Emerging in 19th century America was the importance of gender roles where women and men began to gain agency over specific “spheres” of life. As men focused on working and bread-winning, women were able to assert their own control over the home: As household production by women declined and the traditional economic role of women diminished, the “home” appeared as a topic to be discussed and an ideal to be lauded. Less a place of production than a spiritually sanctified retreat from the hurly-burly of economic life, the home was where women nurtured men and children into becoming morally elevated beings. It could be said that what we think of as the traditional “home” was actually an invention of nineteenth-century Americans. These gender roles of the working man and the housewife is certainly reflected in Norris’s novel, though with much perversion and monstrosity. Norris goes to great lengths to discuss McTeague’s occupation as a dentist. Readers learn about how he defied his family’s mining history and apprenticed with a dentist, and Norris even uses dentistry jargon in McTeague’s conversations to assert his understanding of the profession. Perhaps the most significant symbol of McTeague’s profession is the gilded tooth he wanted for a corner sign. Thus, the large, gold tooth serves as a glaring reminder of McTeague and his economic prowess and professional capabilities. In many ways, he is a normal, working man of the late 19th century. However, Norris begins to complicate these gender roles when Trina wins 5,000 dollars with a lottery ticket and marries McTeague. Despite McTeague’s profession, Trina becomes the primary economic support for the family, given the large sum of money she brings to the marriage. Ultimately, it is this lottery win that sparks the demise of the family. To complicate this issue even further, McTeague ends up losing his job when Marcus reveals that McTeague does not have the proper licensing—a situation that has two important implications: the only flow of income comes from Trina’s lottery winning and her Noah’s flood carvings, and McTeague has failed to uphold his masculine role. Thus, Norris inverts the traditional gender roles by stripping McTeague of a worthy career and placing the control of finances with Trina, a woman. Not only does Trina cross into the masculine sphere of economics, but she also fails to fulfill her responsibilities as the homemaker. Norris shows this failure by the slow degradation of the home after McTeague losing his job. With each move, the family finds themselves in an even more dilapidated and unfortunate home. Trina starves McTeague and does not clean the houses they do live in. She has, in many ways, failed to be a successful housewife. By the end of the novel, the family has unraveled completely, and McTeague murders Trina. Such acts of monstrosity are hard to justify, but Norris seems to have a significant statement about the importance of gender roles. With that said, how does Norris frame monstrosity and victimization in light of genders? The novels we have read so far have typically seen men as monsters and women as victims, but do we have that same issue happening here? How does Norris convolute the blame-game in the novel, and what role do 19th century gender roles have to do with it?
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