Deconstructing Frank Norris’s Fiction: The Male-Female Dialectic

Frank Norris, a contemporary of such famous American authors as Jack London and Theodore Dreiser, has long been grouped with them into the category of naturalism. Only recently have these writers been examined outside the confinements of this category. This study expands on the view of Norris as more romantic than naturalist by discussing the natural man and refined woman types in his works. West also connects Norris and his novels to Carl Jung’s archetypes of the Great and Terrible Mother and the punishing Superego-like Father.