-7)

This is about as deep as Norris goes in explaining how

McTeague ticks. Passages like the above exist throughout the book, and the reader must infer that such a primitive person would obviously be lost in the complexities and

,realities of urban life; thus, McTeague's atavistic flight to his origins in the mountains and the desert where the basic necessity for survival is instinct.

Furthermore, it is said that Norris created McTeague 25

(and others as well) as a result of the influence derived

from the criminal anthropology of Cesare Lombroso (a person's racial and family past can be a determining factor on his or her behavior) , the evolutionary anthropology of 7 Joseph LeConte, and, of course, Zola himself. This would explain the multiplicity of themes in McTeague and the criminal and racial atavistic tendencies of several of

Norris's determined people (many critics, for instance, assert that Norris made Trina a miser because he believed those tendencies to be common to her basic Germanic stock) •

Consequently, in order to accommodate a wider range of ideas and a different set of circumstances, Norris's novels modify or expand the naturalism of Zola's works. He felt the need to open up American fiction and investigate new vistas and possibilities in order to match the vigor of the country, and, as Marchand states, he attempted this with

"the spirit of the anatomist." 8 A transitional condition certainly flowed through the America of the 1890's. On one hand, the burgeoning giant corporations and financial institutions found themselves at odds with governmental restrictions concerning greedy trusts and monopolies. On the other hand, so-called "rugged individualism" was a popular notion throughout much of American society and it helped stimulate the emergence of unionism and also the desire to claim one's piece of the land. This situation occasionally created a polarity amid a still young country.

Because of these diverse conditions, the American realism 26

of the Gilded Age gradually became more and more naturalis

tic due to an infusion of determinism from the likes of

Norris with daring, but sometimes inchoate, themes and

ideas. Nor was Zola's naturalism sufficient to embody a

changing America. Thus, Norris made it his task to depart

from Howells and Zola and create a more tentative and

diverse naturalism--a naturalism which corresponded to a

tentative and diverse America.

If we consider the new conditions in America which

brought forth a variation of Zolaesque naturalism, we should

also consider if even Zola himself offered a true and pure

objective naturalism. That is, did Zola live up to his

scientific objectives? In "Le Roman Experimental," one

appreciates Zola's innovative intentions and can, in turn,

at least acknowledge an aura of the scientific process. In

a novel such as L'Assommoir, we the readers observe the

experiment (Gervaise & Co. in the grips of forces in the

slums of Paris) , and later we deduce from the evidence and

arrive at Zola's desired sociological conclusion. But what

about the selection process for this scientific experiment?

The reader must trust that the author/experimental moralist

.based his experimental ingredients on an organized body of

accumulated data.

But does this really matter in our case? Probably

not. Zola's organizational procedures obviously fall

short of the requirements of the hard sciences. Anyway,

.does even Zola's naturalism have to be that meticulous and 27 rigid? What is important, however, is that the scientific

tone--the feeling or attitude--emerges because of Zola's detachment and objectivity along with a seemingly non

judgmental narrative.

Norris, being less scientific than Zola, relies more on melodrama. As mentioned earlier, his concerns were more thematic--provocative themes of environmental conditioning and criminal-racial atavism within a world of determinism.

More dramatic possibilities exist here than in Zola's novels. McTeague meeting his fate while handcuffed to

Marcus in the desert is not Norris drawing some profound and definite conclusions through a rigid scientific approach. Rather, we see in the last sections of McTeague primitive man, through necessity, instinctively escaping urban civilization and a controlling environment, and atavistically returning to his natural habitat. Pizer regards McTeague's return to the mountains and desert following the murder of Trina, as similar to "a hunted animal's return to its lair, and his reliance on an intuitive sixth sense to avoid capture intensifies this theme."9 These are hardly the results of a scientifically precise sociological experiment that Zola advocated for the naturalistic novel.

Besides ignoring Zolaesque scientific pretensions,

Norris gained further dramatic effect by using in McTeague the "pivotal event." In Zola's L'Assommoir it is difficult to determine one particular pivotal event--why should the 28 author break the steady rhythm of documentation? But in

McTeague, on the other hand, Trina's winning of the $5,000 changes the action drastically. Until then the action is relatively slow and deliberate--the reader meets the characters as Norris exposes the monotonous environment.

Then, quite suddenly, Trina wins the lottery money: "All at once a great thrill of gladness surged up in Trina. •

She was carried away with the joy of her good fortune, a natural spontaneous joy--gaiety of a child with a new and wonderful toy" (Ch. 7, p. 89). Trina then becomes a miser, obsessed with the money and unwilling to share it with any- one. Finally, McTeague, living in extreme misery and drunken despair, is driven to murder her. This satisfies

Norris's criterion that the pivotal event must be the "peg on which the fabric of the thing hangs, the nucleus around which the shifting drifts and currents must--suddenly- coagulate."10 The event now leads to several new dramatic possibilities for the author's consideration. It abruptly changes course from a sort of Zolaesque chronicle of daily events into a melodramatic adventure of murder and pursuit.

Following the murder of the obsessed Trina, McTeague flees

San Francisco and embarks on his atavistic journey:

The life pleased the dentist beyond words. The still, colossal mountains took him back again like a returning prodigal, and vaguely, without knowing why, he yielded to their influence--immensity, their enormous power, crude and blind, reflecting themselves in his own nature, huge, strong, brutal in its simplicity. 29

And this, though he only saw mountains at night. They appeared far different than in the daytime. (Ch. 20, p. 298)

The thin veneer of civilization disappears from

McTeague and he becomes animal-like as he slips back to his past and eats with both hands while he looks "around him with a steady oxlike gaze" (Ch. 20, p. 298). Norris's naturalism is different from Zola's now as we realize the features which separate the authors' respective naturalistic approaches. It is true that both prefer in these two examples to present temperaments rather than complex characterizations. It is true also that both Zola and

Norris attempt objectivity as they depict unfortunates colliding with forces beyond their control. But here the authors part company; Norris, having other concerns beyond the powers of determinism and all of its degenerating manifestations, embodies in McTeague other themes concerning criminal-racial atavism and various forms of social

Darwinism within a determined world (as we will discover, the number of these themes increases in The Octopus) • What better way to accomplish this than to invent additional dramatic possibilities? Though occasionally incongruous and melodramatic, these new possibilities nevertheless serve as effective vehicles for Norris's themes and allow him a greater flexibility than a mere Zolaesque documentary approach.

In essence, we see a new naturalism--American literary 30 naturalism. This is a naturalism which defies any strict definition. As much as it may differ from the European version, the spirit of Zola usually emerges somewhere. Of course, in the same breath, one could designate L'Assommoir and McTeague both as naturalistic works. However, if we take one of the several definitions of literary naturalism and define it as (1) an extension or continuation of realism, and (2) realism infused with a pessimistic 11 d e t erm1n1sm,• • t h en we can d es1gnate• b ot h L I Assommo1r• an d

McTeague as belonging to the naturalistic mode. But the similarities between the works should not obscure the important differences. Indeed, Norris in McTeague with his use of new themes and of the pivotal event for greater dramatic flexibility, focuses on a relatively new, but an increasingly changing and complex, America during the industrial age. Writers such as Norris, through their fiction, expressed this transition and the resulting unrest.

A changing America needed a new fiction. Chapter IV

GERMINAL AND THE OCTOPUS

If McTeague contains several thematic innovations within naturalism, then The Octopus, written a few years later and published in 1900, presents an even more complex development of Norris's distinctive naturalistic art. In almost epic proportion, he relates a human drama around a plot based on an actual incident. In the example from Zola,

Germinal, the author stays with his basic approach and char acteristically gives a clinical depiction of the French proletariat--which actually could take place in any other similar area during the particular time--within a universal material force represented by the mines. As with

L'Assommoir and McTeague, these novels are similar to each other, but the differences are what reflect a genuine progression in American naturalism.

As in L'Assommoir, Zola, consistent with his French naturalism, offers us in Germinal several temperaments attempting to survive in a material world against a specif ic environment--the mining country of northern France during the Second Empire of Napoleon III (Zola wrote the book several years after the demise of the Second Empire) •

The individuals (even the protagonist, Etienne) are of the cardboard variety, or temperaments. These people are best

31 32 described through their physical characteristics, and the author created them for his objective scientific experiment

(the results of which Zola hopes will lead to action on the part of readers not engulfed in this constricting determinism in order to correct the depicted social injustices--one of the primary objectives of the experimental moralist) •

Norris, on the other hand, although still presenting basically one-dimensional individuals, seems to be gradually veering away from temperaments. In fact, in The Octopus he actually creates some rounded characters to explore and react more fully to the American experience symbolized in the growth of the wheat. Although still immersed in various forms of determinism, Norris's new naturalism offers here some hope and optimism--qualities notably absent in the bulk of Zola's work. As Marchand says, Norris in The Octopus wavers between an "impersonal force for which good and evil have no meaning and the idea of a triumphant good for which 1 the universe itself stands sponsor." For this complexity,

Norris needs rounded characters (Annixter, Presley, and

Magnus Derrick) to react effectively to a new and changing country.

Some critics are puzzled by Norris's optimism (Walcutt, for example, views it as going against the dictates of 2 determinism ) since in their eyes this "optimistic determin ism" seems implausible when one considers the earlier events in the novel. During the course of the story, things are not going well for the principals. Also, the novel 33 certainly conforms in many ways to what we expect of the naturalistic approach suggested by Zola: greed, despair, death, all engendered by those non-human forces that relentlessly (and capriciously) control the unaware victim.

But then, curiously, near the end, Norris says this:

In the end, the ultimate final end of all, what was left? Yes good issued from the crisis, untouched, unassail able, undefiled •••• Falseness dies; injustice and oppression in the end of everything fade and vanish away.3

These relatively cheerful sentiments follow depictions of unjust killings and of people being driven from their homes by the railroad. Zola too, in Germinal, shows us much the same thing: exploited people, miners and their families, dying of starvation or being gunned down. But, unlike

Norris, after all this chaos and misery, Zola glumly declares:

Here once again was the monster gulping down his ration of human flesh, cages emerged and plunged down again into the abyss loaded with men, bolted down tirelessly by the insatiable giant. 4

At the conclusion, with his experiment completed, the only hope that Zola perceives is the possibility of a restruc-

11 turing of society ( ••• a new invasion of barbarians re

115 generating the decayed nations of the old world •••• ) to obliterate the present determined world where, according to Matthew Joesphson, 11 individual actions, individual 34

destinies, hold their place only in a larger, more univer

sal, scheme of actions and reactions; they are part, in

short, of a larger and general fate." 6

Ironically, in The Octopus the two individuals that

express the above-discussed optimism are Vanamee, a mystic,

and Presley a poet. This reveals that even self-styled determinists such as Norris, and believers in credos that

call for "life not literature" can occasionally dwell on teleological issues and not entirely depend on a rigid determinism to explain everything. Thus Vanamee tells

Presley: "Evil is short-lived. Never judge the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is, in the end, perfect" (Ch. 9, p. 448). Evidently,

Presley takes this to heart because, at the conclusion

(expressing, it seems, Norris's own view), he decides:

"The larger view always and through all shams, all wicked ness, discovers the truth that will in the end, prevail, and all things surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for good" (Ch. 9, p. 458). How ironic that Frank

Norris, basically a deterministic writer, used a mystic and a poet to express the principal thoughts contained in his epic and most ambitious novel. Many people, however, see this optimism as a new tone for a new American naturalism. Some view it as a result of the influence Norris derived from Joseph LeConte, and actually what Norris means by "good" is the notion of the inevitable reversion of civilized man to his brute nature. 35

Of course, this stands as a common Norris theme, and Don

Walker points out that in fact Norris respected man's basic

instincts, and characters like Vanamee and Hilma Tree do

indeed reflect a distinct good: "Man alone in western 7 space." As opposed to McTeague alone in Death Valley, who

was already corrupted irreparably by urban complexities,

Hilma belonged to "the Eden world of romantic primitivism,"8

or, as Don Graham puts it, she is a person with the ability 9 to "attain a pastoral stasis."

Other critics, however, approach the optimism from

another perspective. Willard Reninger, for example,

contends that the optimism should be seen from Norris's

total development as a writer, and that it is consistent with the chronology of Norris's novels as he gradually

goes from a Zolaesque pessimistic naturalism to his own

optimistic theory. According to Reninger, because Norris did not like the prevailing literary theories of his day

(romance, Howells's realism, Zola's French naturalism) he 10 decided to create another kind of naturalism. Therefore, in the context of Norris's development as a writer, it is by no means inconsistent or puzzling. In fact, it is an idea that Norris declares in "The Responsibilities of the

Novelist": the sincerity of the novelist which entails a full investigation of all conditions of life. To merely adhere to a pessimistic determinism for all the answers is to be both narrow and simplistic.

Other critics, though, object to Reninger's contention 36

that the optimism is organic to Norris's entire output.

Walcutt maintains that Norris, like others who wrote between

1890 and 1900, was unsure concerning his own feelings on the

issue of determinism {synonymous with pessimism) vs. moral 11 respons1. b.1 1'1ty {synonymous w1t. h opt1m1sm . . ) • wa 1 cutt

further believes "The Responsibilities of the Novelist" is

an earnest but fragmented work {similar to most of Norris's

fiction?) and that Norris's criticism must be analyzed "in

relation to the ideas which they pretend to express and to

which they give significant form."12

Whatever the reasons for the optimism, Norris in The

Octopus nevertheless presents a new and vibrant type of

naturalism. Unlike Zola's pathetic individuals, some of

Norris's characters {not temperaments) go through drastic

metamorphoses to the point where they reach new levels of

awareness and experience: Annixter from a misanthropic

rancher to loving and caring husband {and person) ; Magnus

from man of power to man of impotence; Presley from well-

meaning but sedentary poet to spokesman and man of action

{surely this makes Norris happy) • Of course, Vanamee comes

alive upon meeting the new Angele. These characterizations

foreshadow the later emergence of American naturalistic

characters that stand out as more than "types." That is,

although they too are up against unrelenting forces, the

reader knows them as flesh and blood and discovers their

individual nuances: people such as Dreiser's Carrie and

.. Hurstwood along with Clyde Griffths, Farrell's Studs, and 37

eventually Bellow's Augie. What these people have in common

is the fact that they all, at one time or another, are able

to make a decision (or decisions) concerning their lives,

and sometimes the lives of those around them. There, it

seems, lies our so-called optimistic determinism--the

possibility of decisions concerning one's destiny. As

opposed to virtually all of Zola's characters, who live

lives of static powerlessness, some American naturalistic

characters live in a world where at least there is a chance

to instinctively modify their determined states.

Of the four above-mentioned Norris characters, however,

Annixter, Presley, and Vanamee's transformations coincide

with their sudden awareness of the wheat growth cycle in

conjunction with the omnipotent power of the railroad. With

this, another Norris theme appears: the wheat will always

exist along with the ability and means of distribution;

thus, a particular individual may be expendable in order to

sustain the wheat process for the remaining populace. As

Pizer so aptly points out, during the course of the novel,

the three characters (in separate situations) feels the 13 wheat as "objectifications of the divine," and the

acknowledgement of nature and of the growth cycle process

causes them to gain new "values and beliefs following 14 perceptionof the meaning of the process of growth."

Pizer labels this as "evolutionary theism," which is similar

to LeConte's comforting belief that all nature is observable

and describable through scientific laws. Early in the book, 38

for instance, Presley, the outsider-observer (like Etienne

in Germinal) goes through the first of a series of trans-

formations as he recognizes a divine force working through

the observable and the describable:

Presley saw again, in his imagination, the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam with its single eye, cyclopedian, red, shooting from horizon to horizon; but saw it now as the symbol of a vast power, huge terrible, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path; the leviathan with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless force, the iron hearted power, the monster, the colossus, the octopus. (Ch. 1, p. 42)

This passage follows the octupus's slaughter of something

that got in its way--a herd of sheep. It could have just as well been a group of "mere" ranchers. After this observation, Presley gradually changes from poet-observer to

involved activist (the busy "life not literature" syndrome).

Or, as Graham perceives it, Presley's change resembles

Vanamee's newly discovered optimism in that he goes "from emotionally felt and personally experienced stirrings of 15 the heart to intellectual formulations."

Despite all these differences between the two novels, we still discern several obvious and basic parallels.

Little difficulty arises, for example, in acknowledging that the mines of Germinal represent for Zola a force akin to the force of the railroad in The Octopus. That is, both are 39 vigorous, controlling energies, within a particular setting

that determine (whether figuratively or literally) several

fates. The authors center both novels upon these two

forces. Also, as Lars !henbrink so neatly outlines, the

two works deal with economic powers (the capitalists and

the railroad) in conflict with the rather helpless victims

of these powers (the miners and the ranchers) •16 Both

books contain similar openings and closings concerning the

outsider-observer-protagonist (Etienne enters the story;

meets the miners; encounters an anarchist; becomes part of

the miners' struggle; eventually leaves for Paris. Presley

enters the story; meets the ranchers; encounters an

anarchist; becomes part of the ranchers' struggle;

eventually leaves for India) and, in fact, one of Joesph

son's descriptions of Etienne matches the early Presley: 17 " • ardent but indecisive and ill-informed."

The two works vividly contrast luxury with poverty;

Zola and Norris accomplish this with contrasting scenes of

opulent dinner parties and meals against scenes of abject

despair. Although this device seems a bit heavy-handed, it

does occasionally carry great power.

A further noticeable similarity is that both novels

are, in Pizer's words, about "group defeat" (the miners and

the ranchers) which stands as a rather common naturalistic

subject (e.g., The Grapes of Wrath) • 18 Finally, Germinal

and The Octopus fit within another of Pizer's definitions of naturalism in that they combine "detailed documentation 40

of the more sensational aspects of experience with heavy

ideological (often allegorical) themes, the burden of these

themes being the demonstration that man is more circum

scribed than ordinarily assumed ... 19

Consequently, even if we take into consideration the

new and innovative characteristics of Norris's naturalism,

The Octopus, although the author's most ambitious and

frequently brilliant work, still comes across as fragmented

and jumbled. It seems obvious that he was influenced

(whether consciously or unconsciously) by some of the Zola's

work. It also seems obvious that he wanted to modify Zola's

naturalism to better fit a changing and more mobile 1890's

America. In looking at The Octopus one sees an inconsistent

and less-structured form of naturalism. After all, the

America of this era needed more flexibility (and possibili

ties) in order to establish itself as the corporate giant

it later becamee As with Norris's fiction (especially The

Octopus), the only path to progress was the luxury of

experimentation and the ability and courage to take risks.

America grew and, thanks to Norris and others, so did

American fiction.

Ultimately, Norris's characters in The Octopus reflect

this new country of possibilities, and go beyond the mere

11 20 · Sociological extremesn embodied in Zola's characters.

Norris's modifications signaled a naturalism devoid of

rules, and was soon adapted by such writers as Dreiser,

Crane, London, and Farrell: each with a different milieu 41 to explore. And, as Frank Norris did a few short years before, each intuitively adapted naturalism to his own particular needs. CONCLUSION

Following our considerations of European and American literary naturalism, in theory and practice, we now see several differences, as well as similarities between the two types. Although both are labeled "naturalism," it seems that their differences are as pronounced as the differences between Howells's realism and Norris's naturalism. That is, if realism and American naturalism have separate labels, why not have more distinct labels for the two types of naturalism?

Also, to compound this issue, we see that both Zola and Norris, besides writing fiction, liked to promote various literary theories. Zola's theories (mainly outlined in "Le Roman Experimental") were quite straightforward but, nevertheless, unconventional for his time. He called the naturalistic novelist the "experimental moralist"--the writer equipped to depict the plight of the European proletariat. To facilitate this, Zola decided to apply a scientific approach in the writing of a novel. Taking this approach very seriously, Zola believed that if certain social ills became objectively exposed to those people with the power and desire to correct them, then the novel has fulfilled a noble purpose. Further, this approach challenged the Romantic Imagination and its advocacy of

42 43

free will and of the common individual's ability to solve

(or at least deal with) his or her own problems.

A few years later, Norris developed some literary

theories of his own and questioned several institutional

literary traditions. Presumably influenced by Zola and

others, he brought forth an American naturalism that

included a practical "novel of purpose." He hoped that

this type of novel would go beyond the novels of Howells's

realism by probing into the depths and the unseen of life.

But, not being as systematic as Zola, Norris drew the scorn of several earlier American critics because, in his novels, he failed to adhere strictly to Zola's dictates. The truth was, most likely, that the young Norris wanted to attempt assorted approaches to the novel. Like many people in a relatively new country, he was exposed to a myriad of social influences which his novels reflected. Possibly in older

Europe the cause and effect of a social ill seemed basically clear to such a literal mind as Zola's. In a newer and more heterogeneous America, on the other hand, problems contained many ingredients and a writer such as Norris probably intuitively felt that just relying on a kind of

"scientific experiment" in order to expose and correct a social problem was insufficient.

Norris, therefore, as we have seen, gave us stories not only of determinism, but of atavism, criminal anthropology, politics, greed, and primitivism--with these elements sometimes cloaked by a somewhat crude melodramatic 44

plot. Despite his occasional imperfections, a young writer

such as Norris appeared willing to take risks with his

fiction in order to reveal an uncertain but potentially

powerful country experiencing inevitable growing pains.

It seems inaccurate, then, to designate a Norris novel

as being precisely in the same category as a Zola novel.

Despite some similarities, the only major consistent

commonality is pessimistic determinism (and even with this,

the American writers are not as rigid as Zola) • In calling

Zola's Germinal and L'Assommoir and Norris's McTeague and

The Octopus "naturalism," we do not fully give the American

novels a proper place in world literature.

Furthermore, over the years the similarities of the

two types of naturalism have obscured the differences.

Norris was more than just an imitation of Zola. Of course,

he admired Zola (as he also admired Howells), but nowhere

did he specifically state that his novels were modeled after

Zola's. Certainly similarities and Zolaesque influences

filter through some of Norris's works, but this does not

necessarily mean that both writers work in exactly the same

genre. Norris embarked on his own exploration of injustice

and inequality. He went beyond the approaches of Zola and others in order to accommodate another range of ideas and

circumstances. Thus, just as Norris's naturalism (despite obvious influences derived from realism) is not called

something like "naturalistic realism," it should also, by the same token, not be called (despite obvious influences 45 derived from Zola) simply "naturalism." Because of the fact that the inevitable but inappropriate comparisons to

European naturalism can distort American naturalism's worth, a more valid and distinct term for the American version should be in order--a term which would possibly release the

American works from Zola's shadow and, in turn, give them a more elevated rank within world and American literature.

With a new and more descriptive term, critics and readers would be more apt to perceive the differences between Zola and Norris, and then view the works of Norris and the other naturalistic novelists as profoundly unique American works. 46

NOTES

Chapter I

1Emile Zola, The Naturalist Novel, ed. Maxwell Geismar (Montreal: Harvest House, 1964), pp. 1-33.

2Emile Zola, Therese Raquin (New York: Bantam Books, 19 6 0 ) 1 p • XX • 3Ibid., p. xx. 4 willard R. Trask, In trod., Therese Raquin by Emile Zola (New York: Bantam Books, 1960) 1 p. xvi. 5 The Naturalist Novel, p. 1.

6The Naturalist Novel, p. 1.

7The Naturalist Novel, p. 5. 8 The Naturalist Novel, p. 18. 9 The Naturalist Novel, p. 18. 10 The Naturalist Novel, p. 21.

11The Naturalist Novel, p. 22. 12 The Naturalist Novel, p. 28.

Chapter II

1van Wyck Brooks, The Confident Years, 1885-1915 (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1952), p. 217. 2 Ibid., p. 218. 3 Ibid. I p. 220.

4Ibid., p. 221. 47 5 Ibid., p. 226. 6 Granville Hicks, The Great Tradition: An Interpreta tion of American Literature Since the Civil War (New York: Biblo and Tanner, 1967), p. 172. 7 Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (New York: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1950), p. 236. 8 Richard Chase, The American Novel and its Tradition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957), pp. 185- 204. 9 Ibid. , p. 19 9 • 10 charles C. Walcutt, American Literary Naturalism, A Divided Stream (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 19 56) • 11 Ibid., p. 25.

12Ibid., p. 114. 13 Donald Pizer, "Nineteenth-Century American Naturalism: An Essay in Definition," Bucknell Review, 13 (December, 1965), 2-3. 14 Frank Norris, Complete Works of Frank Norris, VII (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1967), p. 22. 15 Ibid., p. 26. 16 Ibid., p. 25.

17Donald Pizer, The Literary Criticism of Frank Norris (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), p. 19. In this work on Norris's criticism, Pizer used the term "life not literature" in order to describe this aspect of Norris's literary thought. 18 . Norr1s, Complete Works, pp. 179-180. 19 carter, p. 157. 20 . Norr1s, Complete Works, p. 163. 21 . Norr1s, Complete Works, p. 164. 22 . Norr1s, Complete Works, p. 164. 23 . Norr1s, Complete Works, p. 113. 24 . Norr1s, Complete Works, p. 114. 48

Chapter III

1 Walcutt, Divided Stream, p. 35. 2 F.W.J. Hemmings, Emile Zola (Oxford: At The Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 119.

3Emile Zola, L'Assommoir (New York: Penguin Books, 1979) 1 P• 29 • 4Frank Norris, McTeague, (New York: New American Library, 1964), p. 8. All further references to this work appear in the text. 5 Donald Pizer, Twentieth-Century American Literary Naturalism (Carbondale, Ill.: So. Illinois University Press, 1982), p. xi.

6 George M. Spangler, "The Structure of McTeague," English Studies (February, 1978), 48. 7 Walcutt, Marchand, Pizer and others have dealt with this issue, in varying degrees, in their critical works on Norris. 8 Ernest Marchand, Frank Norris: A Study (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1942), p. 50. 9 Donald Pizer, The Novels of Frank Norris (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1966), p. 76.

10Norr~s, . Comp 1 e t e Wor k s, p. 114 • 11 George J. Becker, ed., Documents of Modern Literary Realism (Princeton: Princeton Un~versity Press, 1963), p. 35.

Chapter IV

1 Marchand, p. 81. 2 charles c. Walcutt, "Frank Norris on Realism and Naturalism," American Literature, 13 (1941), 61-63. 49 3 Frank Norris, The Octopus (New York: New American Library, Inc., 1974), pp. 457-458. All further references to this work appear in the text. 4 Emile Zola, Germinal (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 489.

5Ibid., p. 489.

6 Matthew Joesphson, Zola and His Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publishers, Inc., 1928), p. 296. 7 oon D. Walker, "The Western Naturalism of Frank Norris," Western American Literature, 2 (Spring, 1967), 18.

8Ibid. , p. 17 •

9oon Graham, The Fiction of Frank Norris: The Aesthetic Content (Columbia, Mi.: University of Missouri Press, 1978), p. 110. 10 H. Willard Reninger, "Norris Explains The Octopus: A Correlation of His Theory and Practice," American Literature, 12 (May, 1940), 221. 11 Walcutt, "Norris on Realism and Naturalism," p. 62. 12 Walcutt, "Norris on Realism and Naturalism," p. 63.

13oonald Pizer, "The Concept of Nature in Frank Norris's The Octopus," American Quarterly Review (Spring, 1962), p. 77. 14 I b"d1 ., p. 76 . 15 Graham, p. 122. 16Lars ~hnebrink, The Influence of Emile Zola on Frank Norris (Upsala, Sweden: Almqvist and Wiksells Boktryckeri AB, 1947), p. 41.

17Joesphson, p. 297. 18 Pizer, Twentieth-Century Naturalism, p. 151. 19 Pizer, Twentieth-Century Naturalism, p. xi.

20walcutt, Divided Stream, p. 128. 50

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