Realism

REALISM
Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique
practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular
kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in
scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all
affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the
immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that 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" (A Handbook to Literature 428).
Many critics have suggested that there is no clear distinction between realism and its related late nineteenth-
century movement, naturalism. As Donald Pizer notes in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to American
Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London, the term "realism" is difficult to define, in part because it is used
differently in European contexts than in American literature. Pizer suggests that "whatever was being produced in
fiction during the 1870s and 1880s that was new, interesting, and roughly similar in a number of ways can be
designated as realism, and that an equally new, interesting, and roughly similar body of writing produced at the turn of
the century can be designated as naturalism" (5). Put rather too simplistically, one rough distinction made by critics is
that realism espousing a deterministic philosophy and focusing on the lower classes is considered naturalism.
In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the
century during which William Dean Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others wrote
fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various contexts. As the United
States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in
industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class
affluence provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture. In
drawing attention to this connection, Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the
threats of social change" (Social Construction of American Realism ix).
Realism was a movement that encompassed the entire country, or at least the Midwest and South, although
many of the writers and critics associated with realism (notably W. D. Howells) were based in New England. Among
the Midwestern writers considered realists would be Joseph Kirkland, E. W. Howe, and Hamlin Garland; the Southern
writer John W. DeForest's Miss Ravenal's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty is often considered a realist novel, too.
Characteristics
 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
 Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.
 Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to
each other, to their social class, to their own past.
 Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class. (See
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel)
 Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and
romances.
 Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.
 Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the
century progresses.
 Interior or psychological realism a variant form.
 In Black and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between realism and sentimentalism
is that in realism, "the redemption of the individual lay within the social world," but in sentimental fiction, "the
redemption of the social world lay with the individual" (75-76).
The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in twentieth century; Howellsian realism fell into disfavor as
part of early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition."
Practitioners
 Mark Twain
 Henry James
Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1954): "The basic
axiom of the realistic view of morality was that there could be no moralizing in the novel [ . . . ] The morality of the
realists, then, was built upon what appears a paradox--morality with an abhorrence of moralizing. Their ethical beliefs
called, first of all, for a rejection of scheme of moral behavior imposed, from without, upon the characters of fiction
and their actions. Yet Howells always claimed for his works a deep moral purpose. What was it? It was based upon
three propositions: that life, social life as lived in the world Howells knew, was valuable, and was permeated with
morality; that its continued health depended upon the use of human reason to overcome the anarchic selfishness of
human passions; that an objective portrayal of human life, by art, will illustrate the superior value of social, civilized
man, of human reason over animal passion and primitive ignorance" (157).
Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most ordinary and
uninteresting, in order to extract from these their full value and true meaning. It would apprehend in all particulars the
connection between the familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of human nature. Beneath the
deceptive cloak of outwardly uneventful days, it detects and endeavors to trace the outlines of the spirits that are
hidden there; tho measure the changes in their growth, to watch the symptoms of moral decay or regeneration, to
fathom their histories of passionate or intellectual problems. In short, realism reveals. Where we thought nothing worth
of notice, it shows everything to be rife with significance.
-- George Parsons Lathrop, 'The Novel and its Future," Atlantic Monthly 34 (September 1874):313 24.
“Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.” --William Dean Howells,
“Editor’s Study,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine (November 1889), p. 966.
Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a
mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm. --Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in the twentieth century. Howellsian realism fell into
disfavor, however, as part of early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition." For an account of these
and other issues, see the realism bibliography and essays by Pizer, Michael Anesko, Richard Lehan, and Louis J. Budd,
among others, in the Cambridge Guide to Realism and Naturalism.

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