Literary Spin

Question: Explain the reasoning behind Realism and Naturalism, and discuss the major players in this literary movement. Be sure to comment with your own thoughts about the philosophy behind this literary movement.

Answer: “Realism and Naturalism are both responses to Romanticism but are not really comparable to it in scope or influence.” Realism and Naturalism both involve aspects of everyday life in order to help the reader relate to the story. In realism, “readers could recognize a slightly altered version of the world they themselves inhabited as they moved from story to story.” The realist novels were based on our own world and included recognizably familiar types of characters that do the sorts of things that ordinary people do every day. Naturalism is mainly characterized with a pessimistic view on humanity, usually using larger groups to symbolize humanity and individuals to illustrate different aspects of society while achieving the same sort of closeness to everyday life that realism does.

Many individuals were major players in developing both Realism and Naturalism. Jean-Baptise-Siméon Chardin and Gustave Courbet were realist painters. In literature, the novelist Honoré de Balzac is called “the grandfather of Realism.” His novels attempted to show a picture of all aspects of France in the time he lived, whether it was the poorest thief or the highest political leader. Gustave Flaubert was a realist novelist who took two real-life women and attempted to write a fictional piece about them. He wanted to “turn journalism into art while avoiding the romantic clichés he associated with his heroine’s fevered imagination.” As a Naturalist himself, Emile Zola coined the term Naturalism. He created the new “scientific novel” by placing characters with “known inherited characteristics into a carefully defined environment and observing the resulting behavior.” He used many different and new techniques to add to the Naturalist effect.

This literary movement involved many people and new ideas in order to achieve a certain effect. The authors of this movement were able to keep readers interested by making them seemingly ordinary characters. They didn’t have any special powers which made each character like a real person. The ability to make a person relate to real events by adding a known characteristic was a huge step in history. In Animal Farm, I remember reading about a mass, representing society. This seems like it would be Naturalism. East of Eden is more of a Realist work. The characters all have characteristics that anyone could find in everyday life. By relating to different types of people, there was most likely a much more diverse and abundant mass of readers.