Realism

Realism is, in the broadest sense, simply fidelity to actuality in its representation in literature...... In order to give it more precise definition, however, one needs to limit it to the movement which arose in the nineteenth century, at least partially in reaction against Romanticism, which was centered in the novel, and which was dominant in France, England, and America from roughly mid-century to the closing decade, when it was replaced by Naturalism. In this latter scene, realism defines a literary method, a philosophical and political attitude, and a particular kind of subject matter.

Realism has been defined as "the truthful treatment of material" by one of its most vigorous advocates, William Dean Howells, but the statement means little until the realists' concept of truth and their selection of materials are designated. Generally, realists are believers in Pragmatism, and the truth they seek to find and express is a relativistic truth, associated with discernible consequences and verifiable by experience. Generally, too, realists are believers in democracy, and the materials they elect to describe are the common, the average, the everyday. Furthermore, realism can be thought of as the ultimate of middle-class art, and it finds its subjects in bourgeois life and manners. Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual to find the scientific laws which control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.

Realists espouse what is essentially a Mimetice Theory of Art, centering their attention in the thing imitated and asking for something close to a one-to-one correspondence between the representation and the subject. They usually have, however, a powerful interest in the audience to whom their work is addressed, feeling it to be their obligation to deal with it with absolute truthfulness. Furthermore, realists are unusually interested in the effect their work has on the audience and its life(in this respect they tend toward a Pragmatic theory of art); George Eliot, in Chapter 17 of Adam Bede(a classic statement of the intention of the realist), expresses her desire that her pictures of common life and average experience should knit more tightly the bonds of human sympathy among her readers. Howells, concerned with his audience of young ladies, felt so strongly the obligation not to do them moral injury that he shut the doors of his own works to most of the aspects of life connected with passion and sex.

Realists eschew the traditional patterns of the novel. In part the rise of realism came as a protest against the falseness and sentimentality which realists thought they saw in romantic fiction. Life, they felt, lacked symmetry and plot; fiction which truthfully reflected life should, therefore, avoid symmetry and plot. Simple, clear, direct prose was the desirable vehicle, and objectivity on the part of the novelist the proper attitude. The central issues of life tend to be ethical -- that is, issues of conduct. Fiction should, therefore, concern itself with such issues, and -- since selection is a necessary part of any art -- select with a view to presenting these issues accurately as they affect men and women in actual situations. Furthermore, the democratic attitudes of realists tended to make them value the individual very highly and to praise characterization as the center of the novel. Hence, they had a great concern for the effect of action upon character, and a tendency to explore the psychology of the actors in their stories. In Henry James, perhaps the greatest of the realists, this tendency to explore the inner selves of characters confronted with complex ethical choices earned for him not only the title of "father of the psychological novel" but also the title of "biographer of fine consciences."

The surface details, the common actions, and the minor catastrophes of a middle-class society constituted the chief subject matter of the movement. Most of the realists avoided situations with tragic or catacylsmic implications. Their tone was often comic, frequently satiric, seldom grim or somber. Their general attitude was broadly optimistic, although James is a great exception.

Although aspects of realism appeared almost with the beginnings of the English novel, for they are certainly present in Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Jane Austen, Trollope, Thackeray, and Dickens, the realistic movement found its effective origins in France with Balzac, in England with George Eliot, and in America with Howells and Mark Twain. Writers like Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and H. G. Wells  in England, and Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, John P. Marquand, and Louis Auchincloss in America kept and are keeping the realistic traditon alive in the contemporary novel.

Realistic Period in American Literature, 1865-1900

The Civil War had been, at least in part, a struggle between the concept of agrarian democracy and that of industrial and capitalistic democracy, and the result of the Northern victory was the triumphant emergence of industrialism. The industrialism was to bring great mechanical and material advances for the nation, but it was also to bring great difficulties in the form of severe labor disputes, economic depression, and strikes that erupted in violence; its capitalistic aspect was to produce a group of powerful and ruthless moneyed men who have gone down in history as the "robber barons"; its application to politics, particularly in the rapidly developing great cities, was to produce "bossism" and a form of political corruption known by Lincoln Steffens' phrase, "the shame of cities." The impact of invention and industrial development was tremendous. The greatest advances were made in communications: the Atlantic cable was laid in 1866; transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869; the telephone was invented in 1876; and the automobile with the inter-combustion engine was being manufactured by the 1890's. By the last two decades of the century many thoughtful people had begun to march under various banners declaring that somewhere and somehow the promise of the American dream had been lost--they often said "betrayed"--and that drastic changes needed to be made in order to recapture it. The Populist Party, the Grange, Henry George's "single tax," and the socialism of the American intellectual were all reflections of a disillusionment with American life never before widespread int the nation.

Intellectually, too, average Americans were living in a new world, although they did not always realize it. The impact of Darwin, Marx, Comte, Spencer, and others advancing a scientific view of human beings sharply at variance with the older religious view was cutting from beneath thoughtful Americans--even while they vehemently denied it-- their old certainty about their perfectibility and about the inevitability of progress. The passing by 1890 of the physical frontier removed from their society a natural safety valve that had acted to protect them against the malcontents and the restless in their world; now they must absorb them and adjust to the fact of their presence; no longer could they seek virgin land on which to build their notions of a world. The rapid growth of education and the rise of the mass-circulation magazine, playing its way by advertising, created a mass audience for authors, and the passage in 1891 of the International Copyright Act protected foreign authors from piracy in America and by the same token protected the native literary product from being undercut by pirated editions of foreign works.

In poetry,.three new and authentic poetic voices were raised in the period: Walt Whitman's in his democratic chant cast in experimental rhythmic poetry; Sidney Lanier's in his moral statements couched in experimental musical poetry; and Emily Dickinson's in her gnomic utterances cast in witty variations on traditional forms. Toward the close of the century Stephen Crane raised a haunting but strident voice in sparse experimental verse that was close to that of the imagists of the twentieth century.

In fiction, the new turbulence, the growing skepticism and disillusionment found an effective voice. The developing mass audience was served by local-color writing, which filled the popular magazines, and by the historical novel, which had a great upsurge of popularity as the century drew toward a close. But in the work of Mark Twain, of William Dean Howells, and of Henry James, the greatest contributions of the age were made. In the works of these men and of lesser writers--largely from the Middle West--realism was formulated as a literary doctrine and practiced as an art form which came to dominate the American literary scene. William James's pragmatism not only expressed the mood of the Realistic Period but also shaped its literary expression, an expression that became increasingly critical of American life as the century drew toward its end.

AMERICAN LITERARY REALISM

I.

Realism is the term applied to literary composition that aims at an interpretation of the actualities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. It is opposed to the concern with the unusual which forms the basis of romance, but it does not proceed, as does naturalism, to the philosophy of determinism and a completely amoral attitude.

The new concepts of science which included the idea of evolution as progress, the view of nature as ruthless struggle for survival, the philosophy of scientific materialism, and a mechanistic interpretation of life all contributed to a changed understanding of the meaning of life. It affected the form of American writing, particularly that of the novel.

The industrial revolution, with its factory system, the growth of cities, quick wealth, keen competition, increased immigration, and shifting of social classes gave a whole new body of material for the writers to report and interpret.

Realism is a quality of all literature, and a realistic period is simply one where realism is predominant. So in this period, it was an extension and continuation of romanticism, not a wholly different attitude toward life. Its emphasis was on character rather than plot, on the commonplace rather than on the unusual, on the truthful treatment of material rather than on hopeful and idealistic fictions.

II.

The most significant literary movement between the Civil War and World War I was realism. Literary realism was the natural development of an age forced to acknowledge a number of new realities. It was an outgrowth of a people less ready to accept the old optimism and affirmations of the prewar transcendentalists, a people who, in the scientific and perhaps skeptical spirit of the day, were ready to accept only what could be observed and verified with the senses. The major spokesman for literary realism was William Dean Howells, whose influence as a novelist, editor, and critic was powerful. Other major writers who are usually considered realists were Mark Twain and Henry James, although their realism often differs from that of Howells, and even more significantly from each other. Howells had many disciples, including Stephen Crane and Hamlin Garland, two writers who are also considered forerunners of literary naturalism. Although many critics see the naturalistic movement which began in the 1890's as an outgrowth and extension of realism, others consider it, at least in part, a reaction against realism and, therefore, the start of a decline of realism as a movement. The local color movement which followed the war and frontier humor tales are often considered contributing factors to American realism.

REALISM AND NATURALISM

Undoubtedly the dominant phenomenon in nineteenth-century European literature was the emergence of REALISM.  From a literary point of view the triumph of the novel, in which it found its most apt expression.  In its social aspect realism was a manifestation of the faith in science and liberalism which grew constantly during the century and only began to falter toward 1900.  In content realistic literature is generally concerned with the affairs of the middle and lower classes; it treats economic, social, and technical matters(e.g., agriculture and industry) in addition to the traditional literary themes of love and gallantry, and it purports to utilize the vernacular of daily life instead of the artificial poetic diction of previous literatures.

The dominant realistic movement which began with Howells, James, and Edith Wharton continued to hold sway over American letters after the First World War.  Where the main body of European novelists had turned to realism in the nineteenth century and then reacted against it in the twentieth century, the Americans, following their example a generation behind them, arrived at the peak of their realistic movement around 1914.  Meanwhile an even more important literary tendency began to develop out of the realistic movement: the school of naturalism, which dominated American letters during the important era of the Twenties.

How is the naturalism different from nineteenth century realism?  First it differs in subject matter.  It took as subjects ugly and unpleasant stories and people.  Second, it threw out anything peculiarly human or religious, denying that man had any moral freedom of choice and asserting that his whole life was determined by heredity and environment.  Often it is completely pessimistic, taking the gloomiest view of life.

Main qualities of naturalism as a literary movement are as follows:

(a) Naturalism is scientific or pseudo-scientific in its approach; it attempts to treat human beings as biological pawns rather than as agents of free will.  The author does not attempt to judge his characters or to comment on their actions; he merely inserts them into a crucial situation and then pretends to stand back and watch them with the impassivity of the scientist.

(b) The naturalist attempts to make literature into a document of society.  He writes "novel cycles" purporting to cover every aspect of modern life, or creates characters who are personifications of various social classes.  Many naturalists gather copious data from actual life and include it in their literary works; they write novels around specific occupations such as railroading or textile manufacturing in which they utilize technical details of the trade for story interest.  This aspect of naturalism represents an attempt to remove literature from the realm of the fine arts into the field of the social sciences.

(c) Because of the above-described documentary nature of naturalism, the technique often involves the conscious suppression of the poetic elements in literature.  The prose style is flat, objective, and bare of imagery; it includes copious details and explanations, and is wary of highly literary metaphors.  It endeavors to imitate scientific, technical, or sociological writing rather than the belles-letters of the past, and in doing so ignores the great part of what is ordinarily considered literary beauty.

(d) Naturalistic literature tends to be concerned with the less elegant aspects of life; its typical settings are the slum, the sweatshop, the factory, or the farm.  Where the romantic author selects the most pleasant and idealistic elements in his experience, the naturalistic author often seems positively drawn toward the brutal, the sordid, the cruel, and the degraded.  This tendency is in part a reaction against earlier literature, especially the sentimentalism of the romantics.  The real motivation forces in a naturalistic novel are not religion, hope, or human idealism; they are the basic urges of self-preservation, sex, and ambition.

(e) Naturalism is sometimes, but not always, socialistic or radical in politics.  The sympathy of the typical naturalist lies with the proletariat, and he sees social evolution mainly in terms of the conflict of classes.  Industrial strife plays a large part in naturalistic literature, as does description of the exploitation of the worker, male and female, by the boss.