American Realism

American Realism


In most people's minds, 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. In summary, here's how the genres portrayed their characters:


Emergence of American Realism

The industrial revolution that took place at the end of the 19th century changed our country 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.

The realism of the 1880s featured the works of Twain, Howells and James among other writers. American Realists concentrated their writing on select groups or subjects. Examples of this practice include:

The factory workers of Upton Sinclair and Rebecca Harding David
Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Charles Chesnutt's stories of black life
Kate Chopin's views of marriage and women's roles
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.

Spurring Change

At its basic level, realism was grounded in the faithful reporting of all facets of everyday American life. According to William Dean Howells, "Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material" (Carter, 36). 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.

In many ways, these turn of the century developments are still alive and well. With regard to contemporary literature, realism is so pervasive that it seems natural and unimportant. However, upon close examination, we realize that realism planted the seeds for many of America's core values.

Basic Tenets

As with all literary genres, we cannot rely on generalizations to interpret a work. After all, realistic literature reflected more than mere external reality. According to Richard Chase's The American Novel and Its Tradition, realism has specific social, political, and artistic characteristics that set it apart from other genres. Below are the salient points that Chase makes about realism:

Plot and Character

Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.
Characters appear in the real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.
Humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than simply reacting to it.
Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot.
Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.
Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class.
Interpretation and Analysis

Realism is viewed as a realization of democracy.
The morality of Realism is intrinsic, integral, relativistic – relations between people and society are explored.
Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic and experimental. The purpose of writing is to instruct and to entertain.
Structure of Prose

Diction is the natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.
The use of symbolism is controlled and limited; the realists depend more on the use of images.
Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses.
Other Important Aspects

Interior or psychological realism is a variant form.
Realism of James and Twain critically acclaimed in the twentieth century; Howellsian realism fell into disfavor as part of an early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition."

Henry James’s contribution to the theoretical and practical aspects of fiction in general, and realist fiction in particular is immense. Throughout his life he was profoundly interested in teasing the potentials of his craft. He wrote substantial criticism of European and American writers (French Poets and Novelists, 1878; Hawthorne, 1879; Partial Portraits, 1888; Essays in London and Elsewhere, 1893; Notes on Novelists, 1914) as well as scrutinized his own writing in prefaces to his own novels. He further explored the complexities of (realist) representation in various short stories such as “The Aspern Papers,” “The Death of the Lion,” and “The Real Thing.”

In his New York Edition preface to The Portrait of a Lady he applied the metaphor of the “house of fiction,” suggesting that there is no single perspective demanded of a realist writer. Each novelist he studied (George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Alphonse Daudet, Guy Maupassant, etc.) looked at life from a particular window of a house, that is, the house of fiction, and so demonstrated her / his unique, personal characteristics as well as providing a valid account of human experience.

His most influential critical essay, “The Art of Fiction” (1884), also argued for the fullest possible freedom in the novelist’s choice of theme and treatment. Redefining experience as the subject matter of fiction, this essay marks a crucial shift of realist fiction toward psychological realism, and eventually, toward modernist fiction. As he contends, “experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every airborne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind.”

As opposed to Howells, James was suspicious of any moral guidelines that would restrict the writing of fiction. As for a workable realist methodology in his narratives, he imaginatively applied the techniques of point of view, interior monologue and the unreliable narrator.

American author, whose unromanticized war novel, THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (1895), brought him international fame. Crane's first novel, MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS, was a milestone in the development of literary naturalism. At its appearance in 1893 Crane was just twenty-one. His manuscript was turned down by the publishers, who considered its realism too "ugly". Crane had to print the book at his own expense, borrowing the money from his brother. In its inscription Crane warned that "it is inevitable that you be greatly shocked by this book but continue, please, with all possible courage to the end." The story of the descent of a slum girl in turn-of-the-century New York into prostitution was first published under the pseudonym of Johnston Smith. Maggie was generally ignored by readers but it won the admiration of other realist writers.

"In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels." (from Maggie)
Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey, the 14th child of a Methodist minister Jonathan Townley Crane and his wife Mary Helen Peck Crane. Crane began to write stories at the age of eight; also both of his parents did some writing and two of his brothers became newspapermen. Crane's mother was active in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and published fiction. Reverend Dr. Crane, an advocate of temperance, published The Arts of Intoxication: The Aim and the Results, a condemnation of alcohol. Crane's first article, on the explorer Henry M. Stanley, appeared in 1890 in Villette.

Crane studied at Lafayette College and Syracuse University. After his mother's death in 1890 - his father had died earlier - Crane moved to New York. He worked as a free-lance writer and journalist for the Bachellor-Johnson newspaper syndicate. While supporting himself by his pen, he lived among the poor in the Bowery slums to research his first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. In England the subtitle was changed to 'A Child of the Streets. 'Maggie' was a common slang term for a female prostitute; in French the word is 'grue', which also means 'crane'. Possibly Crane had read Jacob A. Riis's books How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) and The Children of the Poor (1892), studies of the conditions of slum life. In the novellette GEORGE'S MOTHER (1896), originally entitled A WOMAN WITHOUT WEAPONS, Crane returned to the city life, especially to the lot of the idlers. Maggie Johnson also made a brief appearance as the dream girl of one of the characters. Crane's faithfulness to accuracy of details led him once to dress up as a tramp and spend the night in a flophouse. This produced the sketch 'Experiment in Misery' in 1894. Crane's pioneering novel inspired other writers, such as Hutchins Hapgood (1869-1944), to examine the Lower East Side.

Crane's The Red Badge of Courage depicted the American Civil War from the point of view of an ordinary soldier. In England readers believed that the book was written by a veteran soldier - the text was so believable. Crane dismissed this theory by saying that he got his ideas from the football field. The central character is Henry Fleming, who enrolls as a soldier in the Union army. He has dreamed of battles and glory all his life, but his expectations are shattered in his encounter with the enemy. Witnessing the chaos on the battle field, he starts to fear that the regiment was leaving him behind, and flees from the battle. "Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be crushed."

Henry wanders into a thick wood, and meets a group of wounded men. He tries to help a tall soldier, who dies, and leaves a tattered soldier on a field. He returns to the lines and a deserter hits him with a gun. Henry gets a head wound. Marked now by the "red badge" he falls asleep with his comrades in the evening Next day he feels sore and stiff from his experiences, but in his hatred starts to shoot blindly at the enemy. "Some of the men muttered and looked, awe struck, at the youth. It was plain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing without the proper intermission, they had found time to regard him. And they now looked upon him as a war devil." In the heat of the battle, he picks up the regiment's flag with his friend when it falls from the color sergeant's hands. An officer, who has called him and the other soldiers "mule drivers", calls them again "a lot of mud diggers". Henry wants to die in the battle to prove the officer is wrong. He tries to seize the enemy flag, but his friend is faster and wrenches it free from the hands of the dying color bearer. He is filled with guilt when he remembers the tattered soldier whom he had deserted. "Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks - an existence of soft and eternal peace." The Red Badge of Courage has been called the first modern war novel, but it also borrows from the conventions of a bildungsroman: after the final battle, Henry has matured, and he understands better his personal strengths and weaknesses. Later Crane portayed his hero in the story 'The Veteran' (1896), in which Henry Fleming, eventually promoted to orderly sergeant, recount his battle experiences to his grandson and dies while attempting to rescue colts from his burning barn.

Crane's collection of poems, THE BLACK RIDER (1895), has much in common with Emily Dickinson's simple, stripped style. Crane's rising fame brought him better reporting assignments and he sought experiences as a war correspondent in combat areas. Crane travelled to Greece, Cuba, Texas and Mexico, reporting mostly on war events. His short story, 'The Open Boat,' is based on a true experience, when his ship, a coal-burning tug heavy with ammunition and machetes, sank on the journey to Cuba in 1896. With a small party of other passengers, Crane spent several days drifting in a dinghy off the coast of Florida before being rescued. This experience impaired his health permanently. In the story, originally published in Scribner's Magazine in June 1897, Crane focused on four men, who eventually decide to swim for shore.

In Greece Crane wrote about the Greco-Turkish War, settling in 1898 in Sussex, England, where he lived with the author Cora Taylor, who was the proprietress of the Hotel de Dream, a well-known Jacksonville sporting house. In England Crane became friends with Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Henry James. During this period Crane wrote some of his best stories, including 'The Monster,' 'The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,' and 'The Blue Hotel' (1898), Crane's much anthologized short story, which was first published serially in Collier's Weekly. Swede, a nervous New Yorker, fascinated by tales of the Wild West, enters Pat Scully's hotel in Fort Romper, Nebraska; the hotel is a haven of rest in a blizzard. Swede meets Mr. Blanc from the East, and a reserved cowboy. He drinks heavily and beats Scully's son, Johnnie, after accusing him of cheating at cards. When the Swede attacks another hotel customer, he is stabbed and killed. Several months later Mr. Blanc, feeling responsible for the death, confesses that Johnnie indeed cheated. In a letter from 1898 Conrad wrote to Crane: "You have the terseness, the clear eye the easy imagination. You have all - and I have only the accursed faculty of dreaming. My ideas fade - Yours come out sharp cut as cameos - they come all living out of Your brain and bring images - and bring light." Like Emile Zola (1840-1902) in France, Crane used realism - or naturalism - as a method of exposing social ills, as in GEORGE'S MOTHER (1896), which explored life in the Bowery. Crane himself did not much like Zola. In 1899 ACTIVE SERVICE appeared, which was based on the Greco-Turkish War.

In 1898 Crane returned to Cuba, to cover the Spanish-American War for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. He was involved in combat, covered the landings at Guantلnamo, the advance of Rough Riders, and the Battle of San Juan Hill. According to Crane, the dismounted Rough Riders "marched noisily through the narrow road in the woods, talking volubly", and were then ambushed, suffering heavy losses. Crane concluded that "It was simply a gallant blunder." In Havanna Crane completed most of the Cuban War stories, but did not tell his family or Cora where he was. Due to poor health he was obliged to return to England. There he rented with Cora a cold and wet 14th-century Sussex estate, called Brede Place. Crane died on June 5, 1900, at Badenweiler in Germany of tuberculosis, that was worsened by malarial fever he had caught in Cuba. He was 28 - his career has lasted only eight years. Crane's posthumous publications include the sketches and stories from his life as a correspondent in WOUNDS IN THE RAIN (1900) and WHILOMVILLE STORIES (1900), depicting a childhood in a small state. After Crane's death his work was neglected for many years until such writers as Amy Lowell and Willa Cather brought it again to public attention. Although Crane introduced realism into American literature, his use of symbolism also gave his work a romantic quality.