McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation.
This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters are constrained by "nature"-both their own heredity nature, and the broader social environment.
McTeague was published in 1899 as the first of Norris's major novels.
A landmark of American naturalism, this unflinching novel traces one couple's descent from modest happiness into obsession, greed, and violence, offering a starkly honest portrait of how circumstance and character can conspire to destroy a life.
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