REALISM IN LITERATURE

Introduction

Believers in realism were convinced that there was a need to portray life and

reality as objectively as possible in the arts and in literature. This was

especially emphasized by many writers of the industrialrevolution. Yet, it’s

not an original concept that is distinct to the Industrial Revolution.

The term “realism” was originally used by the thirteenth-century scholastics

as meaning a belief in the reality of ideas; it was contrasted with

“nominalism” which supported the doctrine that ideas are only names or

abstractions. In the eighteenth century its meaning was practically reversed;

in Thomas Reid, in Kant, and in Schelling realism means the opposite of

idealism. As a literary term, realism occurs first in a letter of Friedrich Schiller

to Goethe (April 27, 1798) asserting that “realism cannot make a poet”

(Wellek). In its methods and attitudes, realism may be found as an element in

many kinds of writing prior to the 19th century (e.g. in Chaucer or Defoe, in

their different ways); but as a dominant literary trend it is associated chiefly

with the 19th‐century novel of middle‐ or lower‐class life, in which the

problems of ordinary people in unremarkable circumstances are rendered

with close attention to the details of physical setting and to the complexities

of social life (Answers). The last quote is quite notable in the sense that

novels were the primary medium of its advocates as Romanticism was

notable for the lyrical poetry that is appreciated until now.

Realism and Its Progression

The most commonly accepted elaboration of the definition of realism would

be that of Howell’s. Dewitt, etal.,explained that Howell’s statement indicates

that a belief in the possibility of realism implies a belief in an objective reality.

Realism can be both material and psychological. It uses words to depict the

way that things look and feel and the way that people act. Realists believe in

unexpected ways. Wishing to exclude nothing, realistic writers pay much

attention to detail, especially more sordid or shocking aspects of human life

(Witt, Brown and Dunbar). If sticking objectively to reality is the chief tenet of

realism, then some nineteenth-century realists may not be realists since they

revealed their personalconvictions on contemporary social issues.

The rise of the industrial cities and its drastic effect on human life was

considered to be an appropriate subject by socially concerned realists.

Charles Dickens opened to us a window of the Industrial revolution when his

characters traversed the streets of London, worked in bottle factories, and

landed in debtors’ prison. Witt and company do not consider Dickens as a

consistently realist writer perhaps because of the Horatio Alger-like endings

of his more famous novels. Still, they contended that he does to a great

extent reproduce the material, social, and psychological environment of his

time which was the fact that misery was prevailing in almost all aspects of life

of the working masses. The same economic transformation ushered the

increase of the literacy of the high and middle classes. Aside from increasing

the size of the reading public, realist writers and their publishers facilitated

widespread access through making novels serialized in publications and

journals. This is comparable to the many soap operas that cluttered today’s

TV primetime slots. People may have become tired of the lofty tendencies of

the romanticists and idealists writers of the Romantic Period and sought

characters, events, and stories that they can identify with.

There is widespread agreement that Realism flowered in its fullest in France.

Its precursors are identified as Merimee, Stendhal, Balzac, Monnier, and

Charles Bernard. Champlfeury and later Flaubert, the Goncourts, and the

younger Dumas were the exponents of the school. Flaubert did not recognize

the designation. Flaubert in his series of novels entitled The Human Comedy

(obviously in contrast to The Divine Comedy), portrayed comprehensively

French society in his time which resulted to characters that are realistic and

memorable. Realism in the United States began later than in Europe, but it

had considerable impact on American fictionthat continues to the present

day. Henry James studied the French realists for his own benefit; William

Dean Howells wrote against the “romantic lies” in literature in favor of

realism, which portrays “men and women as they actually are, actuated by

the motives and the passions in the measure we all know.” Stephen Crane,

who portrayed the harsher aspects of the Civil Was, was another great

American realist.

In England, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and William Makepeace Thackeray

were the primary realist writers. Thackeray was called, rather casually, “chief

of the Realist school” in 1851. George Henry Lewes was the first English critic

who systematically applied standards of realism, for instance, in a severe

review, “Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction” (1858). There Lewes boldly

proclaims “... Realism the basis of all Art.” (Answers).

French realism subsequently developed into naturalism, an associated but

more scientifically

applied and Elaborated doctrine, seen by some later critics (notably *Marxist

critics) as degenerate. In England, the French realists were imitated

consciously and notably by Moore and Arnold *Bennett, but the English novel

from the time of *Defoe had had its own unlabelled strain of realism, and the

term is thus applied to English literature in varying senses and contexts,

sometimes qualified as 'social' or 'psychological' realism etc. (Drabble).

Realism as with all trends is not spared from critics. It has many enemies and

some are rabid at heart. Realism was judged negatively for reasons that

included, excessive use of minute external detail, abandonment of what is

ideal and the impersonality and objectivity of the writer who are considered

to be immoral and cynics. According to Wellek, the much vaunted trial of

Flaubert in 1857 for Madame Bovary was completely established realism as

term in France.

Conclusion

Literature responds to the needs of the times. It not only provides a

recreational outlet from the rigors of life but seeks resolution of contemporary

issues. Idealism, Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism in literature were apt

responses in their particular time periods. Both Idealism and Romanticism

provided a venue for classical ideals to be highlighted and strived for as part

of the Renaissance continuum. Realism and Naturalism are reality checks for
society: what we are looking through the mirror is true. The question then

will be, what do we do now?

Works Cited
Answers. "Literary:Realism." www.answers.com.

Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. New York:

Oxford University Press Inc., 2000.

Fletcher, Robert Huntington. A History of English Literature. Easy Software

Products, 2002.

Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Cornwall: Blackwell

Publishing, 2004.

Wellek, Rene. "Realism in Literature." 1 May 2003. Dictionary of the History of

Ideas. 25 February 2009.

Witt, Mary Ann Frese, et al. The Humanities. Lexington: D. C. Heath and
Company, 2002.