Realism – (1865-1915)

Realism is the presentation in art of the details of actual life. Realism was also a literary movement that
began during the nineteenth century and stressed the actual as opposed to the imagined or the fanciful.
The Realists tried to write truthfully and objectively about ordinary characters in ordinary situations. They
reacted against Romanticism, rejecting heroic, adventurous, unusual, or unfamiliar subjects. The Realists,
in turn, were followed by the Naturalists, who traced the effects of heredity and environment on people
helpless to change their situations. American realism grew from the work of local-color writers such as Bret
Harte and Sarah Orne Jewett and is evident in the writings of major figures such as Mark Twain and Henry
James.  

THE RISE OF REALISM (1865-1914)

1861-1865
The U.S. Civil War between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South was a watershed
in American history. The innocent optimism of the young democratic nation gave way, after the war, to a
period of exhaustion. American idealism remained but was rechanneled. Before the war, idealists
championed human rights, especially the abolition of slavery; after the war, Americans increasingly
idealized progress and the self-made man. This was the era of the millionaire manufacturer and the
speculator, when Darwinian evolution and the "survival of the fittest" seemed to sanction the sometimes
unethical methods of the successful business tycoon.
Business boomed after the war. War production had boosted industry in the North and given it prestige and
political clout. It also gave industrial leaders valuable experience in the management of men and machines.
The enormous natural resources -- iron, coal, oil, gold, and silver -- of the American land benefitted
business.

1869
The new intercontinental rail system, inaugurated and the transcontinental telegraph, which began
operating in 1861, gave industry access to materials, markets, and communications.

1860-1910
The constant influx of immigrants provided a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive labor as well. Over
23 million foreigners -- German, Scandinavian, and Irish in the early years, and increasingly Central and
Southern Europeans thereafter -- flowed into the United States Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino contract
laborers were imported by Hawaiian plantation owners, railroad companies, and other American business
interests on the West Coast.

1860
Most Americans lived on farms or in small villages, but by 1919 half of the population was concentrated in
about 12 cities. Problems of urbanization and industrialization appeared: poor and overcrowded housing,
unsanitary conditions, low pay (called "wage slavery"), difficult working conditions, and inadequate
restraints on business. Labor unions grew, and strikes brought the plight of working people to national
awareness. Farmers, too, saw themselves struggling against the "money interests" of the East, the so-
called robber barons like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. Their eastern banks tightly controlled
mortgages and credit so vital to western development and agriculture, while railroad companies charged
high prices to transport farm products to the cities. The farmer gradually became an object of ridicule,
lampooned as an unsophisticated "hick" or "rube." The ideal American of the post-Civil War period became
the millionaire. In 1860, there were fewer than 100 millionaires; by 1875, there weremore than 1,000.

1860 to 1914
The United States was transformed from a small, young, agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern,
industrial nation. A debtor nation in 1860, by 1914 it had become the world's wealthiest state, with a
population that had more than doubled, rising from 31 million in 1860 to 76 million in 1900. By World War I,
the United States had become a major world power.

As industrialization grew, so did alienation. Characteristic American novels of the period Stephen Crane's
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Jack London's Martin Eden, and later Theodore Dreiser's An American
Tragedy depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual.
Survivors, like Twain's Huck Finn, Humphrey Vanderveyden in London's The Sea-Wolf, and Dreiser's
opportunistic Sister Carrie, endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all,
individuality.

1835 - 1910 Mark Twain

• Related literary movements: Realism
• Key themes and features: Satire, Local Color
Some prominent Works: Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer

1843 – 1916 Henry James

• Related literary movements: Realism, Naturalism

1862 - 1937 Edith Wharton

• Related literary movements: Realism, Naturalism

1851 - 1904 Kate Chopin

• Some prominent works: The Awakening, Story of an Hour
• Related literary movements: Realism

1876-1916 Jack London Naturalism

1871-1945 Theodore Dreiser Naturalism

 Common Themes and Elements in Realism

 Pragmatism
 literature of the common-place
 attempts to represent real life
 ordinary people--poor and middle class
 ordinary speech in dialect--use of vernacular
 recent or contemporary life
 subject matter presented in an unidealized, unsentimentalized way
 democratic function of literature
 social criticism--effect on audience is key
 presents indigenous American life
 importance of place--regionalism, "local color"
 sociology and psychology
A WRITTEN REPORT
IN
AMERICAN
REALISM
AND
THE ROAD NOT
TAKEN

Submitted by:
Ruffa Mae E. Soldao

Submitted to:
Mr. Gerry Nicol