Naturalism in American Literature
The relationship between realism and naturalism is the subject of much critical debate in
American literature circles. Some critics (Kolb and Cady) see naturalism as an extension of
realism, but perhaps with a darker vision of the world. Others, like Donald Pizer, argue that
naturalism is much more like Romanticism than realism because it tends to evoke feeling and,
like an inverted Romanticism, emphasize the limitations of the individual—rather than
Romanticism’s elevation of the individual.
Regardless of specific definition held to, several key points about Naturalism remain
without dispute: the historical influences, the representation of the individual, and the
deterministic philosophy that undergirds writings of this period.
Naturalism was heavily influenced by three nineteenth-century writers: Charles Darwin,
Karl Marx, and Emile Zola. Charles Darwin challenged Enlightenment and Romantic ideology
which believed that the conscience is in tune with the natural moral law; Darwin’s theories, on the
other hand, emphasized biological and chemical processes. Darwin’s ideas challenged the moral
precepts upon which the world is held together, this challenge precipitated a shift from
absolutism to relativism from the 19th century to the 20th. According to Darwin’s theories, moral
systems are rationalization for our primary biological impulse, which is self-preservation.
During the Enlightenment and the Romantic Age, the highest goal of man is self-realization, but
Darwin’s ideas, carried to their logical end, find the individual irrelevant.
Karl Marx, too, emphasized the struggles of human beings, though in an economic
manner. His writings encouraged American authors to take note of the lower class, to identify
ways that people are victims of their economic circumstances. Emile Zola was a French literary
writer who applied many of the ideas of Darwin and Marx to his own literary works, and these
literary works were highly influential to writers like Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen
Crane, and Jack London with whom Marx and Darwin’s ideas resonated with their experiences
in America.
Naturalism basically applies scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to a study
of human beings, implying a philosophical position of human beings as physical objects that can
be studied in relationship to their surroundings. According to naturalistic writers, people are
products of their circumstances, economic status, society, biological heredity, with a strong
emphasis on determinism. The characters these writers choose to depict are conditioned and
controlled by environment, heredity, chance, or instinct and are frequently, but not invariably,
poor, uneducated, unsophisticated characters
In this depiction, naturalistic writers emphasize the following themes: The “brute within”
each individual, comprised of strong and often warring emotions: passions, such as lust, greed,
or the desire for dominance or pleasure; and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent
universe; nature as an antagonistic force acting on the lives of human beings; forces of fate and
chance as they affect—and afflict—individual lives; futile attempts of human beings to exercise
free will, often ironically presented, in a universe that reveals free will as an illusion. On this
Becker, Pizer, Kolb, and Cady agree: naturalistic writers depict man as a victim of forces beyond
his control.
There are four major American naturalistic literary writers: Frank Norris, Jack London,
Theodore Dreiser, and Stephen Crane. All four have similar lower-class backgrounds, and
several worked as newspaper reporters. All four challenged convention in their literary material,
including scandalous representations of Americans not following the moral code and often not
being punished specifically for that rebellion.
Frank Norris wrote novels and short stories are about poor, hardworking people
constantly struggling to get by. Their struggles are against environment, other people, and
institutions. Of the literary naturalists, he was the most committed to the method of Émile Zola,
principle practitioner of naturalism—French novelist. His major publications include:
McTeague (1899); The Octopus (1901); The Pit (1903); A Deal in Wheat, and Other Stories of
the New and Old West (1903), The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903), & Vandover and the
Brute (1914). During his lifetime, though critics recognized many readers would take offense at
Norris’s realistic depictions of violence, poverty, and sex, they also recognized that his work
(primarily his novels as his short fiction was seen as inferior to them) broke new literary ground
and praised it as such. Today, he is recognized as the author who brought naturalism to
American literature being the foremost practitioner of literary naturalism in nineteenth-century
America and the foremost literary theorist of naturalism, having written essays explaining
(defending?) his method and arguing for its superiority over the realistic writing of his day
Jack London, too, had a wealth of life experiences in his short forty years. He was
known primarily (and most successfully) for his short fiction, but London did publish novels and
non-fiction essays. His most popular stories come from his Klondike gold mining experience,
which present violent confrontations between humans and nature; Darwinism heavily influenced
his writing; most of the characters of his stories must adapt to their environment or perish.
London’s major publications include The Call of the Wild (1903); The Sea-Wolf (1904); White
Fang (1906); The Iron Heel (1907); Martin Eden (1908). During his lifetime, he was very
popular, selling so much of his work that he was one of the first American writers to make his
living solely through his publications. His novels continue to be popular, primarily as children’s
literature (White Fang and Call of the Wild), but “To Build a Fire” is frequently anthologized;
some of his social fiction has been recently re-evaluated as worthy of critical attention. In
American literature, he is important based on his output alone – published over twenty books,
ranging from short fiction to essays to drama to children’s literature to social critique. And most
important, though, as practitioner of literary naturalism.
Theodore Dreiser’s journalism work influenced both his writing style and content –
focused on details, environment, description. His family life also influenced his work; Sister
Carrie and Jennie Gearhart both based on real-life experiences of his sister. In these works, he
presents unromaticized view of life and of people; deterministic philosophy, survival of the
fittest. Dreiser’s major publications include Sister Carrie (1900); Jennie Gerhardt (1911); An
American Tragedy (1925). During his lifetime, Dreiser constantly fought censorship or other
challenges to his material, most memorably with Sister Carrie and Doubleday, but most notably
with The Genius and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice; because of its
publication challenges, Sister Carrie was upheld as an emblem of freedom of speech . Today, he
is the writer critics love to hate but can’t ignore; because of his provocative material and its
making way for the writings of later novelists and because of his works’ exemplification of
literary naturalism, Dreiser must continue to be taken seriously, but most critics agree that his
style is ponderous and quite often overblown. His fiction examines the American Dream,
particularly the illusory nature of the dream, the lengths to which people who go to attain it, and
the negative consequences that result from this search (either to the seeker or those around
him/her). Additionally, Dreiser pushed the boundaries of acceptable literary material, making
way for many later writers to continue to test those boundaries.
Stephen Crane Started writing poetry and short fiction in his teens and moved to the
Bowery area of New York in his early 20s, studying it intently with goal of writing about its
inhabitants. Crane wrote about previously unmentionable characters and places – beggars,
prostitutes, drunkards. His work emphasizes determined nature of mankind’s life; his characters
have no control over the world around them. His major publications include Maggie: A Girl of
the Streets (1893); The Red Badge of Courage (1895); numerous short fiction collections. The
Red Badge of Courage established Crane as a major novelist; after the success of that novel, a
publisher reissued Maggie (a book which, because of its provocative content, he had been
previously unable to get picked up and had published at his personal expense); though his
writing brought him fame, it never brought him wealth. Important to the study of naturalism in
American literature, Crane’s work is of particular interest because his writing differs drastically
from the almost “photographic-like” qualities of other realistic and naturalistic writers; critics
have been concerned with his emphasis on perception and the individual’s participation in the
creation of his/her “reality.”
Defining and Identifying Realism and Naturalism in American
Literature
“Realism and naturalism are closely related but disputed terms in American literary
history, used interchangeably and also as opposites. Is naturalism merely realism with an
emphasis on pessimistic determinism? Or is naturalism something separate from realism and at
odds with it, an idealistic form of romance? As cultural conditions changed rapidly in mid-
nineteenth-century America, artists of all types turned to realist styles to address such new
concerns as the rise of the middle class and the struggles of the working class” (NAAL).
Literary realism was the dominant style of the late nineteenth-century, but “realism”
meant different things to different writers. William Dean Howells, for example, says that literary
realism “is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.” Henry James
and Edith Wharton, on the other hand, want to probe the interior mental states of their characters:
for James and Wharton, realism is all about accurately depicting the emotional and moral
dilemmas of upper-class characters.
Unlike James and Wharton, Twain was more interested in working-class, rural characters
than he was the urban elite. He also located realism in the language patterns of his characters,
drawing upon a long tradition of vernacular storytelling that attempted to recreate the speech
patterns of everyday people. Twain’s style of realism is often characterized as “regional” or
“local color” (NAAL 13–15).
As American literature moves from James and Howells through Norris and Dreiser, the
big rifts in realism and naturalism will come clear: Though naturalism is very often summarized
as an offshoot of realism, there are differences so great as to make these movements seem
opposite to one another rather than kin. Realist novels were set in believable, everyday locales;
naturalist novels had extreme settings. Realistic characters were usually middle class; naturalistic
ones lower class. Realist plots worked toward the restoration of order; in naturalist novels, the
characters confront major crises and are destroyed by them. A realist might suggest that good
prevails, but naturalist characters are doomed by fate.
“Naturalism can be thought of as a version of realism, or as an alternative to it. Literary
naturalists, unlike the realists for whom human beings defined themselves within recognizable
settings, wrote about human life as it was shaped by forces beyond human control. For them,
their view was truly realistic, while Howellsian realism was a form of prettifying. Naturalism
introduces characters from the fringes and depths of society, far from the middle class, whose
lives really do spin out of control; their fates are seen to be the outcome of degenerate heredity, a
sordid environment, and the bad luck that can often seem to control the lives of people without
money or influence” (NAAL 10). Naturalism is characterized by the following: characters from
the fringes of society; human actions shaped by forces beyond our control (biology, environment,
and chance); a world that is more random than predictable; and no “happy endings” for
characters.
We can see these differences articulated in the literary theory written by major realistic
and naturalist writers. William Dean Howells in Novel-Writing and Novel Reading argues that
one’s personal experiences are the fodder for creative writing: “It is a well ascertained fact
concerning the imagination that it can work only with the stuff of experience. It can absolutely
create nothing; it can only compose . . . Once for all, then, obedience to this law is the creed of
the realist, and rebellion is the creed of the romanticist.”
In The Art of Fiction, James seems to agree with Howells, that experience is the stuff of
fiction, yet his definition of experience differs: “[Y]ou will not write a good novel unless you
possess the sense of reality.” “Experience . . . is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderweb
of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every
airborne particle in its tissue.” James, like Howells, says that reality is a precondition for a good
novel (“you will not write a good novel unless you possess the sense of reality,” he writes in
“The Art of Fiction”). But unlike Howells, who asserts a reality that is referential and shared,
James places greater emphasis on the inner reality, on “life” as mediated through the mind. He
insists on “the power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to
judge the whole piece by the pattern” and also contends that “Experience is never limited, and it
is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderweb of the finest silken
threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every airborne particle in its
tissue.” The phrase “chamber of consciousness” is particularly evocative here.
Frank Norris’s argument in “Zola as Romantic Writer” illustrates the divide between
realistic fiction and naturalistic: “Terrible things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic
tale. They must be twisted from the ordinary, wrenched out from the quiet, uneventful found of
every-day life, and flung into the throes of a vast and terrible drama that works itself out in
unleashed passions, in blood, and in sudden death . . . It is all romantic, at times unmistakably
so.”
Earlier in his essays Norris says that making a novel interesting “is after all the main
point,” suggesting that he views naturalistic and/or romantic novels as more interesting than the
realistic ones of Howells and James, which are concerned with “the smaller details of every-day
life, things that are likely to happen between lunch and supper, small passions, restricted
emotions, dramas of the reception-room, tragedies of an afternoon call, crises involving cups of
tea.”
Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,--
An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!
An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press,
An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:--
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you don't watch out!
We see these differences between realism and naturalism acted out in these poems by
James Whitcomb Riley and Stephen Crane, realistic and naturalistic writer respectively.
Little Orphant Annie ~ James Whitcomb Riley 1885
Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other childern, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
Ef you don't watch out!
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you don't watch out!
An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,
She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about!
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
Ef you don't watch 0ut!
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Stephen Crane ~ 1899
In Riley’s poem, notice that he focused on creating a character through dialect,
emphasizing the exterior, the physical—humorously depicting a moral lesson that the “goblins
will getcha” if you don’t behave well. In Crane’s poem, however, the tone is much more bleak,
the individual depicted is alone, isolated, at the mercy of the uncaring universe.
