American Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism

1860-1920ish

Realism (noun): 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)

More from the Devil’s Dictionary

INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.

JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

BRIDE, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

BRUTE, n. See HUSBAND

IMPUNITY, n. Wealth.

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What brought about Realism?

• A reaction against Romanticism
• rejected heroic, adventurous, or unfamiliar subjects
• The emerging middle class brings increasing rates of literacy as well as the rise of popular literature – elitist literary movements (e.g. Romanticism) lessen with pressure for realistic portrayals of American population
• The harsh reality of the Civil War and the closing of the frontier shattered the nation’s idealism
• The urbanization and industrialization of America
• Upheaval and social change in the latter half of the 19^th century

Romanticism versus Realism

Romanticism

• Aspired to the ideal
• Thought to be more genteel since it did not show the vulgar details of life

Realism

• Thought to be more democratic
• Critics stressed its potential for vulgarity and its emphasis on the commonplace
• Potential “poison” for the pure of mind

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Romanticism versus Realism

• Renders reality in less volume and detail.
• Prefers action to character.
• Reality does not impinge as frequently on the action of the piece as in a novel.
• Characters not as complexly related to each other or to their society.
• Human relationships tend to be narrowly or obsessively involved rather than displaying a range of human relationships.

• Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail.
• 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 a complex relationship or conflict with nature, with each other, with their social class, with their own past.
• Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.

Romanticism versus Realism

• Origins and class of characters sometimes irrelevant, sometimes a mystery.
• Plot is highly colored, featuring astonishing events that have symbolic or allegorical import.
• Tends toward mythic, allegorical, or symbolic forms; Heightened diction.

• Class is important; the realist novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class.
• Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; Tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.
• Objectivity becomes increasingly important – overt authorial comments or intrusions lessen as the century progresses

The Civil War

• The industrialized North defeated the agrarian South, and the United States headed toward capitalism.
• The war taught men that life, man and God were not so good or pure.
• The war marked a change in the quality of American life, a deterioration of American moral values.

Ambrose Bierce

Best known for his fiction: his fastidiously plotted horror tales and the dark, vivid stories—including the often anthologized “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”—that drew from his early war experiences at Chickamauga, Shiloh, and Kennesaw Mountain, where he was wounded.

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In 1913, at the age of seventy-one, the famous writer saddled up a horse and rode into Mexico, not speaking any Spanish, in order to cover the Mexican Revolutionary War, perhaps to participate in it, perhaps to interview Pancho Villa. As newspaper accounts of his time reported, he disappeared without a trace.

Shattered Illusions – how does Ambrose Bierce invoke romantic motifs in an ironic way? How do these illusions of grandeur call attention to the difference between Romanticism and Realism?�

Part I – imagery of nature, laurel, military objectives and strategy as the “theater of war”

Part II – wealth, civic duty vs family loyalty, rousing angel (7), allusion to equestrian statue (8), “the sublimity of the landscape” (11), “divine mandate” (12),

Part III – “spirit of adventure,” ((13), nature imagery, vision of the falling horseman, reckoning with gravity and where he expects to find the horseman’s body, “incredible truth”

Part IV – the ending that overturns the story, crushing irony, story’s quick ending

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Lev Lagorio, In the Mountains of the Caucasus, 1879

How might the laurel in which Carter Druse falls asleep be a loaded or ironic symbol? How does it reveal the complications of realism, and the dismantling of easy ideals?

(seventh paragraph – top of page 5)

So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, who returned the salute with a stately courtesy that masked a breaking heart, left the home of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by deeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellows and his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty at the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than resolution, and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without a movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness—whispered into the ear of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised his forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his rifle.

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(eighth paragraph – bottom of page 5)

His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal, the cliff,—motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and sharply outlined against the sky,—was an equestrian statue of impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse, straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costume harmonized with its aërial background; the metal of accoutrement and caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal’s skin had no points of high light. A carbine strikingly foreshortened lay across the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at the “grip”; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In silhouette against the sky the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away, showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to the bottom

of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by the soldier’s testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.

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Pair Discussion - one person turn in notes, alternate turns in note-taking

• How is nature presented in the story? How is Bierce’s attitude to nature different from the romantics?
• How is heroism, and heroic images of soldiers a source of disillusionment? How might the war be different from what Carter Druse imagined it would be?
• How is duty a motivating force for the story? How does duty first take on a Romantic connotation and then how does duty become an ironic element?
• Discuss Druse's decision process, whether to shoot the rider (whom we don't yet know is his father) and his statement: "Is it then so terrible to kill an enemy in war--an enemy who has surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades--an enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its numbers?"

1880s Urbanization

• Commerce took the lead in the national economy with the movement from free commerce to monopolization
• The spirit of self-reliance became perverted into a lust for money and power.
• Increasing industrialization produced extremes of wealth and poverty.
• Wealth and power were more and more concentrated in the hands of the few "captains of industry“.
• In the meantime, millions of people were struggling for survival.

Results of Industrialism

• Cities became manufacturing centers and more people moved from rural areas into the cities to find jobs;
• A large urban middle class appeared, involved in manufacturing, wholesale and retail sales, banking, the legal and other professions, and the stock market.
• Advances in the technology of printing allowed cheaper production and mass marketing of books and magazines
• Both of which provided fiction that appealed to the interests of middle-class readers.

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Influence of the Middle Class

• The spread of education, through the proliferation of public and private schools in the industrialized western world;
• The cumulative effect of these conditions was the formation of a literate middle class who saw its members as social and political protagonists;
• They wanted a literature that reflected its social structure, manners, and ethical values.

Closing of the American Frontier

• Now that the frontier was about to close and the safety valve was ceasing to operate. The American people lost their dream and imagination.

What is Realism?

• A faithful representation of reality in literature
• Emphasis on development of believable characters.
• Written in natural vernacular, or dialect.
• Prominent from 1860-1890.

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Principles of Realism

• truthful description of life
• typical character under typical circumstance
• objective rather than idealized
• close observation and investigation of life
• concerned with social and psychological problems
• open-ended endings: leaves room for readers to think for themselves.
• insistence upon and defense of "the experienced commonplace".
• character more important than plot.
• attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.
• realism as a realization of democracy.
• moral growth comes from self-realization

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Characteristics of Realism

• Protagonists are typical members of the middle class and reflect the attitudes and values as well as the customs and manners of this class. (some characters may belong to other classes).
• Unlike romantic heroes and villains, the characters are neither extremely good nor extremely bad, but have a mixture of both qualities.
• The seemingly unsubjective/objective style of realism carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon the presentation and account of a scene to deemphasize authorial comment and evaluation. Authors typically object to the omniscient point of view.
• 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.

Realist Writers

Howells on Realism

“Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”

–– William Dean Howells, �November 1889

What is Naturalism?

• Applied scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to the study of human beings.
• Influenced by Darwinism (natural selection) and psychology (Freud)
• Posited that men were governed by heredity and environment.
• Often depict man in conflict with nature, society, or himself.
• Prominent from 1880-1920(ish)

What is Naturalism?

A man said to the universe:  �"Sir, I exist!"  �"However," replied the universe,  �"The fact has not created in me  �A sense of obligation.”

--Stephen Crane (1894, 1899)

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Does a moth have control over its life?

• Do you believe people have control �over their circumstances?
• What are some times when you felt like you had control? When you lacked control?

Does Carter Druse have control over his circumstances? Is he powerless against his fate?

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(from last sentence of paragraph 10 to paragraph 11)

His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.

It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth, his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the trigger; mind, heart and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound… The duty of the soldier was plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush—without warning, without a moment’s spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his account. But no—there is a hope; he may have discovered nothing—perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of the landscape. If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away in the direction whence he came…Druse turned his head and looked through the deeps of air downward, as from the surface to the bottom of a translucent sea. He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men and horses—some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a dozen summits!

Does Carter Druse have control over his circumstances? Is he powerless against his fate?

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Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory, as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their parting: “Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty.” He was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves were as tranquil as a sleeping babe’s—not a tremor affected any muscle of his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim, was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the body: “Peace, be still.” He fired.

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Does Carter Druse have control over his circumstances? Is he powerless against his fate?

(from paragraph 7)

What good or bad angel came in a dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without a movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness—whispered into the ear of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised his forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his rifle…

Characteristics of Naturalism

• Themes: survival, determinism, and taboo issues.
• Conflict: man versus nature, man versus self
• Characters struggle against pressures that threaten to release the "brute within."
• Characters are often lower class in urban settings
• Nature is an indifferent or antagonistic force acting on the lives of human beings.
• Forces of heredity and environment as they affect and afflict--individual lives.

Why did Naturalism develop?

• The swell of immigrants in the latter half of the 19^th century, which led to a larger lower class and increased poverty in the cities
• The prominence of psychology and the theories of Sigmund Freud
• Pessimism in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction
• Publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species

Points to Remember…

• Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism are intertwined and connected.
• Their influence has dominated most literature created since 1920, though the movement itself is dated to roughly that point.
• They are truly American modes of writing.

Naturalist Writers

• Stephen Crane
• Ambrose Bierce
• Jack London
• Edwin Arlington Robinson
• Katherine Anne Porter
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Edith Wharton

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Kate Chopin

Coming to Knowledge

Epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. The term is derived from the Greek epistēmē (“knowledge”) and logos (“reason”), and accordingly the field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge.

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Different fields of philosophy examine how we come to knowledge through

• Sensory perception – I look at a candle and observe light; I touch the flame and feel heat and pain
• Authority – I examine existing knowledge about the physics of light and heat, the philosophy and religious beliefs about enlightenment
• Reason / Empiricism – I conduct thought experiments or scientific ones to develop new knowledge about
• Intuition – I trust my subconscious to guide me to new understandings or realizations about the significance of light, its value in life, in understanding

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VOGUE MAGAZINE

Vogue, influential American fashion and lifestyle magazine. It was founded in 1892 as a weekly high-society journal, created by Arthur Baldwin Turnure for New York City's social elite and covering news of the local social scene, traditions of high society, and social etiquette; it also reviewed books, plays, and music.

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“Desiree’s Baby” is published in 1893 in Vogue.

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TAKE A LOOK AT THE ISSUE – https://archive.vogue.com/issue/18921217

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When Conde Nast takes over the magazine in 1909, it begins to feature fashion and the most prominent illustrators of the day

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WATCH THE VIDEO ON THE NEXT SLIDE TO CONSIDER THE ROLE OF FASHION AND CULTURE IN SHAPING SOCIAL NORMS ABOUT WOMEN’S SPHERE OF ACTIVITY AND INFLUENCE

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CLUE 1 – how does the publication history and target audience shape the argument? Does that rhetorical strategy help us consider the way Desiree – and we – come to knowledge about the limitations of her power?

THE GILDED AGE

Beneath the glittering surface of prosperity there lay suffering and unhappiness. What had been expected to be a Golden Age turned out to be a Gilded one.

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LOOK AT METAPHORS AND IMAGERY IN THE FOURTH PARAGRAPH AND CONSIDER THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF ARMAND’S LOVE FOR DESIREE AND COMPARE IT WITH THE DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS ACTIONS IN PARAGRAPH 18 AND PARAGRAPHS

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WATCH THE FIRST FOUR MINUTES OF THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE GILDED AGE DOCUMENTARY ON THE NEXT SLIDE AND CONSIDER WHAT OTHER LEVELS OF IRONY PLAY OUT IN THE STORY AND IN AMERICAN SOCIETY DURING THIS TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED WEALTH AND CATACLYSMIC POVERTY

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CLUE 2 – how does the exigence of the Gilded Age shape the presentation of Armand’s love for Desiree, and how does it lead to ironies that unfold as Desiree comes to knowledge about her situation?

Historical Markers

1848 - Seneca Falls and the birth of the American Suffrage Movement

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1879 - Jim Crow Laws (the name based on a racist black-faced caricature) institutes “separate but equal” segregation and voter suppression

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1924 - “One Drop Rule,” VA Racial Integrity Act �During slavery, nonconsensual sexual relationships necessitated social practices and legal policies to define whiteness and blackness. Free people of mixed race were considered legally white if individuals had less than one-eighth or one-quarter African ancestry (depending on the state).Many mixed-race people were absorbed into the majority culture based simply on appearance, associations and carrying out community responsibilities. This changes with the “one drop rule” to define a person as black with any blackness in their family tree.

CLUE 3 – how do the movements toward equality in suffrage and the resistance to equality in race relations after the Civil War create illusions of empowerment. leading to the fate that Desiree suffers?

The Rise of Regionalism

What is Regionalism?

• Often called “local color.”
• Focuses on characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features specific to a certain region (eg. the South)
• Coincided with Realism and sharing many of the same traits.
• Prominent from 1865-1895.

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Regionalist Writers

Why did Regionalism develop?

• Dual influence of Romanticism and Realism
• The Civil War and the building of a national identity
• An outgrowth of realism with more focus on a particular setting and its influence over characters

Local Color

The second half of the 19th c. saw America becoming increasingly self-conscious at the very time regional writers began to write about its various aspects. American wanted to know what their country looked like, and how the varied races which made up their growing population lived and talked. It was the age of the first mappings and surveyings of the West; it was the age of the in which the rails of the first transcontinental railroad had bound East and West. Twain displays local color throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) in his portrayal of characters and descriptions of cities.

Characteristics of Local Color

Setting: emphasis is frequently on nature and limitations it imposes; settings are frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting is integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself as the local characteristics of the landscape and social practices reiterate the ways of life in the place.

Characters: local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the district or region rather than with the individual: characters may become character types, sometimes quaint or stereotypical. They are marked by their adherence to the odd ways through dialect and personality traits peculiar to the particular region

Plots. It has been said that “nothing happens” in local color stories and often very little does happen. Stories may include lots of storytelling and revolve around the community and its rituals.

Themes: Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a certain degree of nostalgia for an always-past golden age. A celebration of community and acceptance in the face of adversity characterizes some women’s approach to local color. Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper who seeks something from the community.

Other signifiers to represent regional identity – the landscape including architecture, dialects and accents, colloquialisms and slang, neighborhood social practices, ways of dress, food and rituals surrounding food, beliefs and superstitions idiosyncratic to the region, family structures

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“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”

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– Mark Twain

“A True Story – Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It”

• Start with the claim – what does Twain claim about race relations and limitations of human understanding in the era of reconstruction? Then amend your claim to make it more complex and substantive as you look more closely at the elements of the rhetorical design
• How does the frame narrative shape and develop Twain’s argument?
• What is Misto C’s view of Aunt Rachel in the outside frame?
• How is that view of her amended when she takes narratorship in the inside frame? What details give her more complexity, humanity, power, etc.?
• How do details of local color advance the plot and lead to the (partial) restoration of Aunt Rachel’s family?
• How might Aunt Rachel’s dialect be an element of realism? don’t oversimplify the vernacular. Might our initial impressions of Aunt Rachel’s dialect be a mirror for Misto C’s view of her? Try to relate judgements that we make based on dialect to the paradox in “I ain’t had no trouble – and no joy”)

Charlotte

Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins grew up in poverty, her father having essentially abandoned the family. Her education was irregular and limited, but she did attend the Rhode Island School of Design for a time. In May 1884 she married Charles W. Stetson, an artist. She soon proved to be totally unsuited to the domestic routine of marriage, and after a year or so she was suffering from melancholia, which eventuated in complete nervous collapse. A California trip in 1885 was helpful, however, and in 1888 she moved with her young daughter to Pasadena. She divorced her husband in 1894, and, after his remarriage shortly thereafter to one of her close friends, she sent her daughter to live with them. The entire affair was the subject of scandalized public comment.

The Rest Cure

John

6-16

105-110

125

128

130

134

234 to end

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The Wallpaper

63-65

76-77

89 (turning point)

123

136-145

147 (woman appears)

181-187

227 ***

228 to end

In what way is John’s prescribed treatment more damaging than the illness itself?

The Landscape of the Mind

How do the exigency and purpose of Gilman’s argument drive the direction of the argument away from romantic illusions about the wild mind and toward the complications of realism, of understanding the actualities of mental illness?

‘I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!’ (from Gilman’s diary)