Naturalism

Realism partly shifted to naturalism when influenced by Charles Darwin´s survival of the fittest and literary by Emile Zola. Naturalism reflects the social state of America, cities growing very fast, producing new working class trapped in slums and ghetto. It is based on determination, either biological = characters behave more like animals relying on instincts; or social = a person is reduced to a machine as a victim to society).

In realism characters have free will and can decide, in naturalism not since it claims man in governed by instincts or environment so characters cannot make a choice that would change anything and whatever they do end up bad which destroys the American dream. Naturalism portrays lower class, evil characters, big cities, working and unemployed class, the uneducated, presents unpleasant topics, tragic view of society and provides no happy endings and no more idyllic view of nature.

FRANK NORRIS brought naturalism to America after he rejected Howell’s sentimental realism. His techniques for description seem closer to such romantic writers as Hawthorne but in his case man is governed by instinct = he introduced psychological naturalism that searches in the depth of human heart and soul.

McTeague: A Story of San Francisco is about a dentist from California marries a greedy woman, becomes alcoholic and murders her but none of it is his fault – guilt is in the nature, a human is shown as a victim of his own passions and instincts. Characters are unable to control their own lives and the whole world is a battlefield of uncontrollable forces. He also introduced social naturalism in The Octopus: A Story of California where man is reduced to machine as a victim of society, based on a real story of farmers whose land was stolen by railway companies.

STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900) was a realist as well as a naturalist and a poet, publishing poetry collection War is Kind. He died very young of tuberculosis.

He became famous with his realistic war novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895) which was the first novel dealing with the Civil War. However, Crane himself was too young to fight in it and he constructed battle scenes based on American football and even war veterans admitted it was pretty convincing. It tells the story of Henry Fleming, a young man who volunteers to join the Union army, expecting to become a war hero. Yet, after a long winter in a war camp, he loses his enthusiasm. He starts questioning his courage and becomes afraid. Even though he manages to stay during the first battle, the second he cannot stand. After many confrontations he is hit on the head and then brought back to his regiment, wounded. When he recovers, he starts fighting with animalistic frenzy and is praised by his commanders.

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) is a naturalistic novella that did not gain much acclaim during his lifetime but attracted critics. The takes place in New York in the era of industrialization the late 19^th century. The story opens with Jimmie, at this point a young boy, trying to fight a gang of boys. He is saved by his father, and comes home to his sister Maggie, his toddling brother Tommie, his brutal and drunken father and mother Mary. The parents terrify the children until they are shuddering in the corner. Years pass, the father and Tommie die (described as put into a small insignificant coffin), and Jimmie hardens into a cynical youth. He gets a job as a driver, having no regard for anyone and even gets some women pregnant. Maggie grew up surprisingly pretty and begins to work in a shirt factory. Maggie begins to date Jimmie's friend Pete, who has a job as a bartender and seems a very fine fellow, convinced that he will help her escape the life she leads.

He takes her to the theatre and the museum and Maggie adores him. Maggie begins to be interested in nice clothes and realizes her youth is valuable. Maggie enjoys theatre and the glamour of upper-class. She enjoys social plays where the poor win over the rich for once and it makes her think (that is why Puritans banned theatre = not to give people different ideas), though upper-class does not like the play. But Pete takes her there and plays everything just to get what he wants from her. One night mother kicks Maggie out, saying "Goin to deh devil" since she was sleeping with Pete before marriage. Mary and Jimmie are angry that the whole tenement talks about wicked Maggie. Jimmy loves his sister but he cannot admit it since he would lose his reputation. Nevertheless, Maggie is not a positive character as she is envious and has a dependant dog-attitude for Pete – does everything he wants just to please him and forgets herself.

Jimmie goes to Pete's bar and picks a fight with him (even though he himself has ruined other boys' sisters). Jimmie and Mary decide to join them in badmouthing her instead of defending her. Later, Nellie, a "woman of brilliance and audacity" convinces Pete to leave Maggie, whom she calls "a little pale thing with no spirit." Nellie looks down on Maggie and speaks formal language, whereas everybody else (even Pete whom Maggie sees as higher class) speak dialect of lower class Manhattan. Characters use a lot of repetition (gee, see), making their speech long but in fact they say nothing sensible at all. Pete is suddenly ashamed he dated such an ordinary girl as Maggie.

Abandoned, Maggie tries to return home but she is rejected by her mother. In a later scene, a prostitute, implied to be Maggie, wanders the streets, moving into bade neighbourhoods until, reaching the river, she is followed by a grotesque and shabby man. The next scene shows Pete drinking in a saloon with six fashionable women. He passes out, whereupon one, possibly Nellie, takes his money. In the final chapter, Jimmie tells his mother that Maggie is dead. The mother exclaims, ironically, as the neighbours comfort her, "I'll forgive her!" Was Maggie responsible for how she ended up? There were circumstances but she was still responsible. However, no one was accepting responsibility in this story.

THEODORE DREISER was from a family of German immigrants and had first-hand knowledge of the lower classes. He was interested in the conflicting worlds of the rich and the poor and in economic theories. His Sister Carrie is similar to Maggie but Carrie is more independent, leaves to big town and willingly became prostitute to get money from men to be richer. American Tragedy is very ironic. A businessman has a nice girlfriend but no money. He gets a marriage offer from a rich woman but the poor girl is pregnant so he takes to for a ride and is thinking of drowning her which he does not do but she actually falls and dies. However, he is still accused of murder and sentenced to death on electric chair.

  

JACK LONDON (1876 – 1916) became famous for his stories of adventure at Yukon during the Gold Rush. His characters often face wild nature as he depicts evolutionary struggle in the wilderness, his life philosophy seems to be based on the survival of the fittest. For him the nature was not an enemy but indifferent so if you knew it you could survive. He depicted thinking process of animals (naturalism combined with modernism) in The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906). The Sea Wolf is full of pessimism and contradictions, The Iron Heel is an apocalyptic novel about totalitarian future of the USA, Martin Eden is an autobiographical novel.

The Star Rover a novel or reincarnation and freedom of one’s mind. The story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university agronomy professor spending life imprisonment for an apparent murder of his colleague over woman’s love. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body. Jack London's descriptions of it were based on interviews with a former convict named Ed Morrell, which is also the name of a character in the novel. Another prisoner, Cecil Winwood, convinces other convicts to join him in a jailbreak. However, the guards capture everyone and throw them into solitary confinement because they knew about the jailbreak ahead of time - Winwood told them in hopes of reducing his sentence. Winwood then tells the warden that a supply of dynamite to be used in the jailbreak is hidden somewhere in the prison, and that only Standing knows the location. Standing finds himself on the receiving end of torture by the guardsbut he cannot unveil the location of the dynamite since he simply does not know.

Standing discovers how to withstand the torture by entering a kind of trance state in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives. At one time, he is a nobleman in medieval France. Another time, he spends years shipwrecked on an outcropping of rock barely one-half mile square in the middle of the ocean. Then he is an Englishman living during 1600s in Korea and for a time, he is a trusted friend of the Emperor. When the local political winds change, he and his dignified Korean wife are made outcasts by the new Emperor. Back in the real world, during one of his periodic beatings by the guards, Standing, being wasted away to a bag of bones, is able to defend himself just enough to cause one of the guards to have a nosebleed. For this, he is sentenced to death by hanging. However, Standing does not feel any remorse since he knows that his mind is free and will be born again in a new body.

UPTON SINCLAIR belongs to literary group Muckrakers (muck rakers = kydači hnoje), writers and journalists who were exposing corruption and abuse of power, concentrating on negative side of American life. They gained fame through their investigative articles that exposed wrongdoing. Muckraker fiction is characteristic of a detail journalistic style.

Jungle is a story of immigrant family who come with dream of better life but suffered under terrible conditions in Chicago meat-producing industry. Even president Roosevelt was shocked, the novel caught his attention and led to a reform of food industry. Sinclair believed that the society can be changed and his novels are indeed like propaganda. World´s End is series of eleven novels that cover American and European history.

ELLEN GLASGOW is mainly contrasting struggle between Puritan generations with younger ones, religious and racial conflict, Romantic Comedians. However, it is her Barren Ground that is naturalistic. It is about a girl who should have helped to rebuild her father's farm but she falls in love. Before the wedding, her future husband is forced to marry his former fiancée. Bitter and pregnant, the protagonist leaves and miscarries in a street accident. She returns to the farm, a barren ground, and creates a prosperous dairy farm. Her husband-to-be returns, penniless and addicted to alcohol, and soon dies.

Authors who were realists and partly also naturalists:

Richard Wright - part of the Harlem Renaissance, Native Son, Black Boy

John Steinbeck - especially in The Grapes of Wrath

Edith Wharton - only in The House of Mirth