Realism

American realism started in the 19^th century and continued to the 20^th century, influenced by European realism represented by Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina), Honoré de Balzac and Gustav Flaubert (Madame Bovary). Among the most influential magazines was Atlantic Monthly. This was a period Mark Twain called the Gilded Age.

Realism was a reaction against Romanticism and Transcendentalism. It was not based on the experience that transcends human experience; rather it stresses the common and ordinary everyday life. Individuals possess free will and if they are not idealizing life and society, they can decide rightly. Realists concentrate on common characters living ordinary lives and having similar experience as the reader - that is why realism reached wide audience. In addition, the rise of magazines that were easily available and cheap made the literature reach the widest readership because novels traditionally served the interests and aspiration of middle-class.

Local colour realism used local setting and colloquial language to describe regional specifics. Characters as figures representing the area, rather than individuals and depicts specific manners, customs, history and dialects of a particular place. Realists tended to be sentimental and often used flowery language in order to prove that they can write as elegantly as the British writers. On the other hand, regionalism was more general without historical connotations and puts more stress on psychological features that shape the life and behaviour.

Psychological realism aimed to realistically depict the inner workings of the mind, analyses thoughts and feeling of an individual. Social realism depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, showing pictures of life’s struggles and often depicting working class as heroic.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS was actually a founder of American realism (not Mark Twain!) but his work My Mark Twain tells the story of his close friendship with the writer whose fame would outlast and surpass his own. His opus The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) is about the rise of a businessman to a millionaire and his unsuccessful attempt to join higher society controlled by families with inherited positions and power. He has to chose between moral decision or losing his money and he refuses to cheat other people. Howells mainly wrote sentimental realism that is nostalgic about past, usually with happy endings that want to please the readership.

CHARLES CHESTNUTT (1858-1932) was the most successful mixed race Afro-American fiction writer of his time since before him black writers could not reach wider audiences. He was even praised by Twain and James and wrote in Afro-American dialects. He published collections of short stories The Conjure Woman.

BRET HARTE is called "the writer of the West" and laid the foundation of Western. He introduced totally protagonists to literature outlaws, prostitutes, gamblers whom he is describing as innocent warm-hearted people as in his famous collection Outcasts of the Poker Flat.

MARK TWAIN (1835-1910), originally Samuel Clemens, adopted his pen name while he was a reporter and used the literary persona to explore social and political issues that arose during the post–Civil War period. He began his career as a writer while still a typesetter for his brother’s newspaper but he left after his first book, a travel book The Innocents Abroad, became a national success. He devoted the rest of his life to writing across genres.

He published eighteen books including Roughing It, The Gilded Age in which he gave the nickname to the whole post-Civil War period, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi - a memoir of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is about a Yankee engineer who is accidentally transported back in him to the court of King Arthur where he fools the inhabitants into thinking he is a magician for the use of modern technology. He attempt to modernise the past but he is unable to prevent Arthur's death.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  (1884) begun as the sequel to Tom Sawyer and later became to be recognised as the greatest American novel. Huck and Tom engage in various kinds of play, most of which is dictated by Tom’s love of the romance. The difference is the point of view from which the story is told - instead of the omniscient narrator the new tale is told by Huck himself in a first-person.

Huck's father is a violent drunkard but Huck is fortunately adopted into a good family. When his father threatens to kill him, Huck pretends his own death and he meets slave Jim whose master wants to sell him to the harsher condition of deep South. Huck and Jim are sailing on raft on Mississippi, experience many adventures and discover that Jim is already free. Huck is not planning to be civilised and is plotting his escape. Nowadays it is not seen as a children's book but a serious novel dealing with slavery, racism, growing up and living in the American South.

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)

He was a psychological realist as well as a pre-modernist. He coined the term point of view = narrative situations of the 1^st person narrative and the 3^rd person narrative. He was born into a wealthy family, Emerson was his father’s close friend. As a child his family travelled extensively in Europe, where his father hired private tutors. At the age of twenty-one young James abandoned formal study in science and law, deciding instead to become a professional writer. He became a British citizen as protest to reluctance of the USA to enter WW1. He died in a hospital bed, still writing in the middle of a sentence.

Daisy Miller is about an innocence girl who does not know she should not walk in Rome without an escort since there are different social manners from America. Her fresh American approach is seen as immoral in Catholic Italy and she does not realise she should behave accordingly in different cultural environment.

Portrait of a Lady is similar, presents image of consciousness of young American woman who does not understand the world around her. What Maisie Knew is a ghost story about a little girl whose parents divorced. She very soon understands the immorality of her parents and starts to manipulate them, she is a little monster.

In The Beast in the Jungle John Marcher is reacquainted with May Bartram, a woman he knew ten years earlier, who remembers his odd secret: Marcher believes that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a beast in the jungle. May decides to buy a house in London with the money she inherited from a great aunt, and to spend her days with Marcher, curiously awaiting what fate has in store for him. Marcher is a hopeless egoist, who believes that he is precluded from marrying so that he does not subject his wife to his spectacular fate.

He takes May to the theatre and invites her to an occasional dinner, but does not allow her to get close to him. She loves him but does not believe he is some chosen one but does make him feel he´s extraordinary. She is not helpless victim, she knows what she is doing - everybody in love wants to know more about beloved one even though he/she does not like it. If they married that would make a nice cover of their meetings for society, in addition she´s over thirty = it was no accepted to see a man in that time without being married couple. And she´s an orphan – another good reason to get married. As he sits idly by and allows the best years of his life to pass, he takes May down as well, until he learns at her grave that the great misfortune of his life was to throw it away, and to ignore the love of a good woman.

For Marcher the beast is his fate – whether glorious of catastrophic – it would change his life completely which is quite scary but making him feel extraordinary but also binds him to waiting. For May it could mean finally marriage with Marcher – that would also greatly change her life. For readers the beast maybe means the final revelation that applies universally - you will waste your life by only idly waiting for your fate to come. The beast appears in May´s death which is the biggest change that terminates one´s life – like a real beast that jumps out of jungle – not expected, sudden attack of death. Also when Marcher realizes he wasted his life – beast jumps out as realization to his mind. Maybe his glorious fate was to marry May and to be happy but he only waited passively so his fate passed him.

The Real Thing is about how fiction is sometimes more fit to represent reality than reality itself as a painter uses non-existent things to depict reality. It depicts a painter who paints various character types for covers of novels and he has three models - The Monarchs pair and Miss Churm. The Monarch are aristocrats but totally but they still perfectly portray their high class. While Miss Churm, the ordinary Cockney girl, can play any character, Mrs Monarch is too stiff and she refuses to play anything but aristocracy. When Mrs Monarch refuses to play the Russian princess, Miss Churm takes the role and plays it perfectly. The painter wants to fire the Monarchs for his own economic survival, claiming "I can't be ruined for you" but because they made the modelling their reason for existence, in the end they take up the role of servants so the roles of the Monarchs and Miss Churm swap.

The painter could not see anything besides the real thing in the Monarchs. Being stuck with the "real thing," the realistic surface of the Monarchs, he could not get into characters he wanted to represent since they had no artistic value as the real thing. The tragedy is that the Monarchs could not find nothing as to do. As poor aristocrats, they were totally useless, they had only their noble origin, behaviour, accent and the title. The painter, firstly enthusiastic about their new "real" models, soon does not know what to do with these stiff people but he is too kind-hearted to just fire them. He found out that the real thing cannot describe with the real thing itself since pure realistic description of an object is NOT art.

AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914) fought in the Civil War for the Union and was extremely critical of war, especially the way soldiers were dying at the battle field. He published a collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians where one of stories A Horseman in the Sky describes a young soldier during battle who kills an enemy soldier and then realizes it was his father. Bierce presented a stream of consciousness with flashbacks, he is a psychological realist. He was publishing an anti-slavery magazine and also wrote horrors and supernatural stories. His Devil’s Dictionary ironically defines words like “art = no definition in America.”

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is set during the  Civil War and features a gentlemanly planter Payton standing on a railroad bridge. Military men are present because the man is to be hanged. As he is waiting, he thinks of his wife and children. Then he is distracted by a tremendous noise. He cannot identify this noise, other than that it sounds like the clanging of a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil. It is revealed that this noise is the ticking of his watch. His thoughts stray back to his wife and children and the soldiers drop him down. The story flashes back: Peyton lives in the South and is a Confederate supporter. One day, a gray-clad soldier tells him that Union soldiers have been Owl Creek Bridge. Payton asks if it is possible to sabotage the bridge but it is revealed that he is a Union scout who has lured him into a trap. When he is hanged, the rope breaks and Payton falls into the water. While underwater, his hands, which now have a life of their own, are untying the rope from around his neck.

Once he finally reaches the surface, he realizes his senses are superhuman. Realizing that the men are shooting at him, he escapes and makes it to dry land. He travels through an uninhabited and seemingly-unending forest. During his journey through the day and night, he is fatigued, footsore and famished. He begins experiencing strange physiological events, hearing unusual noises from the wood. He wakes to see his perfectly preserved home, with his beautiful wife outside. As he runs forward to reach her, he suddenly feels a searing pain in his neck and everything goes black. It is revealed that he never escaped at all; he it during the time between falling through the bridge and the noose finally breaking his neck. The death is depicted as: "Death is a dignitary WHO when HE comes announced is to be received with formal manifestation of respect, even by those most familiar with him." Payton believed he was doing the right thing for the South. The irony of the death sentence of hanging and tossing into the river is that when suffocating because of the noose, the water cannot enter lungs so the executed person will not drown even though his body descends at the bottom of the river.

SINCLAIR LEWIS (1885- 1951) won the Nobel Prize but is extremely boring. He always describes boredom and hypocrisy of small towns but also defending feminism. The Job is about a young lady living in small town that works for the man she loves. Main Street depicts a Young girl from larger city marries a small town doctor and is willing to move to him but is a bit too liberal for such place, even wants to change their habits but do not succeed. Frustrated she leaves her husband, returns to the big city but eventually realised she really loves him and goes back to the village.

Babbitt is his most critical work, Babbitt is an average guy who goes to office every day, is married to a women he does not love, is ambitious and social standing is everything for him. The only time he feels better is when he can talk to his only friend but when friend gets arrested, Babbitt thinks about changing everything. He does not manage but at least says his son to follow his way in life.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON (1876-1941) was one of the best short story writers. His fiction is almost poetic, close to modernists. He was a part of the movement called Revolt from the Village. Life in villages was perceived as positive and innocent but Anderson described it as a normal place full of gossip, hypocrisy and violence. His collection of stories Winesburg, Ohio is set in a little town whose characters are connected, making it a short story sequence. A young journalist George Willard, the listener and recorder of other people´s stories, describes inhabitants as grotesque people outside the society, isolated, lonely, and misunderstood. The most important is the moment where the reader can actually see the character which reminds of James Joyce´s sudden revelation = epiphany. Willard eventually leaves Winesburg for the city.

In one story called Paper Pills, the doctor writes his ideas on paper to get rid of them from his head and gives them into his pockets. Knuckles of his hands are unusually big and he blames them for not having a wife, therefore, he hides them into pockets as birds into cage. He finally finds a girl but she falls ill. He reads her the papers and she dies soon.

JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968) was a famous latter local colour realist who grew up in California where his novels are set. He was not popular in America since he was a Vietnam War correspondent and had racist comments so now he not politically correct.

 Of Mice and Men (1937), adapted also the film, deals with economic crisis in California. It was inspired by the poem To a Mouse by Robert Burns and the main idea is that the best planned out plans of mice and men often go wrong. The novel represents the American dream which goes wrong for the protagonists. Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered naturalistic. East of Eden (1952) is a family chronicle.

  

The beginning of feminist writing

The end of Civil War was also connected with the rise of feminism. Many women had to take up various jobs during the war and after it was over, actively entered the booming economy. They mainly worked as telephone operators, clerks or assistants – or started to write. Their writing depicts the conflict between the Victorian angel of the house and ambitious independent woman and shows  incomparability of marriage and maternity with independence.

WILLA CATHER dealt with European immigrants in the mid-west region. My Antonia is an optimistic picture of Czech immigrants as hard working responsible devoted new Americans, the woman had eleven children and lived happily on the farm. Neighbour Rosicky is again about Czech immigrants.

KATE CHOPIN (1850-1904) was an Irish-Catholic immigrant. After her husband died, Chopin started to publish her stories to support her children. She often dealt with the Creole culture in Louisiana that established her reputation as a local colour realist. Chopin was mainly interested in women’s roles and needs. She often wrote stories that were considered controversial or inappropriate.

Odalie Misses Mass is a typical realism of South, Louisiana countryside, with community of brown Creoles who thinks they are better than Afro-Americans because they are from Spain of Portuguese. Her major works included two short story collections, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie.

She openly described unhappy marriage, adultery or racism and her very strong novel The Awakening which tells a story of Edna who starts to question and re-evaluate her life during summer vacation on Grand Isle. Her husband often travels to New Orleans on business and Edna befriends Robert, a son of the resort owner. He teaches her to swim and the experience liberates her. In love with Robert, she decides to leave and starts a new free, independent life. When she finds out that Robert does want to spend his life with her, she goes to the Mexico Gulf and swims until she drowns. It was her only novel and as it was not accepted by the public, she stopped writing and died soon after.

Desiree's Baby is a short story set in Creole Louisiana. Armand is a wealthy slave owner and he is happy with his wife Desiree who comes from poor background but Armand does not care because she is white. After their baby is born and it looks black, Armand starts to be very concerned about Desiree's origin. Desiree commits suicide together with her baby as she does not want to shame her mother who is scared by the child and refuses to touch it. However, it is revealed that it was Armand's mother who was black so Armand himself is partly black, even though he was lucky enough to be born with white skin. Armand revelas the reason why he never knew his mother who died mysteriously in Paris. He thought it was because whe loved France but it was because she was black and did not want to return. The story reveals that it is always woman who is to blame for the colour of the skin of her baby, nobody suspects the husband for being partly black.

The Story of an Hour describes a series of emotions of the female protagonists after hearing her husband died in a railroad accident. As she suffers from heart problems, her sister attempts to inform her gently about it. The protagonists locks herself in the room to mourn her husband but she beings to feel an unexpected exhilaration. "Free! Body and soul free!" In the end her husband returns home, he did not die and that is the shock that kills her. She was imagining her new independence and future without husband who possessed her and shut her in the room like some fragile thing and she was not allowed to do anything.

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) was a relative of Stowe. Her father left the family when she was very young, mother never recovered from it and decided on special bringing up and never shown any affection so that they would not be disappointed in their relationships. Gilman was married to an artist but she was not sure she could be a housewife and a working woman at once. After she gave birth, she suffered a mental breakdown and was treated by a famous neurologist who practiced rest-cure. She almost went insane with the rest as she needed to occupy her mind and to express herself in writing. She committed suicide when she found out about her breast cancer to avoid long painful dying.

To persuade the doctor to change the cure she wrote her most famous short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892). Then she recovered and become the most influential feminist and editor. The story could not be published for a long time, it was refused by editors who feared it would drive readers mad.

Her first non-fiction book was a very import feminist manifesto Women and Economics in which Gilman stated her belief that women dependency on men's money is not good for the society. Herland is an utopian novel that describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via asexual reproduction. The result is an ideal social order free of conflicts. Woman of Herland are loving mother but they are strong and independent.

In The Yellow Wallpaper the readers learns nothing about the female protagonists and she does not give fixed opinion on anything. When they arrive in the country house for her rest-cure therapy, it is so boring she imagines the house to be haunted and tells the fantasy history of every room. Her husband is a psychiatrist and prescribes her absolutist rest without any mental strain. Her nervousness appeared after their child was born but we do not learn anything about the baby as the protagonists calls the baby "it" to disconnect any relationship. She is very imaginative but her husband forbids these "fancies" which causes another conflict within her. She is dependent on her husband and says what her husband thinks about something all the time and during the story she starts to be paranoid even about her own family. Her husband denies her madness and claims she is only nervous and needs rest. Maybe their "holiday" was a way to get her away from his acquaintances who would ridicule him for being unable to cure his own wife.

In her bedroom the only thing worth looking at is an old yellow wallpaper so she has no other way than to focus on it since these patients are usually obsessed with something. She sees only horrible things in the wallpaper's pattern like a woman crawling behind her which shows distorted reflection of herself and suppressed violence. The imaginary woman from the wallpaper image creeps out of wall to the garden but in fact it is the protagonists who does the creeping and just does not want to admit it. However, in fact, it is her husband who drives her mad and she finally loses it at the very last day of their stay. As the finally gets totally mad, she finds her freedom, starts to creep consciously and feels that it was her who left the wallpaper and even steps over her husband who fainted upon discovering her creeping. She found freedom in her madness and was freed from her husband's influence.

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937) is best known for her detailed portraits of class conflict and complicated relationships between men and women. Her best known short story Roman Fever depicts the travels of wealthy Americans tourists in Europe, and also the power games of individual female characters fighting one another for better social position.

Unlike her contemporaries, Wharton’s novels dealt almost exclusively with the concerns of the upper society. Though she herself descended from enormous wealth, Wharton was able to step outside her own experience and take an objective view of privilege and class. Her agenda was to show the unforgiving nature of life at the top and her characters often fall from there. She was also a naturalism, especially in her novel The House of Mirth.

The Age of Innocence (1920) depicts a love triangle of Ethan, his wife Zenobia and her young cousin Mattie. Ethan married Zeena but only after marriage does he realize that his wife is often sick and dependent. To make her life easier, Zeena’s cousin comes for help. Mattie is the opposite of Zenobia and Ethan soon falls in love with her. When Zeena finds out, she sends Mattie away. Ethan and Mattie are desperate and decide to commit suicide together. Unfortunately, both survive as disabled and Zeena becomes their caretaker.  She won Pulitzer Prize for this piece.