VII. American Realism

1. 1. Characteristics of Realism

Realism is a movement in art and literature that began in the 19th century France as a shift against the exotic and poetic conventions of Romanticism. Literary realism allowed for a new form of writing in which authors represented reality by portraying everyday experiences of relatable and complex characters, as they are in real life. According to William Dean Howells, "Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material" (qtd.in Carter 36). Literary realism depicts works with relatable and familiar characters, settings, and plots centered around society’s middle and lower classes. As a result, the intent of realism developed as a means to tell a story as truthfully and realistically as possible instead of dramatizing or romanticizing it. This movement has greatly impacted how authors write and what readers expect from literature. For example, playwright Anton Chekhov reflects in most of his writing a rejection of his romantic contemporaries and predecessors that tended to falsely idealize life. Chekhov’s plays and stories, instead, are made up of characters that are frustrated by the realities of their social situations and their own behaviors and feelings. His characters represent real, ordinary people who want happiness, but are limited by and entangled in everyday circumstances (Britannica)
      Realism in its broad sense has comprised many artistic currents in different civilizations. In the visual arts, for example, realism can be found in ancient Hellenistic Greek sculptures accurately portraying boxers and decrepit old women. The works of the 18th-century English novelists Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett are realist in approach.
     Realism was not consciously adopted as an aesthetic program until the mid-19th century in France. Indeed, realism may be viewed as a major trend in French novels and paintings between 1850 and 1880. One of the first appearances of the term realism was in the Mercure français du XIXe siècle in 1826, in which the word is used to describe a doctrine based not upon imitating past artistic achievements but upon the truthful and accurate depiction of the models that nature and contemporary life offer the artist. The French proponents of realism agreed in their rejection of the artificiality of both the Classicism and Romanticism of the academies and on the necessity for contemporaneity in an effective work of art. They attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. Indeed, they conscientiously set themselves to reproducing all the hitherto-ignored aspects of contemporary life and society, its mental attitudes, physical settings, and material conditions ("Realism"). For the principles of realism, they are as follows:        
1. The philosophy of Realism is known as "descendental" or non-transcendental. The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain. Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic, and experimental.
2. The subject matter of Realism is drawn from "our experience," - it treated the common, the average, the nonextreme, the representative, the probable.
3. The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is an objection towards the omniscient point of view.
4-Realistic Complexity and Multiplicity: Complexity refers to the interwoven, entangled density of   experience; multiplicity indicates the simultaneous existence of different levels of reality or of many truths, equally "true" from some point of view.
Characteristics

• Emphasis on psychological, optimistic tone, details, pragmatic, practical, slow-moving plot.
•  Rounded, dynamic characters who serve purpose in plot.
  
• Character more important than plot.
• Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.
• Emphasis upon morality often self-realized and upon an examination of idealism.
• Empirically verifiable
• World as it is created in novel impinges upon characters. Characters dictate plot; ending usually open.
• Time marches inevitably on; small things build up. Climax is not a crisis, but just one more unimportant fact.
• Causality built into text (why something happens foreshadowed). Foreshadowing in everyday events.
• Realists show us rather than tell us
• Representative people doing representative things
•  Events make story plausible
•  Insistence on experience of the commonplace
  
•  Emphasis on morality, usually intrinsic, relativistic between people and society
  
• Scenic representation important
• Humans are in control of their own destiny and are superior to their circumstances

     The years following the Civil War symbolized a time of healing and rebuilding. For those engaged in serious literary circles, however, that period was full of upheaval. A literary civil war raged on between the camps of the romantics and the realists and later, the naturalists. People waged verbal battles over the ways that fictional characters were presented in relation to their external world. Using plot and character development, a writer stated his or her philosophy about how much control mankind had over his own destiny. For example, romantic writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated the ability of human will to triumph over adversity. On the other hand, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Henry James were influenced by the works of early European Realists, namely Balzac's La Comedie Humaine (begun in the 1830s); Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches (1852); and Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856).These American realists believed that humanity's freedom of choice was limited by the power of outside forces. At another extreme were naturalists Stephen Crane and Frank Norris who supported the ideas of Emile Zola and the determinism movement. Naturalists argued that individuals have no choice because a person's life is dictated by heredity and the external environment. ("Realism")
There are a few different types of literary realism, each with its own distinct characteristics.
a- Magical Realism: A type of realism that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. Magical realism portrays the world truthfully plus adds magical elements that are not found in our reality but are still considered normal in the world the story takes place. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967) is a magical realism novel about a man who invents a town according to his own perceptions (“What is Literary Realism”)

b- Social Realism: A type of realism that focuses on the lives and living conditions of the working class and the poor. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862) is a social novel about class and politics in France in the early 1800s.
c- Kitchen Sink Realism: An offshoot of social realism that focuses on the lives of young working-class British men who spend their free time drinking in pubs. Room at the Top by John Braine (1957) is a kitchen sink realist novel about a young man with big ambitions who struggles to realize his dreams in post-war Britain.
d- Socialist Realism: A type of realism created by Joseph Stalin and adopted by Communists. Socialist realism glorifies the struggles of the proletariat. Cement by Fyodor Gladkov (1925) is a socialist-realist novel about the struggles of reconstructing the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. Socialist Realism, which was the officially sponsored Marxist aesthetic in the Soviet Union from the early 1930s until that country’s dissolution in 1991, actually had little to do with realism, though it purported to be a faithful and objective mirror of life. Its “truthfulness” was required to serve the ideology and the propagandistic needs of the state. Socialist Realism generally used techniques of naturalistic idealization to create portraits of dauntless workers and engineers who were strikingly alike in both their heroic positivism and their lack of lifelike credibility.
e- Psychological Realism. A type of realism that’s character-driven, focusing on what motivates them to make certain decisions and why. Psychological realism sometimes uses characters to express commentary on social or political issues. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866) is a psychological realist novel about a man who hatches a plan to kill a man and take his money to get out of poverty—but feels immense guilt and paranoia after he does it. (“What is Literary Realism”). 

f- Naturalism. An extreme form of realism influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Naturalism, founded by Émile Zola, explores the belief that science can explain all social and environmental phenomena. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner (1930), a short story about a recluse with a mental illness whose fate is already determined, is an example of naturalism. (“What is Literary Realism”)

2. 2. Major Writers and Literary Texts

      The industrial revolution that took place at the end of the 19th century changed U.S.A in remarkable ways. People left rural homes for opportunities in urban cities. With the development of new machinery and equipment, the U.S. economy became more focused on factory production; Americans did not have to chiefly rely on farming and agriculture to support their families. At the same time, immigrants from all over the world crowded into tenements to take advantage of new urban opportunities. In the end, the sweeping economic, social, and political changes that took place in post-war life allowed American Realism to prevail.(“Realism Britannica”).
    The realism of the 1880s featured the works of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Henry James among other writers. American Realists concentrated their writing on select groups or subjects. The first American realist author was William Dean Howells, who was known for writing novels about middle-class life. Another early American realist was Samuel Clemens (pen name Mark Twain), who was the first well-known author to come from middle America. When he published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884, it was the first time a novel captured the distinctive life and voice of that part of the country. Similarly, Stephen Crane’s 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage told the real but previously untold stories of life on the battlefield. These stories encouraged more American writers to use their voices to speak truth to the real conditions of what life was really like, whether at war or in poverty. Other well-known realist American authors include John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Edith Wharton, and Henry James.("Realism”).
     The writing during this period was also very regional. The industrial revolution called for standardization, mass production of goods and streamlined channels of distribution. America was leaping into a new modern age and people feared that local folkways and traditions would be soon forgotten. Responding to these sentiments, realistic writers set their stories in specific American regions, rushing to capture the "local color" before it was lost. They drew upon the sometimes grim realities of everyday life, showing the breakdown of traditional values and the growing plight of the new urban poor. American realists built their plots and characters around people's ordinary, everyday lives. Additionally, their works contained regional dialects and extensive dialogue which connected well with the public. As a result, readers were attracted to the realists because they saw their own struggles in print. Conversely, the public had little patience for the slow paced narratives, allegory and symbolism of the romantic writers. America was shifting into higher gear and readers wanted writers who clearly communicated the complexities of their human experiences.
     At its basic level, realism was grounded in the faithful reporting of all facets of everyday American life. The reading public's preference for realism parallels the changes that were occurring at the end of the 19th and into the 20th century. For example, the modern scientific revolution advocated that truth and knowledge be based on empirical data. Reinforcing that notion, the industrial revolution proclaimed that a better civil society could be built upon machinery and factory labor. Given this atmosphere, several developments occurred around the same time: (1)The growth of investigative journalism; (2) the rise of muckrakers; and (3) the establishment of a new-found fascination with the camera as a means of capturing the realities of a single instant, unvarnished by sentimentality.(“What is Literary Realism”). 
     Due to the changes in class structure with the developments of the second half of the 19th century, the novel became extremely popular. Literacy grew and written works were more accessible. Realism also enhanced the prevalence of novels since their subject matter often focused on characters and themes important and relatable to the working class, middle class, and social mobility.
Here are some examples of novels that helped to shape this literary movement:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
House of Mirth (Edith Wharton)
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)
Daisy Miller (Henry James)
The Call of the Wild (Jack London)
Middlemarch (George Eliot)
Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
A significant offshoot of literary realism was Naturalism, a late 19th- and early 20th-century movement that aimed at an even more faithful and unselective representation of reality. The French novelist Émile Zola was the leading exponent of Naturalism.