The Pit (Norris novel)

The Pit
Author Frank Norris
Country United States
Language English
Series The Epic of Wheat Trilogy
Publisher Doubleday, Page & Co.
Publication date
 1903
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
OCLC 6474431
Preceded by The Octopus
Followed by The Wolf (planned, but never completed)

The Pit: A Story of Chicago is a 1903 novel by Frank Norris. Set in the wheat speculation trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade Building, it was the second book in what was to be the trilogy The Epic of the Wheat. The first book, The Octopus, was published in 1901. Norris died unexpectedly in October 1902 from appendicitis leaving the third book, The Wolf: A Story of Empire, incomplete. Together the three novels were to follow the journey of a crop of wheat from its planting in California to its ultimate consumption as bread in Western Europe.

Plot Summary

The Pit opens with sisters Laura and Page Dearborn and their aunt, Aunt Wess, outside the Auditorium Theatre opera house awaiting the arrival of their hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Cressler. Once inside, they are joined by three other guests of the Cresslers, Mr. Curtis Jadwin, Mr. Landry Court, and Mr. Sheldon Corthell. Corthell and Laura are apparently very well-acquainted before this evening, for their conversation begins with the artist confessing his love for the young woman. Though she does not return this feeling, Laura admits that knowing she is loved is "the greatest exhilaration of happiness she had ever known."[1]

Auditorium stage c. 1890

We soon learn that Corthell is not the only man interested in having Laura as his wife. Both Jadwin, the mature and mysterious man of affairs, and Landry, the exuberant and extravagant man from the Battle of the Street, are captivated by the girl’s unparalleled charm and beauty as well. Despite the fact that she makes it clear to each of them that she has no intentions of ever marrying and declares that she will never love, the three men insist on courting her. Miss Dearborn enjoys having these men chase her, but before long she grows weary of being the object of so many suitors. Enraged at herself for having made herself so vulnerable and for behaving so coquettishly, she dismisses Corthell, Landry, and Jadwin all at once.

Jadwin, a man of persistence who is accustomed to getting what he wants, refuses to give up. Soon enough, Laura agrees to marry him. When her sister asks her if she truly loves Jadwin, Laura admits that though she "love[s] to be loved" and loves that Curtis is wealthy and willing to provide for her whatever she desires, she is not sure if she loves the man himself. To Mrs. Cressler she confesses:

"I think I love him very much – sometimes. And then sometimes I think I don’t. I can’t tell. There are days when I’m sure of it, and there are others when I wonder if I want to be married, after all. I thought when love came it was to be – oh uplifting, something glorious... something that would shake me all to pieces. I thought that was the only kind of love there was".[2]

As Joseph McElrath observes in his analysis of the novel, this passage captures the attitude that Laura will maintain through the final chapter of the book: "She will have 'the only kind of love' described here."[3]

Regardless of any internal reservations, Laura becomes Mrs. Curtis Jadwin on the first weekend in June. For the first years of their marriage, the couple is very happy together. Soon, however, Jadwin discovers a new source of passion that eclipses everything else – wheat speculation. Though he has been warned many times of the dangers of grain trading by his dear friend Mr. Cressler, Jadwin cannot resist the roar of the Pit down at the Chicago Board of Trade. Little by little Jadwin becomes increasingly more obsessed with speculating until the deafening murmur of "wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat" is all he can hear.

Lasalle Street: Old Chicago Board of Trade (right) and Rookery Building (c. 1891)

The love for his wife that used to dictate his every action is replaced with an inescapable infatuation with the excitement of the Pit. All of Jadwin’s time is spent at the Board of Trade Building; often times he even sleeps there at night. Laura, left all alone in her huge house through the day and night, feels lonely and neglected and begins to discover that she needs more from her husband than his money. The extremity of Jadwin’s obsession and Laura’s worries and frustration are summed up in a passage Laura speaks to her husband after working up the nerve:

"Curtis, dear,... when is it all going to end – your speculating? You never used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had you to myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports and that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library – even when you are not doing all that, your mind seems to be away from me – down there in La Salle Street or the Board of Trade Building. Dearest, you don’t know. I don’t mean to complain, and I don’t want to be exacting or selfish, but – sometimes I – I am lonesome".[4]

This selfish concern that she expresses shows the extent to which Laura cares for husband’s troubles. Though he promises time and again that this deal will be his last, it is not until the market has ruined him that Jadwin is able to let it go.

During this distressful time Sheldon Corthell reenters Laura’s life after having been abroad in Italy. While Jadwin spends all his time with his broker Gretry at the Board of Trade, Laura renews her companionship with Corthell, a sensitive man who can dazzle Laura with his knowledge of art and literature and who is willing to dedicate all his time to her. As Mrs. Jadwin continues to see more of Corthell than she does of her own husband, their friendship trends towards intimacy. Corthell would love nothing more than an affair with this married woman, but Laura decides that she values her marriage more than this romance and sends Corthell away for good.

Meanwhile, Jadwin continues wheat trading and grows unbelievably richer by the day. He discovers that he is in the position to do the impossible – corner the market. The game for him has lost its fun, however, and is taking a serious toll on both his mental and physical health. He cannot concentrate on anything other than counting bushels of wheat and cannot sleep for his nerves won’t let him. Greedy and crazed with power, Jadwin tries to control the forces of natures and drives the price of wheat up so high that people around the world, including his best friend Mr. Cressler, are financially destroyed. Only when the "Great Bull’s" corner is finally broken and he and his wife are reduced to poverty can Jadwin and Laura finally see past their individual problems and rediscover their love for each other. The couple decides to leave Chicago and head west, and the reader is left with the feeling that the Jadwins, despite the horrors they’ve just been through, have found happiness at last.

Characters

Themes

Critical reception

Biographer Joseph R. McElrath writes in Frank Norris Revisited that The Pit was widely hailed by its generation’s readers to be “the Great American Novel".[13] Norris succeeded in writing a story that could entertain both popular and more sophisticated audiences. Having appeared just months after Norris' death, critics took the opportunity in reviews of The Pit to mourn the tragic loss of the great "American Zola,"[14] so the novel received much more attention than any of the work that came before it.

House on North Avenue appearing in the novel

Of all the known reviews of written of Norris' work through 1914, one-third of them are about The Pit. The New York Herald went so far as to say that "in The Pit [sic] he is more the prophet of a new dispensation" and "becomes distinctly the founder of a new school, which may preclude a French Norris".[15] Though the majority of reviewers praised the novel, there were still an unsatisfied few who criticized Norris' hurried writing and his storyline’s lack of insight and originality.

Over time critics have come to agree more with the latter reviewers' interpretation of The Pit, and many today regard it as one of Norris' weaker works. Often identified as The Pit’s main flaw is the love plot that centers on Laura and Curtis Jadwin’s marital troubles. Proponents of this view argue that the tumultuous Laura-Jadwin relationship does not synthesize well with the other business plot of the story and that it ultimately detracts from the novel’s structural and thematic cohesion. Donald Pizer highlights as the source of The Pit’s overall disjointedness the fact that the two plots have very different themes and symbols that do not seem to relate. Of the novel he writes:

its major symbols, those involving the wheat and the pit, are present only in the business plot. An entirely different group of symbols appears in the love story. Norris uses three violent and sensational symbols for the pit. It is a whirlpool, a military battleground, and an arena for the combat of enraged animals (bulls and bears). . . . The symbolism in the love story is more subtle. Laura’s artistic tastes, her dramatic roles, and her huge prison of a house constitute a rich symbolic key to her character and to her conflicts.[16]

Many scholars in the field, including Pizer, contend that The Pit is far outshined by its predecessors McTeague and The Octopus.

Sales

The Pit had already sold 20,000 copies a month prior to its publication. During its first year alone, a total of 95,914 books had been bought, making it the third most successful book of 1903.[17] The Publishers' Weekly consistently cited the novel as the "best-selling book in the United States" throughout that year, and advertised it as one of a select few "[b]ooks with blood in their veins".[18] By 1932, nearly 200,000 copies had been sold. The Pit was first published in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post magazine from September 1902 through January 1903. Doubleday, Page, & Company issued the story in book form for the first time in early January 1903. The novel had already gone through five editions only one month after it appeared in stores, and by mid-February it was being sold in Canada, Australia, and England. Doubleday, Page was forced to create a second set of typesetting plates in 1928 after the originals had been worn out. Despite its huge initial success, however, The Pit's popularity was not sustained by the next generations of readers.[19]

Adaptations

Theater

Following its great success Norris' story was rewritten for both stage and screen. On February 10, 1904, The Pit, an original play adapted from the book by Channing Pollock and produced by William A. Brady, opened in the Lyric Theater on Broadway. The original Broadway cast starred Wilton Lackaye as Curtis Jadwin. The New York Times expressed mixed opinions of the four-act drama in an article titled “'The Pit' – 'Tis Pitty; And Pity 'Tis, 'Tis True That Wilton Lackaye Scores".[20] The show closed in April of that year after 77 performances.

Film

A Corner in Wheat, director D.W. Griffith's silent film version of the book, appeared in 1909. It was adapted for the screen by Griffith and screenwriter Frank E. Woods. An anti-monopoly social commentary, the movie tells the story of a greedy commodities gambler who corners the wheat market and consequently forces poverty onto all those who can no longer afford to buy bread. The film stars Frank Powell as the wheat king and James Kirkwood as the poor farmer.

Board Games

Norris' compelling portrayal of the Chicago Board of Trade also inspired the creation of Pit: Exciting Fun for Everyone, a card game by Parker Brothers, in 1904. The game includes 65 playing cards on which either a bull, a bear, or one of seven different commodities available for exchange (corn, barley, wheat, rye, flax, hay, or oats) is pictured. It simulates the nonstop action of an actual trading pit by challenging players to corner the market by collecting all nine cards of one commodity.[21] The game was remastered and released again in 1964 by the name Pit: The World’s Liveliest Trading Game. In 2004, a 100th anniversary edition of Pit was released with two decks of commodities cards – one featuring the original seven commodities and another featuring modern commodities like gold, oil, cocoa, and platinum.[22]

Other

The plot-line that follows Curtis Jadwin’s exploits in wheat speculation and attempt to corner the market was inspired by the true story of Bull trader Joseph Leiter. Norris learned of the Joseph Leitner Wheat corner of 1897-98 upon visiting Chicago in 1901. For a short period of time, Leitner was the largest individual holder of wheat in the history of the grain trade. Leitner lost an estimated 10 million dollars when the market crashed in 1898. The ups and downs of the Chicago wheat pit in the novel follow the pattern of Leitner’s market. Both first purchased wheat in April 1897 and both corners collapsed on Monday, June 13, 1898.[23]

Though Norris' contemporaries believed The Pit to be his literary masterpiece, opinions of the book have changed over time. During the 1950s and 60s, focus shifted to The Octopus as readers hailed this 1901 novel as an American classic. Since the 1970s, critics have regarded McTeague (1899) as Norris' greatest work. Interestingly, biographer Joseph R. McElrath reveals in Frank Norris: A Life that McTeague was one of the less successful books of Norris' lifetime and that the author himself considered The Octopus to be a better work of art.[24]

The story that was released serially in the Saturday Evening Post was titled The Pit: A Romance of Chicago and was significantly shorter than that of the published book. Many descriptive passages and much of the "Conclusion" were cut out by Norris and the magazine’s editors to better appeal to the Post’s readership. The version produced by Doubleday, Page is the full novel as Norris intended it to be read.[25]

References

  1. ↑ Norris, Frank (1903). The Pit. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., p. 25.
  2. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 161.
  3. ↑ McElrath, Joseph R. (1992). Frank Norris Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, p. 113.
  4. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 230.
  5. ↑ McElrath, Joseph R. (1994). "Introduction" to The Pit: A Story of Chicago (Twentieth Century Classics). New York: Penguin Books.
  6. ↑ Urbatsch, Katja (2008). “'Both at Odds with Each Other and at One': Business versus Art in Frank Norris’s The Pit", EESE, No. 4.
  7. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 219.
  8. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 219.
  9. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 129.
  10. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 347.
  11. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 419.
  12. ↑ Norris (1903), p. 56.
  13. ↑ McElrath (1992), p. 2.
  14. ↑ Piep, Karsten H. (2004). "Love's Labor's Regained: The Making of Companionate Marriages in Frank Norris's The Pit", Papers on Language & Literature, p. 28.
  15. ↑ Piep (2004), p. 28.
  16. ↑ Pizer, Donald (1966). The Novels of Frank Norris. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 176.
  17. ↑ "Best Selling Books 1900 – 1909", Rose Books
  18. ↑ "The Publishers' Weekly", The Publishers' Weekly, January - June 1903
  19. ↑ McElrath (1994).
  20. ↑ “‘The Pit’ – ‘Tis Pitty”, The New York Times, February 11, 1904.
  21. ↑ "Pit: Exciting Fun for Everyone", New York Historical Society Museum & Library.
  22. ↑ "Pit 100th Anniversary Edition", Rainy Day Games.
  23. ↑ Kaplan, Charles (1953). "Norris's Use of Sources in The Pit", American Literature, Vol. XXV, No. 1, pp. 74–84.
  24. ↑ McElrath Joseph R. and Jesse S. Crisler (2006). Frank Norris: A Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  25. ↑ Pizer (1966), p. 166.

Further reading

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