The Pit

In The Octopus(1901), one of the earliest muckraking novels of the Progressive Era, Frank Norris exposed the operations of the ruthless, laissez-faire capitalism sanctioned by turn-of-the-century Social Darwinists. The Pit(1903), the second novel in Norris's projected trilogy, continues the "Epic of the Wheat" with the story of Curtis Jadwin, a speculator bent on cornering the wheat market, and his brutally abused wife, Laura. Mingling realism and romanticism, Norris created in Laura a hero...