19th Century Literary Movements Realism and Naturalism

19th Century Literary Movements Realism and Naturalism

Introduction

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Realism and Naturalism are a reply to Romanticism( imagination, poetry and prose, as well as the main themes of nature, exoticism, history, and icons depicted as exceptional individualities) because it was supposed to have lost touch with the contemporary.

Three revolutions took place during the 19th century the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution, and the moral revolution.

In Great Britain, the Victorian period lasted from 1837 to 1901. In the USA, the Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865.

The industrial revolution

The Industrial Revolution was started by the invention of the smoke machine( coal, railroads, manufactories).

All this went down in the towns the increase of the population led to misery and social problems similar to drunkenness, tuberculosis, and harlotry There was a shift from a belief in progress to an adding pessimism.

The scientific revolution

The Scientific Revolution expanded into the transport revolution, starting with the fog machine

1830 Manchester- Liverpool railroad

1869 Transcontinental railroad in the USA

Thomas Edison invents the gramophone, the light bulb and the electric president

Pierre and Marie Curie discover radioactivity

The world was changing extremely presto.

Auguste Comte( 1798 – 1857) is the origin of a philosophical thesis called Positivism. He constructed the “ law of three stages ”( 1) the theological,( 2) the metaphysical, and( 3) the positive.

The theological phase of man was grounded on wholehearted belief in all effects concerning God. God, Comte says, had reigned supreme over natural actuality-Enlightenment. Humanity’s place in society was governed by its association with supernatural aspects and with the church.

The theological phase deals with humankind’s accepting the doctrines of the church( or place of worshipping) rather than depending on its rational powers to explore essential questions about reality.

Comte describes the metaphysical phase of humanity as the time since the Enlightenment, a time steeped in logical rationalism, to the time right after the French Revolution. This new phase countries that the universal rights of humanity are most important.

The central idea is that humanity is invested with certain rights that must be appreciated. In this phase, republics and tyrants expanded and fell in attempts to maintain the essential rights of humanity.

The final stage of the trio of Comte’s universal law is the scientific, or positive, stage. The central idea of this phase is that individual rights are more important than the rule of any one person. Science is supreme and can give man absolute knowledge and power.

The moral revolution 

 The moral revolution marked the end of the Double face of Victorian morality. In the Origin of Species( 1859), Darwin suggested for the first time that man descended from imitators there was no need for God, just a struggle for life( “ survival of the fittest ”). 

 Darwin impacted Marx( communism and class warfare) and Nietsche( vision of superman). 

 Conflicts and struggles define the future of society. It was a time of violent doctrine and moral and scientific changes. 

 Realism 

 literalism is the fact of being faithful to reality. It was a movement down from romantic vision, to get near to the social and intellectual reality of the time. It's the belief there can be a correspondence between reality and its representation. 

 Reality is a subject matter of the life of ordinary people in ordinary situations – for example, the bourgeois middle-class as exceptional people isn't realistic. Balzac talked about every class of society but authentically constantly, elected. 

 Reality is also a matter of realism how characters are determined by their setting, chronological narratives, interior dimension of the characters, and presence of an all-powerful narrator. 

 Literalism in England 

 Jane Austen( 1775- 1817) was a realist who lived during romanticism but she wasn't romantic at all. She described the middle classes in the country( how to get wedded) with two types of heroines romantic on the one hand and reasonable and realistic on the other hand. 

Charles Dickens( 1812- 1870) defined literalism with a strong social dimension he portrayed the working class and the poor and dealt with poverty and rebellion against injustice. Dickens ’ characters are helpless orphans in a cruel world and his novels were used for social reforms.

 In Oliver Twist( 1838), there's sentimentalism and pathos( influence of psychodrama) but also humour and mocking to palliate stresses. 

 Uriah Heep in David Copperfield( 1850) is evil, unattractive, red-haired and smelled like a fish. This romantic literalism depicted social problems as well as imagination and sentimentalism. 

Realism in the USA 

After the Civil War, the vision of Romantic America( Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans) faded because of the expansion to the West( “ Manifest fortune ”) and because the artistic centre of the USA shifted from Boston to New York( which represented fustiness).  

 Harriet Beecher- Stowe( 1811- 1896) used to write children’s books. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, which was a brochure against slavery from a Christian and drippy point of view. African Americans saw it as a paternalistic portrayal, not realistic at all. Its goal was to draw people against slavery and directly started the Civil War. 

 Mark Twain( 1835- 1910) is Samuel Clemens ’ nom de premium. He was substantially a wit with a strong regionalist tradition and used the informal( the language people speak) as well as western tell-tales as consolations. 

 He successfully represented the spirit of post-civil war America with The GildedAge( 1873), a lampoon of the “ purloiner tycoons ”, and Life on the Mississippi( 1883) when he was a steamboat pilot. 

 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn( 1885) is fully written in the conversational language of the youthful American boy who ran down from “ civilization ”( civilization of the South) with Jim, a raw slave. They represent the society of the South before the Civil War in a review of Southern society. 

The slavery system had corrupted the South not only because it was bad but also for the society corrupted the individualities. Huck has an “ extremity of heart ” should he denounce Jim or not? He prefers not to show the morality and the influence society can have on individualities Huck has a “ sound heart and a misshaped heart ”.

Naturalism 

 Naturalism is an extreme form of literary literalism, grounded on the belief that knowledge could explain all social marvels, and was to give the system for the creation of literature. 

           Contrary to Realism, which was a rather loose movement, it constituted a real academy of supposed around its author, the Frenchman Emile Zola. One of its most renowned manifestos was Zola’s Le roman expérimental( 1880). Its main tenets were absolute determinism and materialism the natural knowledge as a methodological model of Darwinism and Claude Bernard’s experimental medication( preface à la médecine expérimentale, 1865). 

Consequences of this scientific outlook 

No free will man is determined by circumstances beyond his command( instincts, surroundings, heredity; thus most natural novels take the form of social and intellectual tragedies. 

 As visible in Zola’s La Bête Humaine( 1890), civilisation is only a shield under the influence of stress, sexual desire or alcohol, man reverts to brutality. This generality of life is of course authentically pessimistic since life and individuality will are seen as pointless. 

 Since the scientific system is the model for learned creation, the naturalist author shouldn't use his imagination, but only search for fd data – social, natural, and intellectual data. 

They generally made expansive introductory exploration before writing. Like a medical scientist, the author makes trials and observes the results after setting characters in a given situation and environs, they observe their responses. In a way, they aim at analyzing the mortal mind and the body. 

  Since they aim to describe social reality “ objectively ” and to deny the claims of the imagination, their emphasis wasn't on form but contents. The choice of subject was frequently the lower classes, to denounce the state of society; they were frequently charged with electing the snidest aspects of mortal nature( vice, violence). 

The plot was maximum of the time presented chronologically( asseveration on the determinism of causes and Results ) and it could, in the worst cases, be genuinely approximately assembled, out of a certain neglectfulness about the aesthetic effect. 

  The impression of objectivity was frequently achieved using descriptions, which try to illustrate the interplay between man and his terrain, and through the use of a distancedniscient narrator, whose intervention was occasionally limited to external focalisation. The style was occasionally unstable and awkward. 

All of this fits Zola’s description of the work of art “ Une oeuvre d’art est un coin de la nature ou à travers un tempérament

Naturalism in the USA 

 Naturalism was much more important as a movement in the States than in Great Britain. This can be partially explained by the fact that social change was indeed rapidly and more radical in this country after the Civil War( 1861- 1865). 

The period saw the end of the agricultural myth of a pastoral America in the face of rapid-fire industrialisation, especially in the North, and the ending of the Frontier in 1890. The American dream of capitalistic success didn't materialize moreover for maximum emigrants and the civic poor. 

 Out of these deep enterprises, an original type of Naturalism was born, which could mix Zola’s positivist testament and a truly aesthetic imagination and a symbolic approach.

It was represented by authors similar as Stephen Crane( 1871- 1900) in The Red Badge of Courage( 1896) and Maggie, a Girl of the Streets( 1893); Frank Norris( 1870- 1902) in McTeague( 1899); Theodore Dreiser( 1871- 1945) in An American Tragedy( 1925); Upton Sinclair( 1878- 1968) in The Jungle( 1906). 

 The Great Depression( 1929- 1935) that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash and ruined transnational trade, putting millions of workers worldwide out of a job, consequently saw a rejuvenation of Naturalism, which lasted until another World War. 

It's substantially represented by John Steinbeck( 1902- 1968), whose work is marked by compassion for poor and borderline people Of Mice and Men( 1937), and The Grapes of Wrath( 1939). 

Richard Wright( 1908- 1960), an African American author whose Native Son( 1940) deals with the problems of race and violence, was also a Naturalist. 

 An exemplar Of Mice and Men 

 Of Mice and Men isn't only a natural novel, it has other confines. Yet it's relatively close to the general enterprises of naturalism, both in subject matter announcement in a narrative style. 

 The choice of poor ranch hands as protagonists and, for the plot, of a violent murder brought about by a mixture of social oppression and sexual desire, ties in with the object of portraying society as it is, under its frequently base aspects, with a critical objective. 

The scientific system that underpins the novel is behaviourism, a likewise influential school of psychology inspired by biology. It sees creatures of mortal behaviour as a response without reference to moral values or “ metaphysical ” novelties like the soul. feelings and encouragements are inapplicable now; so is teleology( determination by final causes). 

 In Of Mice and Men, this purely objective approach is embodied in the structure of the text by its being constructed like a stage play. It consists of the description of settings – which pose the social context and the atmosphere, of behaviour, conversations the conversational. The narrator doesn't intercede in the story; he's a bare onlooker or validation, using the approaches of external focalisation, or zero focalisation. 

A lire Structure in A Midsummer Night's Dream 

 Another naturalistic theme is the parallel between men and creatures, first seen in the title. The mercy killing of Candy’s doggy parallels that of Lenny in the end. The men are little further than animals the ranch society is like a pack of hounds or wolves, in which only the dominant joker has a right to feminine, and where everyone intents on defending his territory( indeed Crooks, the black man, transforms his rejection into a desire for sequestration). Lenny is innocent but dangerous, hence beast- suchlike; his love of soft effects is how desire and fornication find their way to a woeful end. 

 Eventually, nature is seen under a binary aspect. In the opening and closing scenes, it's indifferent to man, in true Darwinian fashion. Yet it can also be maternal, as in the workers ’ dream of a ranch. 

It's also Edenic, in harmony with man, as in the Jeffersonian Frontier. It's a vision, yet dreams are important too they can impact reality, as they told the lives of these characters. “ Real ” literalism has to take them into account too. 

It's maybe in the philanthropic undertone of the book and this complex station to men’s dreams that Steinbeck goes beyond a purely natural approach. 

Naturalism in England 

Due to the tradition of literalism that had transfused English literature since the end of the 18th century, a tradition that didn't deny the claims of the imagination, the naturist movement had lower followership than in France and the USA. 

 Yet the adding pessimism of the late puritanical period, fuelled by the moral extremity following Darwinism and the rise in social problems, made naturalism a strong influence on major authors like Thomas Hardy( 1840- 1928) in Tess of the D’Ubervilles( 1891), Jude the Obscure( 1895) or Joseph Conrad( 1857- 1924) in Heart of Darkness( 1899), and Lord Jim( 1900). 

Hardy and Conrad participated with the naturalists with a sense of tragedy, a belief in the uselessness of human free will, and a conviction that wantonness lurked just beneath the veneer of civilisation. 

Yet their style was largely erudite and symbolic, and they expressed distrust about the possibility of ever reaching the trueness – as opposed to the early naturalists ’ belief in the infallibility of science. 

The end of Heart of Darkness, a violent condemnation of European colonialism in Africa and a leaflet about the reciprocity of the odds and ends of civilisation and wantonness, ends with these mysterious words “ The horror, the horror! ” that sounds like a nihilistic protestation of the impossibility of knowledge. 

 These aesthetic and epistemological characteristics identify Hardy and Conrad with the natural academy maybe less as they make them forerunners of Modernism. 

The criticism of Realism 

 Realism and Naturalism are grounded on the demesne that reality can be known( science as total knowledge) and can be represented objectively( translucency of the medium). Hence its closeness to the social lives and psychology( realism) and biology( naturalism). 

These movements aimed at representing society as it is, frequently with a critical intention( Dickens, Hardy, Conrad). The biggest theoretical problems defying literalism were those of the description of “ reality ”, and of the possibility of “ neutrality ”. 

The notion of “ objectivity ” 

An artist can none be fully “ objective ” and transcribe “ reality ” as it's indeed Zola’s motto( “ A work of art is a corner of nature seen through a disposition ”) reintroduces subjectivity. Temperament is the artist’s subjectivity, expressed in a choice of subject matter and a choice of treatment. 

Why choose only the middle classes or the poor? Exceptional people or gentility are also a part of reality. Happy- ends can be as true to life as natural tragedies. 

Art Inescapably implies a “ point of view ”, as illustrated in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady( 1881). It's the story of a young American woman, Isabel Archer, who's both the protagonist and the “ centre of consciousness ” of the novel. 

 Everything is seen through her subjectivity; indeed the narrator becomes lower and lower supreme as the book develops. This elicits dubieties about the possibility of absolute knowledge, as corroborated by the “ objective ” style and the open ending, which keeps several possible conclusions available to the anthology’s imagination. 

The novel stands between Literalism and Modernism and announces the “ stream of consciousness ” technique. 

Another response against the strictures of Realism was to be set up in the movement called Aestheticism, whose most famed practitioner was Oscar Wilde( 1854- 1900). A notorious Beau Brummell, Wilde was veritably popular among the Victorian advanced classes, yet this open homosexuality brought about a trial and captivity judgment, and the end of his career.

His workshop, celebrated for its incisive wit and numerous dichotomies expose the arbitrariness of conventional wisdom and morality. Plays like The significance of Being Earnest( 1895) are a sharp criticism of Victorian morality and insincerity, lampoon under the cover of comedy. 

 His only fantastic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray( 1891) betrays the influence of aestheticism( Dorian Gray is a Beau Brummell like Wilde himself), establishes the independence of art from morality, and uses the fantastic as a means of querying a “ realistic ” generality of life and art. 

Wilde also wrote tales( “ The Happy Prince ”) and short stories( “ Lord Arthur Savile’s crime ”). The ultimate is a parody of Victorian moralistic stories, frequently aimed at the education of youthful gentlemen. It centres on the paradox of a moral crime or a murder committed out of a sense of duty. 

 A lire The 18th Century the Age of Enlightenment 

                                                                                Being told by a cheiromantist that he'll commit a crime, Savile decides to kill before marrying, for fear of bringing dishonour on his bridegroom. He ends up killing the cheiromantist and lives happily ever latterly. 

 The story is a satire on the fashionable superstitions of the time the fortune- teller reveals to be a fake, and his predicting a tone- fulfilling vaticination. It's also a charge of the confusion between morality and upper-class egoism and conventions. 

As a crime without penalty, it's the contrary of a moral tale, indeed though it masquerades as one. The story isn't realistic since it doesn't observe the laws of realism, and since its ridiculous tone contrasts with the serious-mindedness of utmost realistic works, yet it does have circular social relevancy. 

 

 “ The Canterville Ghost ” is a parody of a Gothic tale( the ghost isn't horrifying and is compared to an actor). It follows the structure of the dwarf tale, in which a pure young girl saves the damned soul. But its main encouragement is a comparison between Britain and America or two dreams of the world. One is traditional and superstitious; the other is positivistic and matter-of-fact the Americans give the ghost oil to slick his noisy chains, and the children play tricks on him and lead him to despair. 

Indeed in his humour and parodies, Wilde’s documents were impacted by the aestheticist philosophy of men like Pater, who associated realism with a bourgeois outlook( capitalistic, rational, purely conventional), and pictured the reality of refined life as that of the sensations and the imagination.

New scientific views of reality 

                                                        At the end of the 19th century, science passed drastic changes, which questioned its capability to picture “ reality ” as it is. 

 The ideology of William James in America, known as Pragmatism, declared that in both science and psychology, knowledge depended on particular points of view and that no theory is suitable to regard thoroughly for reality. This concept had a strong influence on his brother Henry James, the novelist. 

Freud’s psychoanalytical thesis stated that the Unconscious remains ever slippery knowledge can nothing be complete. The frontier between normalcy and madness is ill-defined so that we all reconstruct reality according to our prepossessions absolute knowledge and total objectiveness are insolvable. 

 Einstein’s thesis of relativity, which indissolubly linked time and space, also derived that the laws of physics are relative in the dimension where we belong. The subatomic position obeys different rules, as expressed in Eisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy. 

Modernism 

                            Modernism was born from the fragmentation of the simplistic outlook of Realism it's more “ realistic ” to consider reality as an agglomerate of different, partial views of reality, the impossibility to reach a complete, coherent total stemming from the multiple psychological and epistemological factors of the construction of the real. 

In visual crafts, there were several attempts to integrate these discoveries. 

 Cubism, constructed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, consists in composing a metrical intermixture of multiple dreams of an object, seen from different angles at different times; it thereby integrates the fourth dimension of reality in a two- dimensional work of art. 

Surrealism, with its declination of rationality and stress on the unconscious, through similar ways as collage and écriture automatique, had the end of going beyond literalism using the insights of psychoanalysis. 

In literature, Modernism was especially characterised by its generality that the work of art was an independent total; by the subversion of the traditional opposition between prose and poetry; by a frequent resort to multiple narrators and different perspectives on reality( as opposed to the human narrators of Literalism and Naturalism); by a breaking up of the “ stream of consciousness ”, or “ the attempt to convey all the contents of a character’s mind – memory, sense comprehensions, sensibilities, anticipations, studies, about the stream of experience as it passes by, frequently at arbitrary ”( Martin Gray’s Dictionary of Literary Terms). 

 The most famed writers of this movement are the poets Ezra Pound andT.S. Eliot( The Waste Land, 1922) and the novelists Virginia Woolf( Mrs Dalloway, 1925), James Joyce( Ulysses, 1922), D.H. Lawrence( Women in Love, 1921; Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1928); and the Americans William Faulkner( The Sound and the Fury, 1929), John Dos Passos( Manhattan Transfer, 1925). 

Conclusion 

                     Indeed though they sounded dominant during the other half of the 19th century, Literalism and Naturalism noway had a position of supremacy. The presence of the Fantastic opened up other avenues to the construction of literary meaning and questioned the truly scientific and rational outlook on which these movements were grounded. 

 The epistemological excrescencies of a belief in the translucency of reality and language soon spelt their demise under the rush of Modernism. 

Yet the motivation to describe other realities to make the reader estimate or questioned them remained alive for a while( Naturalism lasted until the 1940s in the States) and has not, indeed now, lost all its appeal or utility.