Sheer Dumb Luck in Wieland and McTeague

When comparing Wieland and McTeague, I realized that the books deal with two drastically different female characters who led drastically different lives, but whose lives had one event in common: an encounter with a murderer. However, the two characters had drastically different endings as well: Clara lived and Trina died. I asked myself why this was. I have decided that while their personalities have a lot to do with their ends, the ultimate reason that Trina died and Clara lived was sheer dumb luck.

First of all, I think each of their personalities led in some way to the outcome of their lives. Trina�s masochistic, submissive, and dependent personality lends heavily to her being abused and ultimately killed by her husband. Interestingly, we only see her masochistic tendencies after she marries McTeague, but it seems reasonable to conjecture that these tendencies were already there. We see Trina�s submissive personality very clearly when McTeague first kisses her and she surrenders utterly to it without a second thought--without even knowing why she gave in so completely.

We are never told if Trina received warning from others about McTeague�s tendency toward sadism, but because of her masochistic tendencies, it�s reasonable to say that Trina may not have listened if someone had told her about the danger of an abusive relationship. Any reasoning person can see that masochistic tendencies make it a lot easier, if not inevitable, for someone to get into an abusive relationship. Trina�s dependent personality worsens the situation. Soon after she marries McTeague, her family leaves San Francisco for southern California to try for their fortune, and so McTeague is the only person she has in the world to depend on. Then when the love dies out of their relationship, Trina finds herself depending more and more on her hoarded coins for comfort and happiness. It�s as if Trina cannot find happiness within herself. She depends on things and people outside herself for it.

On the other hand, Clara is a very independent woman. She isn�t outright rebellious, but neither is she utterly submissive. She thinks through everything on her own, as evidenced by her weighing her fears against her reason each time there seemed to be a threat coming from somewhere (e.g. the times she opened her closet door after she found Carwin in there, the times she debated returning to her house where there was danger). She doesn�t blindly follow what her friends and family say, but she often takes what they say into consideration. For instance, when her uncle advised her not to see her brother before she took off and suggested a trip to Europe, she thought about it for a while before deciding, and she did eventually go with her uncle�s suggestions.

Clara has a deeply embedded desire for life. She considered killing herself more than once in the story, but that innate desire to live would not allow her to. It also prompted her to get out of the house where the murders took place when her uncle suggested a trip to Europe. Trina did not seem to have this instinct to survive in her.

I believe their living situations simultaneously reflected and influenced their personalities, which in turn influenced the outcome of their lives. Clara lived in the rural, isolated American wilderness with her brother and two friends, for most of her life without parents. Not only that, but Clara�s story takes place when the United States were still very, very new and the government was still trying to figure itself out. The four friends developed their own method of living without having to consider expectations of people above them and having to take care of themselves. I believe that contributed strongly to Clara�s independent, survivor attitude towards life.

Trina lived with her parents until she married McTeague, so she went from one form of dependence to another, not allowing her to learn how to take good care of herself in independence. She also grew up in urban San Francisco, where anything needed�food, clothing, other supplies�was much, much easier to obtain than in the wilderness, where Clara and her friends perhaps had to kill their own food or travel many miles to get it. In the city, Trina was also answerable to the authority of her parents, society at large, and a government that had been in place for 100 years. In her life situation, she didn�t have as much of a ground at all for establishing an independent, survivor attitude.

But when you really look at it, ultimately, everything was due to chance, or what you would call sheer dumb luck. It was sheer dumb luck that their personalities were even what they were�that Clara was an independent, survivor personality and that Trina was a dependent, masochistic personality. It was sheer dumb luck that Clara remained sane while her brother went insane. It was sheer dumb luck that Trina went insane (with or without family background). It was sheer dumb luck that Clara happened to live in the American wilderness, separated from authority and societal influences, while Trina lived in urban America, tied closely to her parents and society. It was sheer dumb luck that Carwin was able to stop Wieland from murdering Clara at the end of the book. Going further back, it was sheer dumb luck that Carwin was in her life at all. Similarly, it is sheer dumb luck that McTeague and Trina even met�and going back further, that Marcus (Trina�s cousin) and McTeague were friends to begin with.

According to the critics of these two books, if Charles Brockden Brown and Frank Norris analyzed their own books, they would have called this �sheer dumb luck� fate. A Christian analysis would call it God. If you want to be really straightforward, what directed the characters� lives was not fate or God, but the imagination of the author of the story. Now, what directed the authors� imaginations is a whole other question. Perhaps it�s fate. Perhaps it�s God. Or perhaps it is just dumb luck.

What's happened to me?

-Stephanie

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