Essay Two
Emiy.B1
lecture_3.docxLecture 3
Realism, Naturalism, and the Short Story
Introduction
Many readers see similarities between Melville's Bartleby and Gogol's clerk in "The Overcoat," and these two stories typify many of the traits we have come to associate with realism. As literary Romanticism began to give way to more realistic traits in writing, a group of French and European writers definitively overturned literary conventions and heralded a new way of writing fiction. Literary realism continued to flourish and dominate the literary scene in Europe and North America well into the 20th century. As writers began to experiment with this new type of fiction, they felt free from the constraints of traditional literary structures and began to incorporate other literary techniques such as impressionism, naturalism, and regionalism into their short stories. Often minimizing the very real biases they brought with them to their works, they enthusiastically embraced realism as a more objective way to convey the truth of human life through fiction.
Nineteenth Century Realism
Before and during the early 19th century, the short story form was generally considered to be formulaic and simplistic. Writers merely followed a pattern in which the plot rose dramatically to a crisis and then quickly resolved itself. Enlightenment and even Romantic writers often employed stock or flat characters, or presented characters who allegorically stood for character traits or who were extraordinary in some way. A literary movement developed in France in the mid-19th century that had writers championing the ordinary person as a fitting subject for literature. In 1857, the French novelist, Champfleury, wrote a description of the goals of this new movement, which he called "Le Realisme" (Drabble, 1996, p. 824). His title produced the term realism, which has been associated with these writers and the many British, European, and American writers who were influenced by them.
Literary works of realism are classified as such when they share most of the following characteristics:
They present the difficulties and daily experiences of the ordinary man or woman.
Their authors are more concerned with characterization than with other elements of fiction, as the human individual is their primary concern.
They are set in local, specific, and highly-detailed settings.
Their writers "stress 'sincerity' as opposed to the 'liberty' proclaimed by the romantics" (Drabble, 1996, p. 824).
Their authors view fiction writing almost as a form of journalistic documentation, in which they can convey a slice of life or snapshot of ordinary people and events accurately and as objectively as possible.
They contain accurate description and dialogue, including the use of local accents and speech patterns faithfully reproduced.
They explore all aspects of the common person's life, including situations and events that are sordid, unbecoming, or trivial.
They fully explore the deep psychological choices, ethical dilemmas, and internal feelings of their characters.
The French writers Honoré de Balzac and Guy de Maupassant were enormously influential on other masters of realism, including Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry James. Maupassant famously described the writer's goal as "not to entertain or to move us, but to make us think and to make us understand the deep and hidden meaning of events" through presenting "the spectacle of life . . . reproduce[d] . . . with a scrupulous accuracy" (Maupassant, in Charters, 2007, p. 887). This painstakingly accurate reproduction of reality is a common characteristic of realist literature.
It is important to realize; however, that the realists' emphasis on total objectivity and complete accuracy of representation was not entirely possible, or even desirable, for "all art must select and represent; it cannot be and has never been a simple transcript of reality" (Lawall, 1999, p. 839). Though realism added possible subjects fitting for art, it also excluded the fantastic, the implausible, the romantic, and the ideal (Lawall, 1999). Though realist writers wanted to think of themselves as objective reporters of human life, the truth is that they were master artists with personal biases and values who crafted stories that revealed, at least implicitly, their views and beliefs. "Even the most artful of writers," the Modernist writer Joseph Conrad admitted, "will give himself (and his morality) away in about every third sentence" (Conrad, in Lawall, 1999, p. 839).
The European and Russian Masters
Chekhov's short stories present small sketches or fragments of the life of ordinary characters, along with a narrator who is completely detached or absent. They were enormously influential on other writers, as were the realistic short stories and novels of Tolstoy, Gogol, and the French realists, Maupassant and Gustave Flaubert.
Chekhov's "The Darling" is a powerful story, further enriched for a reader by Tolstoy's commentary "Chekhov's Intent in 'The Darling'". The central character is complex and intricately presented, and the story has a significant theme. Chekhov is known for his empathy for his central characters, though his narrators often remain seemingly detached. Indeed, Tolstoy believed that Chekhov meant to curse his central character, Olenka (or at least her character traits), and ended up blessing her instead (Tolstoy, in Charters, 2007, p. 921). Readers must decide if the story's central character represents the highest ideal of human love and self-denial, or merely foolishness and waste.
In Gogol's short story "The Overcoat," his protagonist, a simple, downtrodden office clerk, shares traits with Melville's Bartleby. With meticulous attention to detail, Gogol forwards a story that at once comments on the trivial and heartless nature of government bureaucracy and suggests the universal human yearning for comfort, significance, and gratification. Some readers find the story cynical, seeing in it a depiction of a common and powerless man unable to find fulfillment or justice in the world around him; they view the story's ending as a sort of cruel joke that further reinforces the story's tone of futility. Other readers find that the ending of the story suggests hope and reinforces the central character's influence on those around him.
Maupassant, who studied at Flaubert's feet and mastered his skill in objectively presenting characters without the intrusion of a narrator's commentary, is primarily concerned with presenting the facts of a narrative in a relentlessly detached tone. "The Necklace" is somewhat atypical of his fiction, for it contains elements of the morality tale and the fable, with characters seemingly more flatly depicted. However, like Tolstoy's story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?", readers are drawn to this story because of the truths it depicts about human nature. Those very traits, which seem the least realistic − the implausibility of the plots, the single-minded obsession of the central characters, the symbolic warnings inherent in the stories − allow both of these stories to speak in profound ways to readers of every age and generation.
Nineteenth Century Realist Fiction
One hundred years passed between the publication of Washington Irving's "The Sketch Book" (1819) and Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919). In the intervening years between these two influential short story collections, the short story transformed from a simple or mythical tale to a complex, realistic vehicle that explores the human condition through carefully placed details and images (May, 2002). The European masters of realism heavily influenced British and American writers such as Anderson, Cather, Chopin, Crane, James, Jewett, Lawrence, Howells, and London, to name only a few. These writers uniformly embraced realism's emphasis on complex characterization, detailed and realistic descriptions of settings, the absence of an intrusive narrator, and themes of deep psychological and ethical importance. While Jewett and Chopin filled their stories with authentic regional dialects and intricately portrayed geographical settings, others such as Crane and London presented naturalistic, almost journalistic, stories of individuals battling harsh and unforgiving natural elements. All of these writers rejected the fantastic and the mythological in favor of realistic stories that conveyed thetruth of human experience as faithfully as possible.
Chopin, in "How I Stumbled Upon Maupassant," discusses the realist conviction that fiction should convey a sort of objective truth. She claims that in Maupassant's realist fiction, she had at last found "something big, satisfying, convincing" (Chopin, in Charters, 2007, p. 858). Chopin boldly (and ironically) asserts, "Here was life, not fiction, for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinking way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making?" (Chopin, in Charters, 2007, p. 859). Realist writers such as Chopin, desired to "look out upon life . . . with [their] own eyes" and give their readers their "impressions," of what they saw (Chopin, in Charters, 2007, p. 859). This technique of conveying direct impressions of what an individual character or narrator sees, feels, or thinks resulted in some works of realism being labeled impressionistic. Impressionism is a type of writing in which authors attempt to convey the truth about how a scene or moment feels, or is experienced by a character, through the careful and artful arrangement of details that create a mood or emotional effect in the reader.
Literary Naturalism
Closely related to literary realism, though different in aim, motive, and philosophy, is a literary movement and technique called naturalism. Naturalism was primarily a philosophical movement that maintained that everything knowable is contained within the physical, natural world, and must have wholly natural causes. Naturalist philosophers were deeply influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin, and privileged scientific methods, reason, and empirical evidence in their understanding of truth. Naturalism "thus wholly exclude[d] the philosophical position of supernaturalism, which encompasses religious belief of all kinds, as well as belief in spirit, soul, immortality, transcendence, or divinity" (Hiner, 2001, p. 80).
Literary naturalism developed in the 19th century as a result of the infusion of naturalist philosophies and motives into the techniques and aims of realism. Emile Zola, the pioneer of literary naturalism, prided himself on his objective and scientificmethod of writing in which he probed the psychological recesses of his characters like "a surgeon [works] on corpses" (Zola, in Lawall, 1999, p. 837). Literary naturalism can best be understood as a narrow type of literary realism that emphasizes detailed, objective, almost journalistic reporting of the facts of characters' lives. In naturalist writing, the views and personality of the author are ostensibly suppressed or absent. Naturalist writers embrace the philosophical views of naturalism and, therefore, often produce literary works in which humans are portrayed as isolated and alienated individuals who must struggle vainly against a hostile or indifferent physical environment.
Both Stephen Crane and Jack London forward protagonists who must fight against destructive natural forces. Crane's story "The Open Boat" is a fictional retelling of an experience he had on board the Commodore on January 2, 1897 (Hiner, 2001, p. 85). Though his central characters, stranded aboard a ten-foot dinghy after a shipwreck, start out believing that fate, or the gods, must have some concern for them, they gradually realize that they are supremely alone, and their faith turns to grief, and then rage. It is easy to see how naturalism works, produced primarily between 1890 and 1940, and expressed the existential sense of fear and loneliness felt by the generation of men and women who witnessed both world wars. The later re-emergence of spirituality and Christianity in the works of T. S. Eliot was one response to what some considered the arid spiritual wasteland of naturalism and existentialism.
Writing About Short Stories
When analyzing and writing about short stories, it is important that students distinguish between merely offering a plot summary and offering a true critical analysis of a short story. Trimble distinguishes between a plot summary and a critical analysis in his 1975 text, explaining that a true critical analysis forwards a new idea or assertion about the literary text. The purpose of a critical analysis is to shed light on a familiar text and help a reader understand the text in a new way. A plot summary merely restates the main events of a narrative, or merely states facts about the text that any conscientious reader would already know (Trimble, 1975).
When writing about short stories, a student's concern should be to forward a unique, specific, narrow, and assertive thesis that presents a point with which few other readers would initially agree. The student's task in the rest of the paper is to show how and why this thesis statement is true and credible, using textual support from the short stories (quotations, paraphrases, and summaries), and explaining clearly the connection between this evidence and the thesis statement. Students should rigorously exclude anything that does not directly support the thesis statement (or main argument of the paper), and should be careful to make sure that all sub-arguments or minor assertions are explicitly tied to the thesis statement. An analysis of short stories may focus on why or how specific elements of fiction forward specific themes, or it may compare and contrast two or more texts in specific areas. Additionally, it could explore a biographical or historical context to shed light on the making of a text, its effects, or its themes. Students may explore literary texts in various ways, but every critical analysis should be narrow in scope and should not assert an obvious fact about the text.
Conclusion
Though literary realism began to branch out into various forms such as naturalism, impressionism, and regional writing, it remained the dominant literary method for writers throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Students of literature can apply a variety of critical methods in their study of realist short stories, as one's understanding and appreciation of these stories is enhanced through many forms of literary criticism. Readers today are drawn to 19th century realism for the same reason as was its original audience: it seems to convey accurately the difficulties, challenges, pleasures, and joys of human relationships and endeavors. Ironically, though these stories depict unique characters set in specific times and places, they also can seem to portray Everyman (or Everywoman), allowing readers to easily identify with the stories' themes.
References
Charters, A. (Ed.). (2007). The story and its writer: An introduction to short fiction (Compact 7th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Davis, R. C., & Schleifer, R. (1998). Contemporary literary criticism: Literary and cultural studies (4th ed.). New York: Longman.
Drabble, M. (Ed.). (1996). The Oxford companion to English literature (Rev. ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Harmon, W., & Holman, H. (2006). A handbook to literature (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall.
Hiner, A. (2001). Bricks and temples: Literary naturalism and the Christian reader's response. In H. Choi, D. Siemens, Jr., & S. Williams (Eds.), Naturalism: Its impact on science, religion, and literature (pp. 79-91). Phoenix, AZ: Canyon Institute for Advanced Studies.
Lawall, S. (Ed.). (1999). The Norton anthology of world masterpieces (7th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
May, C. E. (2002). The short story: The reality of artifice. New York: Routledge.
Read Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”
Read Guy de Maupassant, "The Necklace."
Read Anton Chekhov, "The Darling."
Read Leo Tolstoy, “Chekhov’s Intent in ‘The Darling’.”
Read Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour."
Read Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron."
Read Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Read Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, "A Feminist Reading of Gilman's ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.'"
Read Willa Cather, "Paul's Case."
Read Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat."
