essay topics for naturalism in literature

What Is Naturalism? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

Naturalism definition.

Naturalism (NATCH-rull-ihz-uhm) is a late 19th-century literary movement in which writers focused on exploring the fundamental causes for their characters’ actions, choices, and beliefs. These causes centered on the influence of family and society upon the individual—and all the complications that exist therein—resulting in a view that environmental factors are the primary determinant of human character. Naturalism is in many ways interconnected with realism , but realism is primarily a style of writing, while naturalism is a philosophy in writing.

French author Émile Zola first adapted the term naturalism to describe a specific type of literature and designed many of the theories behind the movement. Though its prominence ended around the turn of the 20th century, naturalism left an ongoing impact, as many modern writers incorporate naturalist features into their work.

The History of Naturalism

Jules-Antoine Castagnary, a French art critic, first used the term naturalism to describe a style of lifelike painting that became popular in the early 1860s. Émile Zola then applied the term to literature. Zola’s seminal essay “The Experimental Novel,” published in 1880, presents a detailed examination of the novel as a preeminent naturalistic literary art form.

Zola laid out three main arguments in the essay. First, writers could incorporate French physiologist Claude Bernard’s method of scientific inquiry to their works. Bernard stated that controlled experiments could either prove or disprove a hypothesis regarding the tested phenomena. Zola posited that a writer could use this same approach, with the characters functioning as the phenomena. Second, Zola said this experimental method separates naturalism from realism and romanticism . Finally, Zola presented an argument challenging his critics’ assertions that his work was immoral and offensive.

Zola’s 20-novel series Les Rougon-Macquart , written between 1871 and 1893, is one of the most significant contributions to naturalist literature. It centers on the lives of two fictional French families—one privileged, the other destitute—throughout five generations. Environment, heredity, and the challenges of life in the Second French Empire ultimately lead each family to ruin.

American author Frank Norris was another formative figure in the naturalism movement. Like Zola, he viewed his characters as experiments; he exposed them to certain stimuli or phenomena and recorded their reactions. The result blends literature and science, marrying a writer’s gift for character and description with a scientist’s detached observations on proven or disproven hypotheses. Stephen Crane, the author of The Red Badge of Courage and other works, employed a similar approach and contributed greatly to the canon of American naturalism.

Naturalism as its own distinct literary movement largely ended around 1900, when American magazine The Outlook published a tongue-in-cheek obituary for naturalism. The publication went so far as to deem Zola’s efforts to craft a new form of scientific literature a total failure. This stance is debatable, especially because countless writers since 1900 have infused their works with heavily naturalistic elements. Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Jack London are just a few who carried naturalism into the 20th century.

The Elements of Naturalism

The major elements of naturalist works are determinism, objectivity, pessimism, setting , and plot twists.

Determinism

This is the philosophical belief that external causes are responsible for all the events in an individual’s life. Fate, nature, or heredity explain why a character’s journey unfolds the way it does. Forces beyond one’s will and control predetermine everything.

For example, in William Faulkner’s short story “ A Rose for Emily ,” the central character’s insanity is a foregone conclusion. It is a natural byproduct of the oppressive control her father exerted over her, her codependent relationship with him, and the self-imposed isolation she maintained her entire life. It’s clear to the reader that there was never any hope for Miss Emily—her fate was determined by her circumstances.

Objectivity

Naturalist writers maintain an objectivity in their storytelling. They detach themselves from the emotional components of the story and serve more as impartial observers of what transpires. When discussing emotions at all, the focus is on primitive emotions of survival, usually in a hostile world.

In The Red Badge of Courage , Crane describes a battle scene with a cool remove:

The men dropped here and there like bundles. The captain of the youth’s company had been killed in an early part of the action. His body lay stretched out in the position of a tired man resting, but upon his face there was an astonished and sorrowful look, as if he thought some friend had done him an ill turn.

Rather than drawing readers focus to the viscerally disturbing realities of battle, he takes an almost lackadaisical approach to depict the scene. The imagery it evokes is commonplace—describing dead men as bundles or resting—rather than violent.

Authors of naturalist works typically possess a cynical or fatalistic worldview, wherein they don’t see their characters as having much power over their lives or decisions. These writers view life as a glass-half-empty prospect.

An example of this appears in Jack London’s classic adventure novel The Call of the Wild , in which the central character is a dog named Buck. “Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is,” London writes, “the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again.” Calling life a “puppet thing” is a pessimistic way of viewing the human—or animal—experience.

Naturalism puts great emphasis on the impact of environment, so location tends to play a significant role in these works. The setting often becomes a character in and of itself.

This is the case in Frank Norris’s novel McTeague: A Story of San Francisco . The downfall of the title character and his wife plays out against a California backdrop, from San Francisco to Death Valley, where the shattered dreams of the gold-seeking miners reflect the shattered dreams of the McTeagues.

Plot Twists

Many naturalist works include a plot twist or some type of intense gut-punch at the end of the story. This underscores the futility of the character’s struggle and the fixed quality of their destiny. For instance, Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening ends with Edna Pontellier drowning herself in the Gulf of Mexico after rebelling against the societal role assigned to her.

The Function of Naturalist Works

The function of naturalism is to present the world as it is—without embellishment, idealization, or romance—and illustrate the dominance of environmental conditions in human life and on individual characters. This perspective allows the author to comment on the darker sides of human nature.

Subjects like poverty, disease, racism, and prostitution often make their way into literary naturalism. The gritty vantage point on the human experience can sometimes be bleak, but authors write this way in service of a higher purpose. They aim to improve the condition of the world by highlighting the dire, uncontrollable circumstances with which everyday people typically live.

Naturalism vs. Realism

Naturalism is an outgrowth of realism . The latter is a literary technique in which an author describes the way things are, but naturalism significantly expands upon this idea by delving into how the way things are influences a character’s behavior and nature.

The characters in realist works have more agency. While they’re products of their environments, they have the freedom to counter their environments and influence their own futures. This differs significantly from naturalist works, where characters enjoy no such autonomy from their circumstances. The hard reality of their lives, defined by genetics, nature, or just the cruel hand of fate, is the sole deciding factor in what happens to the characters.

There is also a scientific component to naturalism. The movement coincided with the first publication of many of Charles Darwin’s theories, which may explain the movement’s tendency to portray a survival-of-the-fittest mindset and a lack of personal, independent choice in one’s fate. Hand in hand with this idea is the presence of the more primitive or animalistic emotions in many naturalist characters.

Naturalism is innately more socially conscious and political than realism. Characters usually live in hardscrabble conditions or face serious life-or-death decisions as a result of external factors rooted in society or circumstance. These conditions are essentially larger than the characters themselves, conditions with which many readers—sometimes, whole communities—can identify. So, on a fundamental level, naturalism deals with more socially relevant issues and bigger-picture perspectives than realism.

Notable Naturalist Writers

Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Stephen Crane, The Open Boat , The Red Badge of Courage
Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy , Sister Carrie
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying , The Sound and the Fury
Ellen Glasgow, Barren Ground
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms , The Sun Also Rises
Jack London, The Call of the Wild , White Fang
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West , The Crossing
Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco , The Octopus: A Story of California
Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water , Childwold
Hubert Selby, Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn , Requiem for a Dream
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle , Oil!
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome , The House of Mirth
Émile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart , Thérèse Raquin

Examples of Naturalism in Literature

1. Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Crane’s 1893 novella is a gritty tale of a young woman named Maggie who can’t escape her miserable lot in life. This is one of the first major works of American naturalism, set in the rough Bowery of New York City.

Maggie grows up in a violent, alcoholic household. When she starts dating a bartender named Pete, her family kicks her out of the house. Later, Pete leaves her, and Maggie’s family refuses to let her return home. She lives on the streets, forced to become a prostitute. The book ends with Maggie’s death.

2. Richard Wright, Native Son

Wright’s 1940 novel follows Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old black man on Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s. He lives in a rundown, one-room apartment with his brother, sister, and mother. After accidentally killing his white friend Mary, Bigger goes on the run with his girlfriend Bessie. They hide out in an abandoned building, where Bigger rapes and ultimately kills Bessie.

The police apprehend Bigger after an intensive, citywide manhunt. His lawyer, Boris Max, defends him by saying Bigger’s destiny was inescapable. His is the embodiment of every black American’s fate: becoming a product of the brutal, oppressive system that created them. Proving this point, the jury finds Bigger guilty and sentences him to die—a verdict he comes to accept.

3. Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

Selby’s 1978 novel is an unflinching look at addiction and its consequences. Elderly Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone are all searching for their own version of the American Dream. Sara, who wants to be on television, grows addicted to diet pills. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone, all heroin users, buy a large amount of heroin and plan to sell it at a huge profit to fund their respective dreams.

As expected, their addictions interfere with their plans, and they turn against one another. The novel ends with each character’s life in ruins. Sara receives electroshock therapy after addiction pushes her to insanity; Harry loses an arm after frequent heroin injections cause an infection; Tyrone goes to jail, where being a black man makes him the target of abuse; and Marion becomes a prostitute to support her habit.

Further Resources on Naturalism

Goodreads has a comprehensive list of Popular Naturalism Books .

Xiaofen Zhang wrote an academic perspective on the movement: On the Influence of Naturalism on American Literature .

M.H. Abrams discusses the differences between realism and naturalism .

ELA Common Core Lesson Plans has advice on teaching naturalism .

The Art Story delves into naturalism in literature and fine art and the similarities and differences between the two art forms.

Related Terms

Characterization
Perspective

Definition of Naturalism

Naturalism is a literary genre that started as a movement in late nineteenth century in literature, film, theater, and art. It is a type of extreme realism . This movement suggested the roles of family, social conditions, and environment in shaping human character . Thus, naturalistic writers write stories based on the idea that environment determines and governs human character.

We also see use of some of the scientific principles in naturalistic works, and humans struggling for survival in hostile and alien society. In fact, naturalism took its cue from Darwin’s theory of evolution, which holds that life is like a struggle and only the fittest survive.

Naturalism vs. Realism

Both naturalism and realism are literary genres and interlinked. However, there are some differences between them:

Naturalism suggests a philosophical pessimism in which writers use scientific techniques to depict human beings as objective and impartial characters; whereas realism focuses on literary technique.
Realism depicts things as they appear, while naturalism portrays a deterministic view of a character’s actions and life.
Naturalism concludes that natural forces predetermine a character’s decisions, making him/her act in a particular way. Realism poses that a decision of a character comes from his response to a certain situation.

Examples of Naturalism in Literature

Example #1: the grapes of wrath (by john steinbeck).

John Steinbeck is one the most popular writers coming from the school of American naturalism. Steinbeck, in his novel The Grapes of Wrath , portrays the Joad family and its changing environment from the naturalistic point of view , during the t Great Depression in the United States. He depicts the Joad family as insignificant, instinct-bound, and small creatures bound to seek a paradise they might never find.

Initially, when the Joads leave home, they are very simple and animal -like people, who could barely understand their plight. They face constant opposition from two powerful predators – society and nature. However, as the narrative progresses, they begin to adapt to new circumstances.

Example #2: The Open Boat (By Stephen Crane)

Stephen Crane, in his short story The Open Boat , portrays men on a boat, representing human endurance against indifferent nature, where they feel themselves helpless. Thus, it contains a theme of naturalism. Whenever a huge wave of water arrives, it shuts everything from the men’s view, and they imagine this particular wave would be the final outbreak of the ocean, like in the following lines:

“If I am going to be drowned–if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven gods, who rule the seven seas,?”

This lays emphasis on their struggle for survival and lack of choice. Besides, The Open Boat symbolically represents human place in the huge universe where man struggles against nature. Then we see a definite determination, as men cannot play any part in their outcome, which results in unexpected death of Oiler, despite being an expert sailor.

Example #3: The Awakening (By Kate Chopin)

Kate Chopin ’s novel, The Awakening , gives an example of a perfect naturalistic novel, as its leading character, Edna Pontellier, lives in a world where no one understands her. Neither does she fit in the Creole society. This often causes misunderstandings in her life, as she can’t understand its people:

“ Edna wondered if they had all gone mad .”

Then, she realizes that she has chosen the wrong man as her husband:

“… taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. She stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it …”

In addition, we see the determination by individual traits and by societal forces inside the family. Consequently, Edna becomes a victim of her sociological pressures.

Example #4: To Build A Fire (By Jack London)

The theme in Jack London ’s novel, To Build A Fire , is man versus nature; thus it is another good example of naturalism. Naturalism in this novel shows how human beings need to be careful at every corner, as death could reach them anywhere, waiting for them to commit a mistake and take their lives. We see the story is about a man with his dog trying to survive harsh, cold weather by building a fire. In fact, the author uses the Darwinian Theory of “survival of the fittest” in his work.

Function of Naturalism

The impact that naturalism has left on literary writers is colossal, leading to the evolution of the modern movement. Generally, naturalistic works expose dark sides of life such as prejudice, racism, poverty , prostitution, filth, and disease. Since these works are often pessimistic and blunt, they receive heavy criticism. Despite the echoing pessimism in this literary output, naturalists are generally concerned with improving the human condition around the world.

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Naturalism and realism.

Gary Scharnhorst
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.509
Published online: 26 July 2017

At the most elementary level, realism may be equated with verisimilitude or the approximation of truth. A mimetic artist, the literary realist claims to mirror or represent the world as it objectively appears. Naturalism may be given a trio of thumbnail definitions: pessimistic determinism, stark realism, and realism plus Darwin.

Realism As a Literary Theory

William Dean Howells , the most prominent American advocate of realism in the arts, urged readers to apply this singular test to any work of the imagination: “Is it true?—true to the motives, the impulses, the principles that shape the life of actual men and women?” In Criticism and Fiction ( 1891 ), Howells proposed an evolutionary literary model, with realism superior to romance just as birds are a more sophisticated species than lizards. Although Howells admired the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne , he nevertheless believed Hawthorne's fiction occupied a lower rung on the evolutionary scale of literature than realism, or “the truthful treatment of material.” “Let fiction cease to lie about life,” he declared. “Let it portray man and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know;…let it not put on fine literary airs; let it speak the dialect, the language, that most Americans know—the language of unaffected people everywhere.” Howells was also able to stretch his definition of realism to cover such wildly different works as Mark Twain 's humorous sketches and his dystopian A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ( 1889 ).

In all, according to Howells, realism insisted “that fidelity to experience and probability of motive are essential conditions of a great imaginative literature.” Thus, it resisted or opposed allegory and romance, especially sentimental romance. Realistic fiction portrayed distinctive personalities and rounded or credible characters, developed linear plots, and depicted recognizable settings. (As the modern writer John Barth has noted, “God was not a bad novelist, except He was a realist.”) Devaluing anecdote or story, it emphasized the importance of individual character. Sometimes claiming to portray a “slice of life” or “transcript of life,” the realists often found their subjects amid the details and surfaces of middle-class, bourgeois experience. They shared with such pragmatists as William James a philosophical attitude, a method of “radical empiricism” that affirmed free will and equated motive and behavior.

Standard literary histories have long dated the start of the realistic period in American literature at the end of the Civil War. Ostensibly, the pioneering works of realism were such volumes as John W. De Forest 's novel, Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty ( 1867 ), and Mark Twain's satirical travelogues, The Innocents Abroad ( 1869 ) and Roughing It ( 1872 ). With the critical recovery in the late twentieth century of women's writings from the mid-1800s, however, the beginning of the realistic period has been pushed back more than an entire generation to such texts as Caroline M. Kirkland 's A New Home, Who'll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life ( 1839 ) and Rebecca Harding Davis 's Life in the Iron-Mills ( 1861 ).

In the late twentieth century , too, proponents of poststructuralism assailed the notion of literary realism. How can any literary text replicate or imitate “reality” (whatever that may be?), they ask. Language creates the only reality we know. Any attempt to define the term absolutely is not only presumptuous but doomed. Roland Barthes , for example, has argued that so-called realistic texts are no more based on “reality” than other forms of writing and has indicted as simplistic the epistemological assumptions of those who purport to be realists. In effect, he suggested, the realists merely took reality for granted. Admittedly, it is easier to define what realism was not than what it actually was. ( Mary E. Wilkins Freeman told an interviewer in 1890 that she “didn't even know” she was “a realist until [some reviewers] wrote and told me.”) Such scholars as Donald Pizer , however, have attempted to recuperate or rehabilitate the terms “realism” and “naturalism.” As Pizer writes in The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism ( 1995 ), “Whatever the philosophical, moral, and social baggage that encumbers them, they will have to do.” In a functional sense, the terms obviously meant something. What qualities in the writings of the self-described realists seemed innovative? Or, put another way, what was it about those writings that inspired such fierce opposition during the so-called Realism War of the 1880s and 1890s? Influenced by such European writers as Zola, Tolstoy , Guy de Maupassant , and Dostoyevsky , the realists certainly believed they were championing a new brand of fiction.

Howells and the Realism War

While he neither inspired nor founded a school or movement of realists, Howells was at the center of American literary culture for over fifty years. He was the most influential American novelist, editor, and critic of his generation. As editor of the Atlantic Monthly for over fifteen years and later as the contributor of the “Editor's Easy Chair” series to Harper's Monthly , he befriended and promoted such realists as Henry James , Mark Twain, Mary Freeman , John De Forest , Sarah Orne Jewett , Frank Norris , Charles Chesnutt , Paul Laurence Dunbar , Hamlin Garland , Edith Wharton , Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Abraham Cahan , and Stephen Crane . For Howells, realism was a democratic movement in the arts, a focus on the normal and ordinary, distinct from romanticism or “romanticistic” fiction with its emphasis on more ideal, bizarre, sentimental, fantastic, exotic, melodramatic, or aristocratic topics. In life , he declared, the realist “finds nothing insignificant.” In The Rise of Silas Lapham ( 1885 ), for example, Howells remarked on how “a great many novels” fail “as representations of life.” The Reverend Mr. Sewell, a Howells spokesman, refers derisively to the “mischief” done by such popular fiction. “The novels might be the greatest possible good to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are altogether noxious.” The readers of such slop commit psychical suicide . The novelist “who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people,” another character in the novel avers, “would have the answer to ‘the riddle of the painful earth’ on his tongue.” In The Minister's Charge ( 1887 ), which again features the character of Sewell, Howells realistically rewrote the sentimental juvenile fiction of such authors as Alger and Oliver Optic . Similarly, Basil March , another Howells persona, opines in A Hazard of New Fortunes ( 1890 ) that

I believe that this popular demand for the matrimony of others comes from our novel-reading. We get to thinking that there is no other happiness or good fortune in life except marriage, and it's offered in fiction as the highest premium for virtue, courage, beauty, learning, and saving human life. We all know it isn't. We know that in reality, marriage is dog-cheap.

Howells was profoundly influenced in the late 1880s by Tolstoy's ideas about nonviolence and economic equality. In 1887 he risked his reputation and livelihood by publicly repudiating the guilty verdicts brought against the Haymarket Square anarchists and what he called the “civic murder” of four of them. His novel Annie Kilburn ( 1889 ) glossed Tolstoy's Anna Karenina ( 1875–1877 ), as the identical initials of their respective heroines suggest. As a result, he became an easy target for some parochial critics. The so-called Realism War, waged in reviews and magazines throughout the 1880s and 1890s, pitted the realists, especially Howells, against editors and popular writers who espoused the sentimental or sensational brands of literary romance. For example, the genteel critic Hamilton Wright Mabie alleged in his review of Howells's Silas Lapham that realism was nothing more or less than “practical atheism applied to art.” These skirmishes often smacked of politics; the controversy over realism began at the height of the debate over the fate of the Haymarket Square anarchists. Also, the war was fought largely along regional lines; the realists were largely easterners or transplanted westerners living in the East, whereas the most outspoken opponents of realism (including Maurice Thompson , author of Hoosier Mosaics [ 1875 ] and Alice of Old Vincennes [ 1901 ]; the poet James Whitcomb Riley ; and Lew Wallace , author of the historical romances The Fair God [ 1873 ] and Ben-Hur [ 1880 ]) often resided in the Old South or the Old Northwest. The Association of Western Writers (later the Western Association of Writers), played a crucial role in the war by offering Thompson, its first president, a forum for his attacks. Over a period of some twenty years, beginning in 1887 , Thompson repeatedly complained that Howells had foisted the “raw, nauseous realism of the Russians and the Zola school of France” onto a reading public hungry for “American books of a wholesome and patriotic kind.” Realism was little more than decadent “worship of the vulgar, the commonplace and the insignificant.” “Some years ago, before there had been so much said about realism in literature,” Thompson declared in 1889 , “I predicted that realism would in due time be found to mean materialism, socialism, and, at last, anarchy.…The progression will be: Realism, sensualism, materialism, socialism, communism, nihilism, absolute anarchy.” Thompson and Howells's other opponents often compared realism to mere photography, or worse, cheap Kodak snapshots, lacking the artistry of the painter.

The war, in the end, took its toll on Howells's reputation. By the early twentieth century his brand of realism seemed dull and timid, a movement within the spurned genteel tradition in American letters. Ambrose Bierce defined realism in his Devil's Dictionary ( 1906 ) as “the art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.” In 1915 Howells wrote James that he had become “comparatively a dead cult with my statues cast down and the grass growing over them in the pale moonlight.” Sinclair Lewis famously, or infamously, attacked him by name in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1930 : “Mr. Howells was one of the gentlest, sweetest, and most honest of men, but he had the code of a pious old maid whose greatest delight was to have tea at the vicarage.”

In addition to Howells, many other novelists of the period defended the aesthetics of realism. In the preface to his novel The Mammon of Unrighteousness ( 1891 ), for example, H. H. Boyesen asserted that he had “disregarded all romantic traditions, and simply asked myself in every instance, not whether it was amusing, but whether it was to the logic of reality—true in color and tone to the American sky, the American soil, the American character.” Henry James implicitly compared realistic fiction to painting in his essay, The Art of Fiction ( 1884 ). According to James, the novel should exude an “air of reality,” which is its “supreme virtue,” by “its immense and exquisite correspondence with life.…The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life. When it relinquishes this attempt, the same attempt that we see on the canvas of a painter, it will have arrived at a very strange pass.” James's brand of realism was a form of literary portraiture, as may be inferred from several of his titles (including Portraits of Places [ 1883 ], The Portrait of a Lady [ 1881 ], The American Scene [ 1907 ], and Partial Portraits [ 1888 ]). And in his facetious essay, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses ( 1895 ), Mark Twain listed “nineteen rules governing literary art.” Among them: “when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances,” and “the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone.” Cooper 's romance, The Deerslayer ( 1841 ), however, was “simply a literary delirium tremens .” Similarly, Stephen Crane reminisced that he had

developed all alone a little creed of art which I thought was a good one. Later I discovered that my creed was identical with the one of Howells and Garland, and in this way I became involved in the beautiful war between those who say that…we are the most successful in art when we approach the nearest to nature and truth, and those who…don't say much.

Realism As Literary Practice

The literary landscape in the late nineteenth century featured no organized or monolithic group of realists. As Elizabeth Ammons has suggested, “the most important characteristic of American realism was its racial, ethnic, sexual, and cultural range.” There were, in effect, many “realities” or varieties of realism, including local color or regionalism (for example, the tales of Twain, Jewett, Freeman, Chopin, Bret Harte , James Lane Allen , Rose Terry Cooke , Joel Chandler Harris , Edward Eggleston , and Joseph Kirkland ), psychological realism (James, Gilman, Sherwood Anderson ), critical realism (Howells), and “veritism” (Garland's term for realism true to the perceptions of the writer, a protorealism or an overtly politicized form of realism). The various realists did not necessarily appreciate all contributions to the form; Mark Twain wrote Howells that he “would rather be damned to John Bunyan's heaven than read” James's The Bostonians ( 1886 ). Such Native-American storytellers as Zitkala-Sa and Sarah Winnemucca, the Jewish-American writer Anzia Yezierska, the Asian-American author Sui Sin Far, and such African Americans as W. E. B. Du Bois and Charles Chesnutt were also regarded as realists, though obviously their experiences were distinctly different from those of the canonical Anglo-American writers. With their interest in local customs, mores, and dialects, local colorists were local historians in a sense. They identified themselves with the communities they chronicled. Their tales often took the form of the anecdote or character sketch (Harte's “Tennessee's Partner” [ 1869 ], Freeman's “A New England Nun” [ 1891 ], and Harriet Beecher Stowe 's Oldtown Folks [ 1869 ], for example). Both Eggleston, the author of The Hoosier Schoolmaster ( 1871 ), and Kirkland, the author of Zury: The Meanest Man in Spring County ( 1887 ), turned formally late in their careers to writing local history. Eggleston was even elected president of the American Historical Association in 1900 . The difference between literary romance and realism, at least of the local color variety, may be underscored by comparing two of Twain's novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ( 1876 ) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( 1884 ). As Leslie Fiedler has suggested in Love and Death in the American Novel (rev. ed., 1966 ), the two novels retell essentially the same story, the first nostalgically and sentimentally through a soft lens and the second more rigorously, honestly, and truthfully. The two novels are “alternative versions of the same themes” or “the same dream dreamed twice over, the second time as nightmare.” Huckleberry Finn is a true book,” Fiedler adds, but Tom Sawyer only ‘mostly a true book’ with ‘some stretchers,’ one of which is its ending.” The contrast is perhaps most apparent in the respective depictions of Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. The bucolic St. Petersburg of Tom Sawyer and the opening chapters of Huckleberry Finn are an idealized representation of Hannibal, which is more realistically rendered in the latter work as Bricksville, the dirty little river town where hogs root in the muddy streets and the town drunk is killed in cold blood. Though his masterwork is rarely regarded as an exercise in local color, Twain also carefully recreated in Huckleberry Finn the several distinct dialects spoken by his characters. “The shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work,” he insisted in an explanatory note, “but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with those several forms of speech.” In the Uncle Julius dialect tales collected in The Conjure Woman ( 1899 ), moreover, Chesnutt satirized Harris's popular Uncle Remus tales and the plantation tradition they evoked. Local colorists seemed drawn to compiling short story cycles. In addition to Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman , examples include Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs ( 1896 ), Garland's Main-Travelled Roads ( 1891 ), George Washington Cable 's Old Creole Days ( 1879 ), and Kate Chopin 's Bayou Folk ( 1894 ).

James's psychological realism was a more aestheticized form of fiction. By experimenting with refined narrators or “centers of consciousness,” James presumed to recreate the play of their imaginations—in effect, to adapt his brother William's Principles of Psychology ( 1890 ) to the fictional page. Chapter 42 of The Portrait of a Lady ( 1881 ), in which Isabel Archer contemplates the state of her marriage to Gilbert Osmond, anticipated the modern stream of consciousness novels of Gertrude Stein , Virginia Woolf , James Joyce , and William Faulkner . In The Turn of the Screw ( 1898 ), Henry James recounted a ghost story from the point of view of a psychopathological narrator. Particularly in some of his later tales (including The Beast in the Jungle [ 1903 ]), he described almost no physical behavior, a technique that led to the joking complaint that James “chewed more than he bit off.”

Very few American poets of the period between 1865 and 1915 presumed to be realists in their verse. The major poets—such as Longfellow , Riley, E. C. Stedman , Edwin Markham , Sidney Lanier , Ina Coolbrith , Thomas Wentworth Higginson , William Vaughan Moody , and Thomas Bailey Aldrich —were heirs of the sentimental tradition of British romanticism. Howells and other realists wrote poetry, to be sure, but most of it was utterly conventional and forgettable. Twain parodied sentimental verse in both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn , as in Emmeline Grangerford's funeral poetry, but his own poetry was unremarkable. The African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar published dialect verse, much as Chesnutt wrote dialect stories, but he was an exception to the rule. Both Crane and Edwin Arlington Robinson penned a brand of naturalistic poetry around the turn of the century. Crane's verse was enigmatic and bitterly ironic, and Robinson wrote such dramatic monologues as Richard Cory and Miniver Cheevy and the sonnets Zola and Annandale , the latter a defense of euthanasia.

The forte of the realists, however, was topical fiction. Even James's stories on the international theme (for example, Daisy Miller [ 1879 ], The American [ 1877 ], and The Ambassadors [ 1903 ]) exploited the growth in international travel during the last third of the nineteenth century . (With the development of the steamship, passenger departures from the United States for Europe increased from around 20,000 in 1860 to around 110,000 in 1900 .) More to the point, realists often protested conditions, pilloried hypocrisy, or proposed social reforms. Few topics escaped their notice. It was, as Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner averred in their collaborative novel, a “gilded age,” not a Golden Age. Among the topics that concerned them were political corruption (Twain and Warner's The Gilded Age [ 1873 ], Henry Adams's Democracy [ 1880 ], and Garland's A Spoil of Office [ 1892 ]); immigration and integration (Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky [ 1917 ], Sui Sin Far 's Mrs. Spring Fragrance [ 1912 ], and Yezierska 's Hungry Hearts [ 1920 ]); marriage and divorce (Howells's A Modern Instance [ 1882 ] and Wharton's The Age of Innocence [ 1920 ]); small-town parochialism or “the revolt from the village” ( E. W. Howe 's The Story of a Country Town [ 1883 ], Edgar Lee Masters 's Spoon River Anthology [ 1915 ], Robinson's The Children of the Night [ 1897 ], Wharton's Ethan Frome [ 1911 ], Sinclair Lewis's Main Street [ 1920 ], and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio [ 1919 ]); military imperialism during the Spanish-American War (Howells's “Editha” [ 1905 ] and Twain's The War Prayer [ 1916 ]); lynchings (Twain's “The United States of Lyncherdom” [ 1923 ] and Walter V. T. Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident [ 1940 ]); urban squalor, prostitution, and the “fallen woman” or “the shame of the cities” (Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets [ 1893 ]); economic injustice (James's The Princess Casamassima [ 1886 ], Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes [ 1890 ], and Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ); alcoholism (Howells's The Landlord at Lion's Head [ 1897 ] and Norris's McTeague [ 1899 ]); and euthanasia (Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree [ 1907 ]). Such texts complemented some of the social essays of the period, including Henry Demarest Lloyd 's Wealth against Commonwealth ( 1894 ), Thorstein Veblen 's The Theory of the Leisure Class ( 1899 ), and Jacob Riis 's How the Other Half Lives ( 1890 ). In Under the Lion's Paw ( 1889 ), Garland specifically endorsed the “single tax” on “unearned increment” advocated by Henry George in his book, Progress and Poverty ( 1879 ).

Other narratives were devoted to the “woman question” and the contemporary feminist movement, including Chopin's The Awakening ( 1899 ) and “The Story of an Hour” ( 1894 ), James's The Bostonians , Howells's Dr. Breen's Practice ( 1881 ), Freeman's “A New England Nun” ( 1891 ) and The Revolt of ‘Mother’ ( 1890 ), and Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper ( 1892 ). The latter tale specifically critiqued the rest cure for women suffering from hysteria or neurasthenia prescribed by S. Weir Mitchell, a Philadelphia nerve specialist and part-time novelist.

Realistic fiction published during the final decade of the nineteenth century was often a race-inflected fiction as well. The 1890s, punctuated by the Chinese Exclusionary Act ( 1892 ) and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of the Supreme Court ( 1896 ) sanctioning “separate but equal” public facilities for blacks and whites, were the nadir of race relations in the United States. The public debate about it notwithstanding, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was not a race novel, certainly not in the same sense as Howells's An Imperative Duty ( 1891 ) or Twain's The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson ( 1894 ). In the former, a young woman raised to believe she is white discovers that she has a black ancestor. In the latter, two baby boys are switched in their cradles, one of them freeborn and the other a slave but otherwise indistinguishable, with tragic results. In both novels the authors probed the meaning of racial identity. A cluster of other realistic race novels appeared in the early 1890s, among them Anna J. Cooper's A Voice from the South ( 1892 ) and Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted ( 1892 ). Chesnutt also published a trio of realistic novels around the turn of the century that pondered the consequences of racial violence: The House behind the Cedars ( 1900 ); The Marrow of Tradition ( 1901 ), based on the race riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898 ; and The Colonel's Dream ( 1905 ), about the failure of the New South to secure racial justice.

Despite the early successes of the local colorists Bret Harte and Mark Twain, western American writers were slow to warm to realism. Western literature was epitomized by the sensational, blood-and-thunder of the dime novel westerns that celebrated westward expansion and conquest. As late as 1902 , the same year Owen Wister's romanticized bestseller The Virginian appeared, Norris complained that rather than a school of western realists there were “the wretched ‘Deadwood Dicks’ and Buffalo Bills of the yellowbacks” and writers “who lied and tricked and strutted in Pathfinder and Leather-Stocking series.” Still, a brand of western realism emerged in such neglected or unknown works as Mary Hallock Foote's novel The Led-Horse Claim ( 1883 ), Mary Austin 's Land of Little Rain ( 1903 ), and Andy Adams 's The Log of a Cowboy ( 1903 ), all of which deal with mining, ranching, or other forms of labor. Clarence Gohdes declared in 1951 , in fact, that Foote was “more of a realist than either Harte or Clemens in portraying the life of the mining areas.…In the history of fiction dealing with the Far West she may claim attention as the first realist of the section.”

American realists contributed to the national literary culture in another way; they belonged to the first generation of true literary professionals in America, as Howells suggested in his essay, The Man of Letters As a Man of Business ( 1893 ). The realists hired the first literary agents in the early 1880s, contributed to the first newspaper fiction syndicates in the mid-1880s, and lobbied for passage of legislation governing international copyright, finally adopted in 1891 . They introduced marketing gimmicks such as subscription sales (Mark Twain was a director of the American Publishing Company of Hartford) and composite novels (such as The Whole Family [ 1908 ], to which Howells, James, Freeman, and nine other writers each contributed a chapter). Partly as a result of the invention of the Linotype machine, the number of magazines published in the nation increased from about two hundred in 1860 to some eighteen hundred in 1900 , with a corresponding increase in the opportunities for literary careers. To be sure, most commercially successful novels were still pitched to middle-class women readers. Howells estimated that some 75 percent of all books sold in the United States were bought by women, and the novelist John W. De Forest similarly declared that women comprised four-fifths of the novel-reading public. The novel, even the realistic novel, usually contained a love interest ( Huckleberry Finn was a rare and notable exception) if only to spur sales—but it was a love interest often disappointed. Many of the realists also scripted plays, often adaptations of their own stories and novels, because the market for new drama was more lucrative than for fiction. As Harte would write, plays were potentially “vastly more profitable” or lucrative than novels. A “good play” in production ought to pay its author about three thousand dollars per year, he thought. Similarly, James noted privately that he “simply must try, and try seriously, to produce half a dozen—a dozen, five dozen—plays for the sake of my pocket, my material future.” In all, Twain, Howells, James, and Harte produced some sixty scripts, though many of them were never produced professionally.

Naturalism As a Literary Theory

In his essay Le roman expérimental (The Experimental Novel) ( 1880 ), the French novelist Émile Zola developed an elaborate analogy between experimental or empirical fiction and the medical science of the French physician Claude Bernard . According to Zola, the experimental (that is, the naturalistic) novelist simply adopts “the scientific method, which has been in use for a long time.” He “institutes the experiment, that is, sets the characters of a particular story in motion, in order to show that the series of events therein will be those demanded by the determinism of the phenomena under study.” Richard Wright deployed a similar trope in his essay How Bigger Was Born ( 1940 ), often reprinted as an introduction to his Native Son ( 1940 ), one of the last American naturalistic novels: “Why should I not, like a scientist in a laboratory, use my imagination and invent test-tube situations, place Bigger in them, and…work out in fictional form a resolution of his fate?” The influence of Zola on American naturalists can hardly be understated. Norris, for example, sometimes signed his letters “the boy Zola,” and Crane wrote that his character Maggie Johnson “blossomed in a mud puddle,” much as Zola's character Nana was “a plant nurtured on a dung heap.”

In a word, the strategies of both realism and naturalism depend upon a quasi-scientific method of detailed observation, but in the case of naturalism the science is rooted in Darwin's theory of evolution. As Malcolm Cowley explained in ‘Not Men’: A Natural History of American Naturalism ( Kenyon Review , Summer 1947 ), “The Naturalistic writers were all determinists in that they believed in the omnipotence of abstract forces. They were pessimists so far as they believed that men and women were absolutely incapable of shaping their own destinies.” Similarly, Lars Åhnebrink , in The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction ( 1950 ), allowed that the naturalist “portrays life as it is in accordance with the philosophical theory of determinism .” Dreiser variously described Carrie Meeber, for example, as “a waif amid forces,” “a wisp in the wind,” a “wisp on the tide,” and he referred in Sister Carrie ( 1900 ) and An American Tragedy in pseudoscientific terms to such body chemicals as “katastates” and “anastates” and to “chemisms” in an attempt to explain all thoughts and emotional responses as mere chemical reactions in the blood.

In all, naturalism was a literature of despair that repudiated the optimism and idealism of the Enlightenment. American naturalists tended to emphasize environmental factors in the formation of character, European naturalists heredity factors. Most American literary naturalists were also Social Darwinists who applied Darwin's biological theories of natural selection to models of social organization, arguing by analogy that just as the fittest of each species in nature struggles for existence by adapting to its environment, the fittest human competitors best adapt to social conditions and thrive and prosper. Crane made the point in a poem that is a virtual Social Darwinian parable:

The trees in the garden rained flowers. Children ran there joyously. They gathered the flowers Each to himself. Now there were some Who gathered great heaps— Having opportunity and skill— Until, behold, only chance blossoms Remained for the feeble. Then a little spindling tutor Ran importantly to the father, crying: “Pray, come hither! “See this unjust thing in your garden!” But when the father had surveyed He admonished the tutor: “Not so, small sage! “This thing is just. “For, look you, “Are not they who possess the flowers “Stronger, bolder, shrewder “Than they who have none? “Why should the strong— “The beautiful strong— “Why should they not have the flowers?” Upon reflection, the tutor bowed to the ground. “My lord,” he said, “The stars are displaced “By this towering wisdom.”

Similarly, the opening chapter of Dreiser's The Financier ( 1912 ) portrayed a battle to the death between an octopus and a squid. Young Frank Cowperwood wonders how life is organized and observes the battle in a tank at a fish market near his home. Gradually, the lobster devours the squid and answers the riddle young Cowperwood had been pondering: “Lobsters lived on squids and other things,” and men lived on “other men.” Tennyson had mused on “Nature, red in tooth and claw” a half century before, but it remained for the naturalist writers to illustrate a ruthless struggle for existence. The theory of literary naturalism even informs such pulp novels as Edgar Rice Burroughs 's Tarzan of the Apes ( 1914 ), which thematically suggests that a white child raised in the African jungle will inevitably grow up to be “king of the apes.”

In truth, most naturalists came to Social Darwinism not through Darwin but through the social theories of Herbert Spencer. The poet Edwin Arlington Robinson lamented to a friend in 1890 that “Life was something before you came to Spencer.” When Dreiser read Spencer's First Principles ( 1862 ) in 1894 , he admitted, it “blew me, intellectually, to bits” and left him “numb.” He realized that “Man was a mechanism, undevised and uncreated, and a badly and carelessly driven one at that.…When I read Spencer I could only sigh.” He later told the novelist Frank Harris that Spencer “nearly killed me, took every shred of belief away from me; showed me that I was a chemical atom in a whirl of unknown forces; the realization clouded my mind.” Similarly, Jack London recalled in his autobiographical novel, Martin Eden ( 1909 ), his own introduction to “the man Spencer.…There was no caprice, no chance. All was law.” In brief, naturalism gleans from Darwin the metaphor of the jungle; from Spencer the metaphor of the “struggle for existence” in society; from Freud the inviolable determinism of the unconscious; from Marx a sense of economic determinism; from positivism in general and Auguste Comte in particular a doctrine of environmental determinism; and from Hippolyte Taine the notion of literature as the product of race or national character, moment, and social milieu.

While the canonical American naturalists are usually considered sui generis —some literary historians even assert that no American realist became a naturalist—both Howells and Twain commented on the doctrine of determinism in their late fiction. In The Landlord at Lion's Head and The Son of Royal Langbrith ( 1904 ), Howells considered the possibility of biological determinism along the lines of Zola. And Huckleberry Finn contains hints of Twain's belief in environmental determinism. (“I never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it.”) Both A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson were thematically devoted to illustrating how environment shapes character. “Training is everything”—this exact phrase appears in both chapter 18 of the former novel (“Training—training is everything; training is all there is to a person”) and as an epigraph to chapter 5 of the latter. (“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”) Twain expressed his ideas about environmental determinism most fully in his philosophical treatise What Is Man? ( 1906 ): “The human being is merely a machine, and nothing more.…A man is never anything but what his outside influences have made him.”

Little wonder Cowley concluded that the net effect of naturalism was “to subtract from literature the whole notion of human responsibility.” As Norris wrote of the brutish “second self” of his protagonist in McTeague ( 1899 ), “Below the fine fabric of all that was good in him ran the foul stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. The vices and sins of his father and of his father's father, to the third and fourth and five hundredth generation, tainted him. The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins. Why should it be? He did not desire it. Was he to blame?” The author's answer is obvious: of course not. Or as Dreiser noted in chapter 7 of Sister Carrie , “On the tiger no responsibility rests.” Crime in the naturalistic novel—such as McTeague's murder of Trina, Hurstwood's theft of money from his employers in Sister Carrie , or Clyde Griffith's murder of Roberta Alden in An American Tragedy ( 1925 )—was the result of uncontrollable passions and forces, not personal volition. Similarly, Crane inscribed the flyleaf of a presentation copy of his novel Maggie, A Girl of the Streets :

It is inevitable that you will be greatly shocked by this book, but continue, please, with all courage to the end. For, it tries to show that environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless. If one proves that theory, one makes room in Heaven for all sorts of souls, notably an occasional street girl, who are not confidently expected to be there by many excellent people.

Yet Crane's comment also illustrates a dilemma faced by the naturalist. To the extent that he objectively portrayed the plight of the underclass and described the deterministic forces that shape character, he was faithful to the tenets of naturalism. To the extent he wrote a brief for the defense of the underclass or preached a message, however, he violated the principle of scientific objectivity and became an advocate for reform rather than an objective scientist. Form had been sacrificed to theme, as in Maggie or Upton Sinclair 's The Jungle ( 1906 ), or even Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath ( 1939 ). Unlike realism, doctrinaire naturalistic texts rarely advocated social reform. Indeed, the naturalistic theory of mind went hand in glove with the Gospel of Wealth of such industrialists as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner . Whereas naturalism shares with realism the ambition of depicting the experience of everyday men and women accurately, it also shares with modernism an epistemological skepticism, a belief in the nonteleological or purposeless nature of the universe. Though many of the naturalists were leftists (including Dreiser, London, Sinclair, and Steinbeck), their theoretically objective literary perspective warred with their politics. Or as Charles C. Walcutt explains in American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream ( 1956 ), “all ‘naturalistic’ novels exist in a tension between determinism and its antithesis. The reader is aware of the opposition between what the artist says about man's fate and what his saying it affirms about man's hope.”

A naturalistic corollary to the doctrine of determinism was the indifference if not malevolence of nature. In Placer County, California, Norris writes in McTeague , nature “is a vast, unconquered brute of the Pliocene epoch, savage, sullen, and magnificently indifferent to man.” Similarly, in The Octopus ( 1901 ) his narrator opines that “Nature is a gigantic engine, a vast cyclopean power, huge, terrible, a leviathan with a heart of steel, knowing no compunction, no forgiveness, no tolerance; crushing out the human atom standing in its way, with nirvanic calm.” In The Blue Hotel ( 1898 ), Crane marvels on “the existence of man” suffering a blizzard and concedes “a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb.” Or, as Crane wrote in one of his poems,

A man said to the universe “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”

Naturalism As Literary Practice

Theoretically, the naturalistic tale might be a “success story,” with the hero achieving ever greater triumphs. In practice, however, the naturalistic tale was almost always a “failure story” or “plot of decline,” with an unfit protagonist like Eugene O'Neill's Brutus Jones slowly degenerating, falling ever lower on the evolutionary ladder. Norris's McTeague is depicted as an atavist fated eventually to die. Dreiser 's An American Tragedy was among other things a parody of the Horatio Alger myth of success. Jack London's To Build a Fire ( 1908 ) features a foolish and unfit protagonist who deserves to die, and his The Law of Life ( 1901 ) depicts the necessary sacrifice of a tribal elder when he becomes a liability to the survival of the group. Such tales were often shocking to readers, and Maggie, The Red Badge of Courage ( 1895 ), and Sister Carrie were all published in expurgated versions at the insistence of publishers. Moreover, even though many naturalists (Dreiser, Crane, and Harold Frederic, for instance) began their careers as journalists, they employed a self-consciously crude style of writing. As Norris declared, “Give us stories now, give us men, strong, brutal men, with red-hot blood in 'em, with unleashed passions rampant in 'em, blood and bones and viscera in 'em, and women, too, that move and have their being, people that love and hate.…We don't want literature, we want life. We don't want fine writing, we want short stories.”

However crude the naturalistic style, it did exhibit certain recurring hallmarks. Virtually all naturalistic novels were written from the third-person omniscient point of view. The naturalist was, after all, a type of scientist, his novel a type of laboratory report. (There were rare exceptions, such as Jack London's The Sea-Wolf [ 1904 ].) Whereas the realist aimed to draw “rounded” or credible individual characters, the naturalist portrayed representative and recurring types such as the brute (for example, Norris's McTeague and Vandover and the Brute [ 1914 ] and O'Neill 's The Hairy Ape [ 1921 ]) and the spectator or observer (Presley in The Octopus or Ames in Sister Carrie , for instance). Unfortunately, the trend among naturalists to portray types also prompted them to reinforce racial and ethnic stereotypes and to assume the superiority of Anglo-Saxon civilization according to the standard science of the day. For example, Norris depicted a Jewish junk collector through anti-Semitic stereotyping in McTeague , Crane portrayed a comic Sambo in “The Monster” ( 1898 ), and London condescended to a number of racial types in his Klondike and South Seas fiction. Such belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority would point, in the end, to Gilman's endorsement of the early- twentieth-century eugenics movement in her novel, Herland ( 1915 ).

There were other formal characteristics of literary naturalism. Naturalists frequently employed organic, especially animal, metaphors. Obviously, such metaphors had been used prior to the publication of On the Origin of Species ( 1859 ), but after the publication of Darwin's theory of natural selection they would have an entirely new resonance. McTeague is a bull, Maggie's brother Jimmie is a fighting cock, and the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath is implicitly compared to a land turtle. Naturalists also often invoked sports or gaming metaphors, as when Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage compares a military battle to a football game. Plots were occasionally organized around such forms of cutthroat competition as labor strikes (for instance, Sister Carrie , Norris's The Octopus , Sinclair's The Jungle , Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle [ 1936 ] and The Grapes of Wrath ) or, for obvious reasons, warfare (Crane's The Red Badge of Courage , Willa Cather's One of Ours [ 1922 ], Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bells Tolls [ 1940 ], Wharton's A Son at the Front [ 1923 ], Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead [ 1948 ], and James Jones's From Here to Eternity [ 1951 ] are examples). Naturalistic novels were often bloated with detailed descriptions of insulated settings, such as Rum Alley in Maggie , based on Hell's Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan; the Polk Street neighborhood of San Francisco in McTeague ; and first a ship and then an island in London's The Sea-Wolf . If a writer is an environmental determinist, after all, he or she labors under the obligation of depicting the environment in minute detail. Taking their cue from Zola's twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle ( 1871–1893 ), moreover, several naturalists planned or completed trilogies of novels. Dreiser projected a “trilogy of Desire” and Norris anticipated a “trilogy of the Wheat.” John Dos Passos's U.S.A. ( 1938 ) comprised three published novels, James T. Farrell wrote a “Studs Lonigan” and “Danny O'Neill” series, and Eugene O'Neill wrote Mourning Becomes Electra ( 1931 ) and later projected a cycle of plays on American history, of which the completed A Touch of the Poet ( 1946 ) and More Stately Mansions ( 1964 ) were to be a part.

Above all, the naturalists tended to be critical of the “teacup tragedies” of Howellsian realism. “Realism is minute; it is the drama of a broken teacup, the tragedy of a walk down the block, the excitement of an afternoon call, the adventure of an invitation to dinner,” Norris complained. Naturalism, in contrast, should explore “the unplumbed depths of the human heart, and the mystery of sex, and the problems of life, and the black, unsearched penetralia of the soul of man.” In fine, “terrible things must happen to the characters in a naturalistic novel.” Broadly speaking, too, there were generational differences between realists and naturalists. Realists like James and Howells matured as writers in the 1870s and 1880s, whereas naturalists like Crane and Norris matured in the 1890s. But these differences should not be exaggerated. After all, James and Howells remained essentially realistic and remarkably prolific writers until their deaths in 1916 and 1920 , respectively, whereas Crane and Norris both were dead by 1902 , Crane at the age of twenty-eight, Norris at thirty-two.

Twentieth-Century Developments

Some of Crane's later writings, such as The Red Badge of Courage and “The Blue Hotel,” represent a variation on the naturalistic tradition and point in the direction of literary impressionism and modernism. Crane asserted in War Memories ( 1899 ) that he was trying to imitate in words what the French impressionists were doing with light and color: “I bring this to you merely as an effect—an effect of mental light and shade, if you like: something done in thought similar to that which the French Impressionists do in color; something meaningless and at the same time overwhelming, crushing, monstrous.” The Red Badge of Courage essentially recounts through his impressions the fears and illusions of its ironic soldier-hero, Henry Fleming. All events are filtered through his vision, his sense perceptions. Not only is there no objectivity to his story, the very notion of reality is a shifting and unstable construction of Fleming's imagination. Put another way, by the end of his life Crane had begun to develop naturalistic themes in an impressionistic style. His later tales anticipate Hemingway's terse style, with frequent shifts in point of view, and in fact Hemingway later praised Crane's masterful method in such stories as The Blue Hotel and The Open Boat ( 1894 ).

The proletarian writers of the early twentieth century , such as Sinclair ( The Jungle ), Jack Conroy ( A World to Win [ 1935 ]), and Robert Cantwell ( The Land of Plenty [ 1934 ]), attempted to graft their leftist politics onto naturalism, a project that met with decidedly mixed results. The hybrid betrayed the “divided stream” of American naturalism in unusual degree. The Jungle may have been the earliest American proletarian novel, and it is often credited with catalyzing support for the Pure Food and Drug Act ( 1906 ), but as a novel it is crudely constructed and basically breaks in half when the proletarian hero, Jurgis Rudkus, is thrown in jail and, upon his release, leaves Chicago. As Sinclair later conceded, he “aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Naturalism, as Cowley explains in “ ‘Not Men,’ ” was fundamentally “unsuited” to the “essentially religious purpose” of the proletarian writers. Given the deterministic bias of naturalism, the proletarian writers were simply unable to explain the conversion of a character to socialism or other forms of radical politics.

The last major controversy over naturalism in literature occurred in the 1940s, and it centered on the possibility of “naturalistic tragedy.” During the 1880s the Scandinavian playwrights Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg had conceived of their plays Ghosts ( 1881 ) and Miss Julie ( 1888 ) as naturalistic tragedies. But tragedy, according to its Aristotelian definition, affirms the significance of human life: through the imitation of noble actions ending in catastrophe, a tragic hero falls from a high place and the audience experiences a catharsis of “pity and fear.” Joseph Wood Krutch , in The Tragic Fallacy , a chapter in The Modern Temper ( 1929 ), countered that the phrase “naturalistic tragedy” is an oxymoron. “We write no tragedies today,” Krutch argued, because modern science has enfeebled the human spirit. “If the plays and novels of today deal with littler people and less mighty emotions,” he added, “it is not because we have become interested in commonplace souls and their unglamorous adventures but because we have come, willy-nilly, to see the soul of man as commonplace and its emotions as mean.” When writers turned “from the hero to the common man,” they “inaugurated the era of realism.” These arguments prompted Arthur Miller 's dramatic experiment, Death of a Salesman ( 1948 ). In effect, Miller replied to Krutch in an essay explaining why he wrote the play: “In this age few tragedies are written,” he declared. “It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science.” The tragic mode may seem “archaic, fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the kingly,” but “I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were.” So Miller portrayed his hapless salesman Willy Loman (low man) as a tragic hero.

The tradition of realism and naturalism has left an indelible mark on American fiction. Even today, some elements of naturalism surface in the fiction of Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer, for example, and John Updike is a type of neo-realist with affinities to Howells. Whatever the posturings of the postmodernists, literary historians may claim for no other American literary tradition the achievements of the realists and naturalists.

See also Anderson, Sherwood ; Chesnutt, Charles W. ; Chopin, Kate ; Crane, Stephen, and his The Red Badge of Courage ; Dreiser, Theodore ; Dunbar, Paul Laurence ; Garland, Hamlin ; Harte, Bret ; Howells, William Dean ; James, Henry ; Jewett, Sarah Orne ; London, Jack ; Masters, Edgar Lee ; Miller, Arthur, and his Death of a Salesman ; Norris, Frank ; O'Neill, Eugene ; Robinson, Edwin Arlington ; Sinclair, Upton, and the Muckrakers ; Steinbeck, John, and his The Grapes of Wrath ; Twain, Mark ; Wharton, Edith ; and Wright, Richard .

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Realism and Naturalism

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Realism and Naturalism by John Dudley LAST REVIEWED: 29 August 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0059

Variously defined as distinct philosophical approaches, complementary aesthetic strategies, or broad literary movements, realism and naturalism emerged as the dominant categories applied to American fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Included under the broad umbrella of realism are a diverse set of authors, including Henry James, W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, George Washington Cable, Rebecca Harding Davis, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Hamlin Garland. Often categorized as regionalists or local colorists, many of these writers produced work that emphasized geographically distinct dialects and customs. Others offered satirical fiction or novels of manners that exposed the excesses, hypocrisies, or shortcomings of a culture undergoing radical social change. A subsequent generation of writers, including Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, and Jack London, are most often cited as the American inheritors of the naturalist approach practiced by Emile Zola, whose 1880 treatise Le Roman Experimental applied the experimental methods of medical science to the construction of the novel. Governed by a combination of heredity, environment, and chance, the typical characters of naturalist fiction find themselves constrained from achieving the transcendent goals suggested by a false ideology of romantic individualism. Over the past century, critics and literary historians have alternately viewed realist and naturalist texts as explicit condemnations of the economic, cultural, or ethical deficiencies of the industrialized age or as representations of the very ideological forces they purport to critique. Accordingly, an exploration of these texts raises important questions about the relationship between literature and society, and about our understanding of the “real” or the “natural” as cultural and literary phenomena. Though of little regard in the wake of the New Critics’ emphasis on metaphysics and formal innovation, a revived interest in realism as the American adaptation of an international movement aligned with egalitarian and democratic ideology emerged in the 1960s, as did an effort to redefine naturalist fiction as a more complex form belonging to the broader mainstream of American literary history. More recently, the emergence of deconstructive, Marxist, and new historicist criticism in the 1980s afforded a revised, and often skeptical, reevaluation of realism and naturalism as more conflicted forms, itself defined or constructed by hegemonic forces and offering insight into late-19th- and early-20th-century ideologies of class, race, and gender.

In the wake of Parrington’s attempt to reconcile the rise of realism and naturalism with an essentially romantic tradition ( Parrington 1930 ), interest in the rise of these movements has occurred in waves. In particular, efforts to provide large-scale summaries reflect the attention to social problems in 1960s, and the influence of—and reaction to—post-structuralism and cultural criticism in the 1980s. In all cases, however, comprehensive hypotheses about the nature of realism and naturalism remain grounded, to a large extent, in the political, economic, and cultural history of the late 19th century. Berthoff 1965 , Pizer 1984 , and Lehan 2005 represent attempts to accommodate the horizons established by Parrington’s definition of the study of literary form. Kaplan 1988 , Borus 1989 , and Bell 1993 each make valuable contributions to the new historicist reexamination of naturalism. Murphy 1987 offers one of the few comprehensive accounts of realism within dramatic literature.

Bell, Michael Davitt. The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Provides compelling readings of the canonical authors, suggesting little common ground beyond the fact that both realism and naturalism explicitly reject the conventional dictates of artistry and dominant notions of style. Unified in their attraction to “reality” as an abstraction, Howells, Twain, James, Norris, Crane, Dreiser, and Jewett each constructed radically unique responses to a common “revolt against style” (p. 115)

Berthoff, Warner. The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884–1919 . New York: Free Press, 1965.

Suggests that realism as a category may be best understood though an examination of practice, rather than through the study of principles or theories. In this light, establishes forceful reading of realist novels as varied statements of outrage and opposition to the increasing materialism, disorder, and perceived moral decay in the years leading up to World War I.

Borus, Daniel H. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Draws on concerns of new historicism, yet emphasizes the process of literary publication and reception itself. Explores Howells, James, and Norris in detail, with some attention to other writers, including compelling discussions of the publishing industry, literary celebrity, and rise of the political novel.

Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Includes a concise summary of earlier critical debates about realism (including and subsuming naturalism) and describes the cultural work in novels of Howells, Wharton, and Dreiser to construct social spaces that contain and defuse class tensions emerging in the late 19th century. Among the more influential new historicist interventions.

Lehan, Richard Daniel. Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.

Resolutely formalist overview of realism and naturalism as literary modes. Describes the philosophical and cultural assumptions that helped shape these movements and traces their development throughout the 20th century. At times polemical in its dismissal of post-structuralist or materialist rereadings (see, for example, Kaplan 1988 ; Howard 1985 or Michaels 1987 , both cited under Philosophy, History, and Form ), nonetheless immensely useful and readable synthesis of key ideas.

Murphy, Brenda. American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940 . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

A treatment of realism in American theater, tracing the development of realist ideas about dramatic representation and their subsequent influence on American dramatists of the 20th century, including Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, and others. Addresses the scant attention paid to the theater in the scholarship on realism.

Parrington, Vernon Louis. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, 1860–1920 . Vol. 3, Main Currents in American Thought . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930.

Though left incomplete at Parrington’s death, offers what would become the dominant view of realism and naturalism for much subsequent criticism. Sees these movements as antitheses of idealism represented by the Emersonian tradition, providing a needed corrective to “shoddy romanticism” that threatened to consume the American literary tradition.

Pizer, Donald. Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature . Rev. ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.

Revision of essential 1966 work, offering a comprehensive formal theory of realism and naturalism, linked by adherence to an ethical idealism that informs, restructures, and complicates the diversity of themes and topics, the often bleak subject matter, and the presence of a deterministic worldview. Collects a variety of essays that construct a coherent portrait of the movements and their defining tensions.

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Home › The Naturalism of Émile Zola

The Naturalism of Émile Zola

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 8, 2018 • ( 2 )

The novels of the French writer Émile Zola (1840–1902) move toward a more extreme form of realism known as naturalism, taking its name from its allegedly scientific impulse to base its characters, events, and explanations on natural rather than supernatural or divine causes. Perhaps more than any other major literary figure, Émile Zola registered in his fiction and his critical theory the rising tide of scientific advance in the later nineteenth century. Zola was deeply conscious of these movements toward naturalism, toward the restriction of one’s inquiries to the realm of nature (the realm of science, as opposed to the realm of supernature or the supernatural), and he saw naturalistic literature as merely a natural extension and completion of a far broader positivistic movement in recent history.

As such, Zola was the leading figure of French naturalism. He wrote a cycle of twenty novels under the rubric of Les Rougon-Macquart , concerning the two branches of a family, the Rougons and the Macquarts. Zola traced the “natural and social history” of this family through a number of generations, laying emphasis upon their behavior as influenced by heredity and environment. Some of the best known of these novels are L’Assommoir (1877), Nana (1880), and Germinal (1885). Zola’s essay The Experimental Novel (1880) attempted a justification of his own novelistic practice, and became the seminal manifesto of naturalism.

Zola makes it clear at the outset of his essay that the inspiration and foundation of his arguments was Claude Bernard ’s essay Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale , which had endeavored to show that medicine had a scientific basis, namely, the “experimental method.”1 Bernard had argued that this method, already used in the study of inanimate bodies in physics and chemistry, should also be used in the study of living bodies in the fields of physiology and medicine (2). Essentially, Zola sees Bernard’s attempt as a symptom of a larger pattern of intellectual development: the nineteenth century, he remarks, is marked by a “return to nature,” to natural and scientific explanation of all phenomena. Zola wishes to argue for “a literature governed by science.” He wishes to extend Bernard’s arguments specifically to the realm of the novel, thereby situating fiction and literature within this overall direction of scientific advance. Where Bernard aims to extend scientific study into the realm of physiology and medicine, Zola desires to extend it even further, into the realm of “the passionate and intellectual life” (2).

What are the premises of the so-called experimental method? According to Bernard, as reported by Zola, the experimentalist is distinguished from the mere observer in that the latter “relates purely and simply the phenomena which he has under his eyes . . . He should be the photographer of phenomena, his observation should be an exact representation of nature” (7). The experimentalist, on the other hand, directly intervenes in, and modifies, these phenomena for specific heuristic purposes, to confirm or disprove an experimental idea or hypothesis (6–7). The experimental method or experimental reasoning is “based on doubt, for the experimentalist should have no preconceived idea, in the face of nature, and should always retain his liberty of thought” (3). Bernard, as quoted by Zola, distinguishes experimental reasoning from scholastic inquiry: “it is precisely the scholastic, who believes he has absolute certitude, who attains to no results . . . by his belief in an absolute principle he puts himself outside of nature . . . It is . . . the experimenter, who is always in doubt . . . who succeeds in mastering the phenomena which surround him, and in increasing his power over nature” (26). Hence this scientific method overturns and rejects all previous authority: “it recognizes no authority but that of facts . . . The experimental method is the scientific method which proclaims the liberty of thought. It not only throws off the philosophical and theological yoke, but it no longer admits scientific personal authority” (44). Zola accepts Bernard’s characterization of the stages of progress of the human mind, through “feeling, reason, and experiment”: at first, feeling, which dominated reason, created theology; then reason or philosophy, assuming the dominant role, engendered scholasticism; finally, experiment, or the study of natural phenomena, brought us to “the objective reality of things.” Hence the experimental method of science is the culmination of a historical development which is progressively rational and naturalistic (33–34).

The second and related major principle of science, according to Bernard, and Zola after him, is the belief in an “absolute determinism” in natural phenomena; in other words, there is no phenomenon, no occurrence in nature, which does not have a determining cause or complex of causes (3). An important aspect of this principle is that science shows us “the limit of our actual knowledge.” But such a recognition of what we can and cannot know is empowering: “as science humbles our pride, it strengthens our power” (22). A passage from Zola neatly sums up this part of his argument, whereby he situates literature within the general context of scientific advance:

the experimental novel is a consequence of the scientific evolution of the century; it continues and completes physiology, which itself leans for support on chemistry and medicine; it substitutes for the study of the abstract and the metaphysical man the study of the natural man, governed by physical or chemical laws, and modified by the influences of his surroundings; it is in one word the literature of our scientific age, as the classical and romantic literature corresponded to a scholastic and theological age. (23)

What does all of this mean in practice for the naturalistic novel? To begin with, Zola’s attitude represents an extreme reaction against Romanticism and all forms of mysticism and supernaturalism. Zola sees his own literary era as placing an exaggerated emphasis on form and as “rotten with lyricism” (48). He insists that the subject matter of the experimental novelist is rooted in actuality, in observation of human beings and their passions; he conducts a “real experiment” by altering the conditions and circumstances of the characters he creates, positing certain causes of their actions (10–11). Such an attitude is directly opposed to attitudes such as vitalism, which “consider life as a mysterious and supernatural agent, which acts arbitrarily, free from all determinism” (15). Anticipating Freud, Zola extends the principle of determinism from its application throughout natural phenomena to encompass human behavior. He extends the principle to literature, to the novel, which is a “general inquiry on nature and on man” (38), saying that “there is an absolute determinism for all human phenomena” (18). Zola sees this determinism, then, as both external and internal, as governing the external world and the psychology of man (17). Novelists should, he urges, “operate on the characters, the passions, on the human and social data, in the same way that the chemist and the physicist operate on inanimate beings, and as the physiologist operates on living beings. Determinism dominates everything.” As such, “purely imaginary novels” should be replaced by “novels of observation and experiment” (18).

If determinism dominates in both worlds, in nature and in the mind of man, the experimental novel must consider man in both social and psychological aspects. He suggests that “heredity has a great influence in the intellectual and passionate manifestations of man.” Considerable importance must also be attached to the “surroundings” (19). Hence, while he acknowledges that the novelist should continue the physiologist’s study of the “thoughts and passions,” he reminds us that these are not produced in a vacuum: “Man is not alone; he lives in society, in a social condition; and consequently, for us novelists, this social condition unceasingly modifies the phenomena. Indeed our great study is just there, in the reciprocal effect of society on the individual and the individual on society” (20). Zola sees the experimental novel as freeing this literary genre from “the atmosphere of lies and errors in which it is plunged” (42). The following is perhaps Zola’s most comprehensive definition of the program of the experimental novel:

this is what constitutes the experimental novel: to possess a knowledge of the mechanism of the phenomena inherent in man, to show the machinery of his intellectual and sensory manifestations, under the influences of heredity and environment, such as physiology shall give them to us, and then finally to exhibit man living in social conditions produced by himself, which he modifies daily, and in the heart of which he himself experiences a continual transformation. (21)

Hence, Zola views literature as not merely the expression of an author’s mentality; the artist’s personality, he says, “is always subject to the higher law of truth and nature.” In fact, this personality is manifested only in the formal aspects of the novel rather than in its truth-value, which is independent of any such subjective basis (51). Zola explains that in the experimental novel all existing rhetorical elements are still allowed, since they do not impinge at all on the method of the novel (48).

The Titans: The Warrior of Words (Emile Zola)

Notes 1. Émile Zola, The Experimental Novel and Other Essays, trans. Belle M. Sherman (New York: Haskell House, 1964), p. 1. Hereafter page citations are given in the text.

The Influence of Naturalism in 19th Century Literature: Exploring the Realistic Portrayal of Human Experiences

Welcome to my blog, 19th Century , where we delve into the captivating world of naturalism in the 19th century . Explore the raw and unfiltered beauty that emerged during this era, as artists and thinkers sought to capture the essence of reality. Join me on this journey as we uncover the mesmerizing intricacies of nature through the eyes of influential figures from the 19th century.

Table of Contents

The Emergence of Naturalism in the 19th Century: An Exploration of Realism and Scientific Determinism

The 19th century witnessed the emergence of Naturalism as a prominent literary and artistic movement. During this time, there was a shift towards representing reality in a more objective and scientific manner. Naturalist writers and artists sought to depict life as it truly was, often focusing on the gritty and harsh aspects of human existence.

Realism played a crucial role in laying the foundation for Naturalism. Realist writers like Gustave Flaubert and Honoré de Balzac aimed to portray everyday life with accuracy and detail. They rejected romanticized and idealized depictions of reality, instead opting for an unvarnished portrayal of society. Realism aimed to reflect the social, political, and economic realities of the time, tackling topics such as poverty, class struggle, and the effects of industrialization.

Scientific determinism also influenced Naturalism to a great extent. As the scientific advancements of the 19th century , particularly in fields like biology and sociology, began to shape people’s understanding of the world, artists and writers started exploring the idea that human behavior and destiny were determined by external factors rather than individual agency. They believed that forces such as heredity, environment, and social conditions exerted a powerful influence on individuals, shaping their actions and determining their fate.

Naturalist works often portrayed characters as victims of their circumstances, highlighting the impact of societal forces on their lives. This deterministic perspective challenged traditional notions of free will and moral responsibility, offering a more pessimistic and fatalistic view of human existence.

Naturalism emerged as a response to the changing cultural landscape of the 19th century. Realism and scientific determinism played crucial roles in shaping this movement, which sought to depict reality with uncompromising honesty and examine the deterministic forces that governed human behavior. The exploration of these themes marked a significant departure from earlier literary movements and left a lasting impact on the artistic and intellectual landscape of the time.

What Was Romanticism And Why Was It So Vital For Art? | Landmarks Of Western Art | Perspective

What is literary realism 7 aspects of realist novels, what was the concept of naturalism.

Naturalism was a literary movement that emerged in the 19th century as a response to the rise of industrialization and scientific advancements. It aimed to portray life and society in an objective and unfiltered manner, emphasizing the influence of social, economic, and environmental forces on individuals.

Naturalist writers sought to depict characters as products of their environment, shaped by both heredity and circumstances. They believed that humans were subject to the same laws of nature as animals, and that their lives were determined by external factors rather than personal agency or divine intervention. This perspective reflected the growing influence of Darwinian theories of evolution.

In naturalist literature, themes of determinism prevailed, highlighting how characters were constrained and influenced by their social class, race, and environment. Naturalist writers often focused on the darker aspects of life , exploring topics such as poverty, violence, and desperation. They aimed to expose the harsh realities of society and challenge prevailing notions of morality and free will.

Notable naturalist writers of the 19th century include Émile Zola, Theodore Dreiser, and Stephen Crane. Their works often depicted characters from various social backgrounds , portraying them in gritty and realistic settings. Overall, naturalism was characterized by its commitment to objective observation and its portrayal of human beings as products of their surroundings, offering a critical lens through which to examine society and its flaws.

Who embodies naturalism in 19th century American literature?

One of the key figures who embodies naturalism in 19th century American literature is Stephen Crane . Crane’s works, such as “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” reflect a deterministic view of life, presenting characters who are shaped by their environment and circumstances. They often struggle against forces beyond their control, such as poverty, violence, and war. Crane’s writing style, marked by vivid imagery and stark realism, captures the harsh realities of life in the late 1800s. He portrays human beings as helpless creatures caught in a larger natural order, where individual agency and free will are limited. Crane’s work exemplifies the naturalistic movement that sought to depict life as it truly was, devoid of romantic idealism or moralizing.

What are the key features of naturalism?

Naturalism was a literary movement that emerged in the late 19th century and was characterized by a depiction of life through a scientific and deterministic lens. Here are some key features of naturalism:

1. Determinism: Naturalism embraced the idea that human behavior and actions were determined by external forces such as heredity, environment, and social conditions. Individuals were seen as products of their circumstances rather than agents of free will.

2. Pessimism: Naturalistic works often portrayed a bleak and pessimistic view of life, emphasizing the harsh realities of the human condition. Themes of poverty, inequality, and suffering were common in naturalistic literature.

3. Social commentary: Naturalist writers used their works to critique social institutions and expose the flaws of society. They explored issues such as poverty, class struggles, corruption, and the impact of industrialization on human lives.

4. Scientific objectivity: Naturalistic writers sought to apply scientific principles to the study of human behavior and society. They emphasized observation, research, and the use of empirical evidence to depict realistic and accurate portrayals of life.

5. Focus on the lower classes: Naturalism often focused on the lives of the working class, portraying their struggles, hardships, and lack of opportunities. This emphasis on the lower classes aimed to shed light on the social injustices and inequalities prevalent during the time.

6. Environmental influences: Naturalistic works highlighted the significant impact that the environment had on shaping human behavior. The surroundings, including nature, urban settings, and social conditions, were believed to shape and control individual lives.

Overall, naturalism sought to present a scientific, objective, and unromanticized portrayal of human existence, influenced by the social, economic, and biological factors of the 19th century.

What are five characteristics of naturalism?

Naturalism, a literary movement of the 19th century, sought to depict life and human behavior as it truly is, without idealization or romanticism. Here are five key characteristics of naturalism:

1. Determinism : Naturalism rejects the notion of free will and emphasizes that individuals are shaped by external forces such as environment, heredity, and society. Characters in naturalist literature often find themselves trapped in situations they cannot control.

2. Pessimism : Naturalist writers typically have a pessimistic view of human existence. They portray life as harsh, brutal, and indifferent, with little hope for improvement or redemption. This bleak outlook reflects the influence of scientific theories like Darwinism and Marxism.

3. Objectivity : Naturalist authors strive for objectivity in their writing, presenting events and characters in an unemotional and detached manner. They avoid moral judgments and allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the characters and their actions.

4. Social Determinism : Naturalism places considerable emphasis on social conditions and their impact on individuals. Writers explore how factors such as poverty, class, and social inequality shape a character’s behavior and limit their opportunities for advancement.

5. Scientific Influence : Naturalism draws heavily from scientific theories of the time, including Darwinism and the ideas of social scientists such as Émile Zola. Naturalist writers employ observation, detail, and scientific method in their work, often adopting a precise and detailed writing style.

These characteristics define the naturalist movement of the 19th century, highlighting its objective and scientific approach to portraying reality and exploring the deterministic nature of human existence.

Frequently Asked Questions

What were the key characteristics of naturalism in the 19th century and how did it differ from other literary movements of the time.

Naturalism was a literary movement that emerged in the late 19th century as a response to the industrialization and social changes taking place during that time. It sought to present a more scientific and objective view of human behavior and the natural world.

Key characteristics of naturalism include a focus on determinism, where characters are shaped by their environment and biological influences beyond their control. Naturalist writers often depicted characters from lower social classes and explored themes of poverty, violence, and the struggles of survival. Furthermore, naturalism emphasized documentation and observation, often incorporating detailed descriptions of the physical and social environment.

Naturalism differed from other literary movements of the time by its emphasis on portraying the harsh realities of life and avoiding idealized depictions. Romanticism, for example, celebrated imagination, beauty, and individuality, while naturalism aimed to present life’s grim truths with scientific precision.

Another significant contrast can be observed between naturalism and realism. While both movements sought to depict reality accurately, naturalism went further by delving into the influence of heredity and environment on human behavior. Naturalist writers believed that individuals were products of their circumstances and had limited control over their destinies.

Naturalism in the 19th century was characterized by its scientific approach to literature, exploration of harsh realities, and its focus on the deterministic nature of human existence. It stood apart from other movements by its emphasis on depicting life in a less idealized manner and its deeper analysis of the impact of environment and biology on individuals.

How did naturalist writers in the 19th century explore the themes of determinism, social inequality, and the impact of environment on individuals?

In the 19th century, naturalist writers explored the themes of determinism, social inequality, and the impact of environment on individuals through their literary works. Naturalism, as a literary movement, focused on portraying life as it was, often emphasizing the influence of external factors on an individual’s fate.

Determinism, the idea that human actions are predetermined by external forces, was a central theme in naturalist literature. Writers such as Émile Zola and Stephen Crane explored this concept by presenting characters whose lives were shaped by their environment and circumstances. They believed that individuals had little control over their destinies due to the powerful influence of social and environmental forces.

Social inequality was another prevalent theme in 19th-century naturalist writing. Authors highlighted the stark contrast between different social classes and depicted how individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds were often trapped in cycles of poverty and despair. They aimed to shed light on the harsh realities of society, exposing the systemic injustices that perpetuated inequality.

Moreover, naturalist writers paid great attention to the impact of environment on individuals. They believed that one’s surroundings played a significant role in shaping their personality, behavior, and opportunities in life. Through detailed descriptions of settings, authors like Jack London and Thomas Hardy intricately illustrated the ways in which nature and urbanization impacted characters mentally, physically, and morally.

Overall, 19th-century naturalist writers used their works to delve into the interconnectedness of determinism, social inequality, and the influence of environment on individuals . Their portrayals of harsh realities and limitations faced by characters brought attention to the larger societal issues of their time, sparking discussions and debates about the role of destiny, class divisions, and the power of the external world on human existence.

Which authors and works are considered seminal in the development of naturalism in the 19th century, and how did their writings reflect the societal and cultural changes of the time?

Some of the seminal authors and works that are considered important in the development of naturalism in the 19th century include:

1. Émile Zola: Zola is often regarded as the father of naturalism. His works, such as “Thérèse Raquin” and the twenty-volume series “Les Rougon-Macquart,” depict characters whose lives are shaped by their environment and biological instincts. Zola’s writings reflect the societal and cultural changes of the time by illustrating the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and scientific advancements on individuals and their behavior.

2. Henrik Ibsen: While primarily known for his plays, Ibsen’s work also contributes to the naturalistic movement. In his play “A Doll’s House,” Ibsen explores societal expectations, gender roles, and individual agency, reflecting the changing attitudes towards women and marriage in 19th-century society.

3. Stephen Crane: Crane’s novel “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” is a notable example of naturalistic literature in America. It portrays the life of a young girl living in poverty and the harsh reality of urban slums. Crane’s writing reflects the societal issues of urbanization, poverty, and the struggles faced by marginalized individuals.

4. Édouard Manet: Although primarily known as a painter, Manet’s work, particularly his portrayal of modern urban life, influenced naturalistic literature. His art captured scenes from contemporary society, showcasing the changing landscapes and the effects of industrialization on everyday life.

These authors and their works reflected the societal and cultural changes of the time by embracing a more realistic and scientific approach to literature. Naturalism focused on examining the influence of environment, heredity, and social determinism on characters, offering a critique of the prevailing Victorian idealism. These writings shed light on the challenges faced by individuals in the face of industrialization, urbanization, and the changing norms of society.

naturalism in the 19th century was a significant movement that emerged as a response to the rapid industrialization and social changes of the time. It sought to present a realistic portrayal of life by depicting characters and events with scientific objectivity. Naturalist writers such as Emile Zola and Stephen Crane focused on portraying the darker aspects of society, highlighting the impact of social determinism and environmental influences on human behavior.

The naturalist movement challenged traditional literary conventions by emphasizing the role of heredity, environment, and social conditions in shaping individual lives. It aimed to provide a critique of society, shedding light on issues such as poverty, inequality, and the struggles faced by marginalized individuals. This approach presented a stark contrast to the romantic ideals of earlier periods, reflecting the changing social consciousness and intellectual debates of the time.

Moreover, naturalism in the 19th century also had a profound influence on other forms of art, including painting and theater. Realistic depictions of everyday life and social issues became popular across various artistic mediums, contributing to a broader cultural movement that sought to capture the complexities and realities of the human experience.

While naturalism may have lost some of its popularity over time, its exploration of the human condition and its commitment to portraying the truth remain relevant. The movement’s emphasis on the interconnectedness of individuals with their environment provides valuable insights into the complexities of human behavior and society as a whole.

19th-century naturalism played a crucial role in challenging conventional artistic norms and fostering a more nuanced understanding of the human experience. Through its objective portrayal of reality, it continues to resonate with audiences and serve as a reminder of the power of literature and art to provoke thought and reflection.

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ENG 232 - American Literature II: Naturalism

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American Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike, Realism which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. The Naturalist believed in studying human beings as though they were "products" that are to be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures.

Man against nature
Nature is indifferent to man
The universe is deterministic

Jack London: An American Adventure

Jack London: An American Adventure 2 Titles The most ambitious biography ever made about the "master of adventure." To honor Jack London on the 100th anniversary of his death, let’s examine his outstanding life and how it reflects a turning point in American history, since Jack London participated in all its major political, cultural, and social evolutions.

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Essay Samples on Naturalism

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Reality Of Romanticism And Realism Under The Umbrella Of Gothic Genre

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Distinguishing Naturalism and Realism in Theatre Plays

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The Value of Theism Christianity and Naturalism

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Naturalism and Beneficence Related to Value Development in Nurses

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The Literary Themes in Crane's The Open Boat

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Analysis of Naturalism in Arthur Miller's Play "A View From the Bridge"

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Best topics on Naturalism

1. Paranormal and Supernatural: Scientific Explanation

2. Reality Of Romanticism And Realism Under The Umbrella Of Gothic Genre

3. Distinguishing Naturalism and Realism in Theatre Plays

4. The Value of Theism Christianity and Naturalism

5. Naturalism and Beneficence Related to Value Development in Nurses

6. The Literary Themes in Crane’s The Open Boat

7. The Open Boat: The Undertones of Naturalism and Imagery of Religion

8. Analysis of Naturalism in Arthur Miller’s Play “A View From the Bridge”

9. The Substance Of Natural Law Theory

10. Natural Law As A Focuses Of Moral Values

11. Medical Ethics’ Issues: How ethics obstruct Natural Law and Healthcare

12. Case That Illustrates The Application Of Natural Law

13. Naturalism and Natural Beauty of Art Nouveau

14. The Naturalistic Approach to Kafka’s The Trial in Berkoff’s Play

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The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism

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3 Nature in Naturalism

Bert Bender , Emeritus Professor of American Literature at Arizona State University, now lives in Atascadero, California. His books include Sea-Brothers: The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby-Dick to the Present; The Descent of Love: Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction, 1871–1926; Evolution and “the Sex Problem”: American Narratives during the Eclipse of Darwinism; and a memoir, Catching the Ebb: Drift-Fishing for a Life in Cook Inlet.

Published: 18 September 2012
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This article addresses the question of what naturalism has to do with nature. Darwinian evolution transformed the face of “nature,” shattering the idea that nature exists in a state of grand repose and projecting instead a reality of struggle, competition, and violent change—not only among plants and animals, but in human society and even within the individual chaotic mind. The idea of studying the human's place in nature—that is, to study human nature as a branch of Darwinian natural history—absolutely displaced the work of earlier writers such as Emerson or Thoreau, who believed that the soul transcends nature. But as the Darwinian revolution developed, affecting every field of thought, realist narratives began to shift from comic to more tragic presentations of people's place in nature.

First-time readers of American naturalists such as Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser might justifiably wonder what naturalism has to do with nature. It’s easy to see how London’s famous stories of the north feature landscapes from those latitudes, but what about the other naturalists? Expecting to find scenes from the green, or at least the white world, one finds instead the squalor of Crane’s Bowery, Norris’s San Francisco, or Dreiser’s Chicago. Aren’t these naturalists supposed to be nature writers? And those who might want to approach this question from another angle will find little help in such recent volumes as Literature and Nature: Four Centuries of Nature Writing (2001), where the editors avoid any mention of naturalism and include only two famous stories from that movement, Crane’s “The Open Boat” and London’s “To Build a Fire.” Worse, the editors’ only comment about these two pieces is that they describe the “struggle for survival” and serve mainly to “question American self-confidence and technological prowess” (Keegan and McKusick 771). If, having gone this far in their efforts to understand what naturalism has to do with nature, students can take comfort in knowing that even Henry James shared their confusion. Grappling with the meaning of naturalism in his 1880 review of Zola’s Nana , James wrote testily that “the only business of naturalism is to be—natural” (“Nana” 91). He felt that the novel contained only “filth” and he wondered how Zola could “call that vision of things … nature ” (92). James went on to suggest that “The mighty mother, in her blooming richness” would “blush” at Zola’s presentation of herself, and he demanded to know “on what authority does M. Zola represent nature to us” in this way (92)?

The best way to clear up this confusion is to underscore the point that American literary realism (including the later and more pessimistic variety we think of as naturalism) arose largely in response to the scientific revolution that began in the 1830s with the discovery of geological time. As Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830–33) helped clear Darwin’s way in formulating his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, the Origin of Species contributed to Lyell’s own new work in The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation (1863), and, more importantly, to the book published that same year by Thomas Henry Huxley, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature . The idea of studying the human’s place in nature—that is, to study human nature as a branch of Darwinian natural history—absolutely displaced the work of earlier writers such as Emerson or Thoreau, who believed that the soul transcends nature.

Darwinian evolution transformed the face of “nature,” shattering the idea that nature exists in a state of grand repose and projecting instead a reality of struggle, competition, and violent change—not only among plants and animals, but in human society and even within the individual chaotic mind. During the first decades of the Darwinian revolution, the young, self-described realists such as W. D. Howells and Henry James showed little interest in the supposed beauty and simplicity of rural life and were inclined instead to present scenes of city life, wherein the nature of civilized humanity could be studied with ease. They echoed new work in anthropology and sociology that reflected evolutionary change and emphasized the origins of marriage in the capture of brides. Like most writers of their generation, they took comfort in the idea that Anglo-Saxon and, especially, American civilization had evolved to such a high state that we scarcely resembled the “savage” or “barbaric” humans who still occupied the lower fringes of society. These unfortunates (particularly Native Americans and African Americans) were usually to be found only at a safe distance from the civilized town square and seemed doomed to evolutionary extinction. Of course, even civilized whites were descended from the lower primates, but writers could smile at their characters’ faintly vestigial animality and take heart in the idea that evolution was constantly lifting us to ever higher planes.

But as the Darwinian revolution developed, affecting every field of thought, realist narratives began to shift from comic to more tragic presentations of people’s place in nature. The most disturbing problem had arisen from Darwin’s prediction in the Origin of Species that “psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation” (488). Within a decade after Darwin had driven that point home with startling force in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal (1872), William James began formulating the first evolutionary psychology, The Principles of Psychology (1890), and young novelists were exploring the Darwinian unconscious. By the mid-1890s, naturalist novelists such as Harold Frederic and Stephen Crane would begin dramatizing what they called the “chaos” of their characters’ minds.

Although the realists/naturalists agreed that human nature was their essential subject, they sharply disagreed on how to define that nature. It is important to realize that, while the evolutionary view of life was reshaping virtually every discipline, even biologists, including Darwin and Wallace themselves, disagreed on just exactly how evolution by means of natural selection proceeds. Similarly, while the realists/naturalists all assumed an evolutionary reality of some kind, they differed in their interpretations of evolution and human nature. Sharp disagreements often arose even among writers who considered themselves Darwinists, especially when writers from different social points of view sought to represent the evolution of sexual difference and racial difference. Moreover, such disagreements became even more complicated during the decades surrounding 1900, when a number of anti-Darwinian theories arose to challenge the theory of natural selection. Known in the history of science as “the eclipse of Darwinism,” this movement ended only in 1942, with what Julian Huxley called “The Modern Synthesis” of Mendelian genetics and natural selection. During the “eclipse,” writers could project the evolutionary “reality” in various ways, some embracing theories that best supported their own views in the social disagreements over sexual or racial difference, or over questions concerning eugenics or the possibility of evolutionary progress. Some writers aligned themselves with particular anti-Darwinian theories that would support narratives wherein some higher power such as “love” (as in Joseph LeConte’s Evolution , 1888) or “creative evolution” (as in Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution , 1911) promises to lift us beyond the gross workings of natural selection.

Although the realists/naturalists produced narratives that interpreted human nature and evolution in a variety of ways, they agreed in general that the human’s place is in nature; and they continued in this way well beyond the period of time that was long delineated in the title of the leading journal, American Literary Realism, 1865–1910 (the dates were recently dropped from the title). Just as many novels from the years surrounding the Scopes Trial (1925) reflected our culture’s intense interest in the controversies over Darwinism, many literary works of the present time share the assumption that the human being exists in nature, particularly those works that examine the human’s place in the ecological web. And to help clarify this context in the study of American literary realism and naturalism, it is worth noting that the contemporary scholars (mostly in philosophy and psychology, and none in literature) associated with The Center for Naturalism underscore the point that their guiding philosophy is “that human beings are fully included in nature” ( Center ); that is, without absolute free will or recourse to any “sky hooks” to lift the mind above the biological fray.

The realists/naturalists construed human nature in a variety of ways, depending in large part on the particular writer’s point of view as the stream of evolutionary thought developed over time—that is, as a number of theorists sought to reinforce or redefine Darwinian evolution. To illustrate this point it is useful to note the example of Henry James, even though few would describe him as a naturalist. By considering James’s keen interest in Darwinian evolution in the 1870s and ’80s, we can better understand how the first currents of evolutionary thought developed over time to inform not only works by naturalists such as Jack London, but a wide range of other narratives by writers such as Charles W. Chesnutt and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Only four years after James expressed confusion and distaste for Zola’s form of naturalism, he was referring to himself as “quite the Naturalist”—after having visited Millbank Prison to take notes for scenes in his 1886 novel The Princess Casamassima (Edel 315). But he had long since become a kind of naturalist. He had met both Darwin and Huxley and was well aware that the struggle for survival includes what Darwin called “the sexual struggle,” for no organism can evolve without achieving reproductive success. Thus both he and his colleague in founding American realism, Howells, fixed their attention on Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. This was the underlying subject of the famous story he gave us in his mid-thirties, “Daisy Miller: A Study.” The subject of his “study” is not the title character, Daisy, but his main character, John Winterbourne, and how he came to miss the opportunity James presented him when the “pretty American girl” (Daisy) came to stand before him “in a garden” (309). Though this would be one of countless courtship narratives that explored Darwin’s theory of sexual selection during those years, its tragic conclusion is often misunderstood. In James’s study, the courtship fails not because of Daisy’s melodramatic death or because she selected another male, but because Winterbourne “had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason could not help him” (314). And the consequences for him are graver than most realize: in the “garden” of life, from the evolutionary point of view, the prize goes only to those who obey the first law and achieve reproductive success. There will be no evolutionary future for Winterbourne. The story is replete with Darwinian imagery of the courting male, but even though Winterbourne possesses one of the male’s important secondary sexual characters for attracting a female, a moustache (James shows him “smiling and curling his moustache” [319]), he cannot compete in the sexual struggle as do successful Darwinian males, by either dancing or singing, or by battling with his competitors. He falters at a crucial moment in his courtship when the thought that Daisy “was surrounded by half-a-dozen moustaches” in Rome “checked [his] impulse to go straightway to see her” (333).

James explains that his hero lost his “instinctive certitude” (356) by having lived so long in Geneva, the “metropolis of Calvinism” (306), where he “had become dishabituated to the American tone” (314). Now, if at this point we could ask of James the same question he asked of Zola—“on what authority does [he] represent [human] nature to us” in this way?—the obvious first answer is that James was relying on Darwin’s analysis of the male’s role in the sexual struggle. But James was also relying on the authority of contemporary theorists of his own time, such as his brother William. In his Atlantic Monthly essay of 1880, “Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment,” William James not only championed Darwin’s work but extended it by explaining “the function of the environment in mental evolution” (455). Praising Darwin’s “triumphant originality” in showing how spontaneous variations are subjected to the environmental forces of natural selection and sexual selection, James begins his study of mental evolution by citing “the facts … drawn from the lower strata of the mind … from the region of intelligence which man possesses in common with the brutes,” and by emphasizing how “excessively instable” the “human brain” is (443, 456). But James goes on to explain how mental variations—such as those that tilt an individual “towards masculinity or femininity, towards strength or weakness, towards health or disease, and towards divergence from the parent type”—are acted upon by the individual’s social environment (444). Just as the geographical environment “selects” certain variations above others, the “habits and associations” one gains from one’s social environment are crucial to that person’s evolutionary fate (455). This is not to say that William would have agreed with Henry’s fictional exploration of mental evolution in his portrait of Winterbourne; only that, by considering this kind of scientific background during the 1870s and 1880s, readers can better appreciate the unexpectedly powerful role that nature plays in narratives such as “Daisy Miller.”

Assuredly, it can be discouraging to know that critical readings of naturalist fiction should be informed by a knowledge of relevant developments in the stream of evolutionary thought. But readers who are willing to follow up on this point will not only achieve a clearer understanding of literary history, but gain respect for, and insight into, particular works by the authors whom they most admire. It is a great disservice to writers such as Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, or Edith Wharton, for example, to ignore both the extent to which they were inspired by Darwinian thought and their ingenuity in testing and interpreting it in their own studies of human nature. Also, it would be a mistake to imagine that it is either impossible or not worth our while to track this line of thought among the naturalists.

The Courtship Plot and Sexual Selection

At the risk of oversimplifying the issues in question, it helps to realize how much of the evolutionary puzzle in literature can be traced back to the theory of sexual selection. Yet this should be no surprise, for Darwinian evolution depends on reproduction. As Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species , there is “one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings—namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die” (208). Taking this into account, novelists realized that Darwin had re-invigorated the age-old courtship plot and that his theory of sexual selection was the key to their own further explorations of human reality.

Many pre-Darwinian writers from Shakespeare to Jane Austen had observed features of human courtship that were faintly animalistic—such as the male’s passion and combativeness in his pursuit of the female and her coyness in judging her suitors’ strength or beauty. But none had anticipated the way that Darwin’s theory of evolution would establish the human’s common descent with the so-called lower animals, much less the way that his theory of sexual selection would define courtship as part of the general struggle for existence, the evolutionary prize going to those who best succeed in propagating the species. According to Darwin’s theory, then, “the sexual struggle” involves mainly (1) the male’s efforts to “drive away or kill [his] rivals” in order that he may possess the female; (2) the male’s effort “to excite or charm” the female, in hopes that she will select him; and (3) the female’s power to select the male who most pleases her, usually based on the criteria of his strength and beauty ( Descent 2: 398). As Darwin repeatedly noted, one should not be misled by the seeming simplicity of these main features, for sexual selection is “an extremely complex affair” ( Descent 1: 296). This is certainly the case in the realm of fiction, where naturalist courtship plots often reflect not only a particular writer’s social point of view, but his or her interest in certain aspects of Darwinian thought that were being developed in his or her own time, perhaps in the work of a favored theorist such as Joseph LeConte, Ernst Haeckel, Henri Bergson, or Havelock Ellis.

Realist and naturalist writers agreed in general with Darwin’s assertion that “the season of love is that of battle” and that the “law of battle” pertains within the human community ( Descent 2: 48, 325–26). In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), for example, James names one of Isabel’s suitors Lord Warburton but suggests that his nature as a warring male is now scarcely evident in his highly civilized state, as when James notices his “large, white, well-shaped fist” (196). A decade later, though, Stephen Crane focuses on Maggie’s favorable response to her lover Pete’s stories of his fights: “It appeared that he was invincible in fights” and that he “disdained the strength of a world full of fists” ( Maggie 27). Later still, Frank Norris created a melodramatic “law of battle” scene in which McTeague breaks Marcus Schouler’s arm, and he noted that when the “bestial fury” subsided, one of the female observers giggled “hysterically” ( McTeague 430). And in The Sun Also Rises (1926), the boxer Cohn’s appeal as a competitor for Brett Ashley is exceeded only by that of the bullfighter Romero. Generally speaking, as writers began to take Darwin’s theory of common descent more seriously, the male’s combativeness gradually emerged as the most difficult problem to be overcome in social evolution.

Similarly, many realist/naturalist narratives from the 1870s well into the twentieth century feature courtship scenes of music and dance (or “love-antics,” to use Darwin’s term), wherein characters of either sex seek to excite or charm their prospective mates. Working with Darwin’s analysis of biological beauty as an adaptive strategy in the struggle for existence, especially his theory that birdsong and music evolved by means of sexual selection, Edmund Gurney produced his revolutionary aesthetics of music in The Power of Music (1880), and nearly every novelist produced scenes of musical courtship. But here, too, there is a discernible development over the decades in the authors’ views of human nature. In Howells’s The Lady of the Aroostook (1879) the heroine’s church-singing is both “like a mermaid’s” and “like an angel’s,” and it causes “the long red neck” of one man to perspire (113, 258). In the late 1890s, both Harold Frederic (in The Damnation of Theron Ware ) and Kate Chopin (in The Awakening ) would feature powerfully erotic scenes in which music by Frederic Chopin arouses the characters’ sexual emotions in explicitly Darwinian terms. But only a few years later, Frank Norris dramatized the power of music in quite other terms, linking it to the kind of evolutionary evil that his mentor Joseph LeConte traced back to the lower stages of existence (LeConte 365). In describing the character Laura’s response to a musical performance in The Pit (1903), Norris relies on key passages from The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , but he names the male musician Corthell and arranges for his melodramatic performance of Liszt’s Mephisto Walzer . In the following decades, however, spurred by both popular Freudianism and the first strains of the jazz age, many naturalist narratives affirmed the expression of erotic emotions that Norris had sought to repress. Both Sherwood Anderson and F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, give us many such scenes, often drawing on Darwinian theory through Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897–1928) and The Dance of Life (1923). In Dark Laughter (1925), for example, Anderson celebrates “The dance of life!” and seeks to heal his characters’ sexual repression by advising, “Dance the dance out to the end. Listen, do you hear the music?” (92).

An especially interesting development concerning courtship scenes of music and dance in naturalist fiction occurs during the Harlem Renaissance. But the backdrop to this involves literary history’s failure to appreciate why many African Americans were not just interested in, but felt liberated by, Darwin’s theory of racial evolution. He maintained that the “so-called races of men” are not “constant” or fixed by design, like the leopard’s spots, as many southerners maintained. Arguing that racial differences have merely evolved, Darwin explained why marked differences in skin color would have been produced more by sexual selection than by different climates ( Descent 1: 248–50). Pointing out that there is no “universal standard of beauty with respect to the human body” and that “each race … possesses its own innate ideal standard of beauty,” Darwin argued that marked differences in skin color were established in the remote past, when humanity was in a state of “savagery” and when the most powerful males in particular tribes left the largest numbers of offspring ( Descent 2: 353–54). Because “people of each tribe admire their own characteristics,” the dominant males would have mated with the “most strongly characterized” females, and through this process the particular characteristic (e.g., darkness of skin color) would have “been slowly and gradually exaggerated” ( Descent 2: 384). Charles W. Chesnutt was the first African American novelist to embrace Darwin’s theory of racial evolution, believing that nature’s “laws” of natural selection and sexual selection were more just than American law and southern traditions. Chesnutt (who was so light-skinned that he sometimes passed for white) wrote of light-skinned blacks who passed for white and whose biological attributes made them attractive mates for whites. Perhaps because of his own social position along “the color line,” Chesnutt imagined that the race problem in America would be resolved only through further evolution and complete racial amalgamation. For this reason, Chesnutt sometimes presented his own prejudicial portraits of darker people as being outcast or left behind by evolution itself, and this theme—the conflict within the African American community between those of lighter and darker skin—would be hotly debated among novelists of the Harlem Renaissance.

While most of the Harlem novelists affirmed Darwinian theory, they were further conflicted over the question that W. E. B. Du Bois posed in a symposium published in the influential journal Crisis , titled “The Negro in Art: How Shall He Be Portrayed?” The underlying issue in Du Bois’ question involved the added complication that popular Freudianism had brought to the discussion of the race problem. Some white and African American novelists (e.g., Carl Van Vechten or Claude McKay) sought to affirm the race’s so-called “sexual primitivism,” as an indication of its good mental health—that is, its freedom from white America’s neurosis of sexual repression. But Du Bois and others hoped to portray a more elevated, spiritual love among African Americans. Thus, while some writers affirmed the blues as the truest expression of African American nature, Du Bois maintained that the soul song, sorrow song, or spiritual best expressed the African American reality.

Two Harlem writers, Claude McKay and Rudolph Fisher, were especially attuned to the evolutionary biology of their time, particularly as it pertained to the evolution of race. Fisher, a physician who had taught embryology at Howard University and co-authored articles in scientific journals, believed that evolution was the “savior” of modern science (McCluskey xiv), and McKay recalled having discovered “suddenly like a comet … the romance of science in Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature and Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe ,” key elements in what he called the “emotional-realist thread” that defined his work ( Long Way 12, 250). But Fisher and McKay disagreed with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose own credentials in modern science were impeccable.

The difference between these writers’ views on music and human nature is evident in their scenes set in Harlem cabarets. In Dark Princess (1928), Du Bois developed the theme that he had presented in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), that the soul song or sorrow song is the essential black music. Thus, his brief cabaret scene features a degraded woman who sings “her vulgar ‘blues’” with writhing movements and an unnatural “harsh shrill voice” (66) that appeals mostly to the whites and bores the blacks. Du Bois’ hero is only momentarily affected by this kind of music, which the novel finally overwhelms with spontaneous outbursts of “Go down, Moses!” and “I am seekin’ for a City” (310). McKay, on the other hand, celebrated the blues and even the African drum beat because they best expressed the unrepressed racial life. Thus, in Home to Harlem (1928), McKay describes the blues rhythm as “simple-clear and quivering … like a primitive dance of war or love” suggesting the “sacred frenzy of phallic celebrations” (196–97). And in a chapter called “Spring in Harlem,” he reunites his hero and heroine in a cabaret scene wherein, at the first notes of the music, the dancers showed “all their teeth” and “started shivering for their partners to come.” Soon, they all “picked up the refrain and jazzed and shouted with delirious joy” (296–97). Similarly, though not quite as boldly as McKay, Fisher (a jazz musician in his own right) produced cabaret scenes that celebrated so-called primitive music and dance in a number of short stories, such as “Common Meter” (1930); and, in The Walls of Jericho (1928), he playfully suggested that “a rising tide of rhythm” in the music of that era might be America’s best hope for allaying racial fears (82). Orchestrating this scene at the racial improvement society’s annual ball, Fisher remarks that on the dance floor, people of all varieties of skin color “rubbed joyous elbows, laughing, mingling, forgetting differences”—until the music stopped (82, 74).

Darwin’s theory of sexual selection gives the female a powerful role in influencing evolutionary development—her power to select her mate and thus produce such physical attributes as the increasingly intricate designs on the peacock’s plumes or, among humans, relative hairlessness. But biologists and novelists alike have long disagreed about the female’s freedom to choose, and about the particular male attributes that most impress her. Darwin contributed to these disagreements by writing that among human beings, males had gained much of the power to select in primitive times, when marriage originated in the capture of brides. Thus novelists from the 1870s on have presented this aspect of human nature in a variety of ways. For example, wanting to project evolutionary progress that led to a genteel society, Howells gave us many heroines who select strong but gentle males who scarcely exhibit the kind of passion that drives the Darwinian male, and he suggests that behind the female’s unconscious choice is a higher evolutionary power somewhat like manifest destiny, promising evolutionary progress if not utopia. At the same time, Henry James gave us a number of heroines like Isabel Archer ( Portrait of a Lady ) or Verena Tarrant ( The Bostonians ) who naively believe in their freedom to select or even not to select a male. But, revealing both his belief in the violent origins of marriage and his own views on women’s rights, James’s narratives end when such women are captured by men of exceptional mental strength.

Perhaps the most impressive exploration of female choice in naturalist fiction is Kate Chopin’s study of her heroine Edna Pontellier in The Awakening (1899). Anyone with a serious interest in Chopin should read what was certainly her favorite chapter in The Descent of Man , chapter 14 of volume 2, which she mined in creating Edna Pontellier and other women such as Mrs. Mallard (in “The Story of an Hour”). Although Darwin takes up the question of “Choice exerted by the female” in this chapter on birds, Chopin followed his assertion that “the mental powers of birds … do not fundamentally differ from ours” ( Descent 2: 124). Thus, working with Darwin’s point that “every male of the same species” does not “equally excite or attract the female” (2: 99), Chopin first establishes that Edna’s sexual antipathy toward her husband was only natural, and she then supports that analysis by drawing on Darwin’s discussion of female pigeons who refuse to mate with males selected for them by breeders. One of Edna’s ways of asserting her independence from Mr. Pontellier is to arrange to have her own “pigeon house.” Also, building on Darwin’s point that the female pheasant not only selects her mates, but sometimes actively courts the male, Chopin describes Edna’s active role in pursuing her affairs with two other males. Described by the Darwin-like Dr. Mandelet as “some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun” (952), Edna first awakens to the sexual power of music in a memorable scene that closely echoes Darwin’s description of such emotions. Moreover, Chopin arranges for Edna to defend her choice of a lover. Denying that women “select” for the typical qualities that Darwin imagined civilized women found most attractive—social position and wealth—Edna explains that she is drawn to her lover, Robert, because of his eyes, nose, lips, and so forth: that is, apparently, because she finds him beautiful and because she herself is “happy to be alive” (965). Chopin was only one of many writers to feel liberated by Darwin’s theory of human nature.

Among the innumerable versions of women exerting their power to select in naturalist narratives is Edith Wharton’s well-titled story, “The Choice” (1916). Here another married woman feels antipathy for her husband and selects a lover with the appeal that he is somewhat androgynous (as is Edna’s lover, Robert) compared with her hyper-masculine husband. But in the final crisis, when the two males are joined in battle, she cries out for her husband, unconsciously revealing her desire for a powerful, even somewhat brutal mate. Similarly, the character Edith in Harold Frederic’s The Market-Place (1899) frankly acknowledges her desire for the ruthless financier Thorpe, an “exceptionally strong and masterful character” who can reduce her “brain to a sort of porridge” (160–62). But in another narrative, Wharton gave us a woman (in The Custom of the Country , 1913) who elevates her social position by choosing a series of ever-more wealthy mates, even abandoning her own child along the way. In Sister Carrie (1900), Dreiser presents Carrie’s power to select more sympathetically. After Carrie is more or less caught by her first mate, a “rudimentary” man named Drouet, she leaves him for Hurstwood, who “she instinctively felt … was stronger and higher”—until she meets Ames (58, 82). Now, with “an ideal to contrast men by” (239), Carrie refuses to sleep with Hurstwood, but because Ames is beyond her reach, Dreiser last pictures Carrie in a state of wistful loneliness.

Still, in the early decades of the twentieth century a number of novelists continued to place their faith in the female’s power to select as the key to possible evolutionary progress. In The Valley of the Moon (1913), for example, Jack London produces a promising marriage by emphasizing his heroine’s care in selecting her mate. Repeatedly asking herself, “ Is this the man ?” she rejects a number of suitors, one, for example, who was too brutal in his battle with other suitors, and one who was too soft and ineffectual (13). She selects a man, Billy, who has the requisite biological features of strength (he is a champion boxer) and beauty (in his physical features and in his grace as a dancer). London’s key points are that Billy is a gentle man who fights only when fighting is necessary, and that, in touching the heroine, Saxon Brown, Billy exhibits the kind of sensitivity that Havelock Ellis was advocating at the time (in Sexual Selection in Man ) as an essential part of the psychology of sex. Thus, having found a man who does not arouse “the old sex antagonism” that Saxon had felt with other men, she solved what London calls “the pre-nuptial problem of selecting a husband” (78, 117). Then, after Saxon solves “the post-nuptial problem of retaining a husband’s love” (117; here again London draws on Havelock Ellis), London’s ideal couple can proceed on their quest to find a way of life best suited to deal with the larger evolutionary problem that London addresses, the world’s population explosion, including the social ills that then plagued Oakland, California.

Some final examples of naturalist fiction that centered on the female’s power to select are to be found in several novels of the Harlem Renaissance. After a half century of realist/naturalist narratives that had focused on courtship as the essential pathway to the evolutionary future, and on the civilized female’s power to select, novelists of the Harlem Renaissance generally agreed that any further racial evolution would depend largely on the female’s choice of mates. While other realists and naturalists had looked ahead to possible “new” men and women, the Harlem novelists’ more immediate sense of a brutal past propelled their interest in racial “betterment,” “uplift,” and “the Younger Generation” to whom Alain Locke dedicated his landmark anthology, The New Negro (1925). Nella Larsen, for example, was greatly affected by the novelist T. S. Stribling’s belief that “no people can become civilized until the woman has the power of choice among males” (Davis 153). But Larsen’s own narratives on racial evolution were tragically complicated by her own position along the color line as a woman of mixed race and by her intensely introspective Freudianism. The heroine of Quicksand (1928), Helga Crane, is first drawn to a black man, largely for the Darwinian reason that his “deep voice” was “particularly pleasing” and that it produced in her “a mystifying yearning which sang and throbbed in her”; but these emotions simultaneously produce in her “something very like hysteria,” the classic Freudian symptom of sexual repression (19–20). Thus Helga flees from this opportunity to select a mate and then, in Denmark, selects against a white suitor because of “some impulse of racial antagonism” (84). She has a “curious feeling of repugnance” both for his physical features (his, hair, his voice, the shape of his nose) and for what he brings to mind regarding American history: she tells him, “I’m not for sale … to any white man” (86–87). Finally, back in America, she is drawn by strains of church music into an encounter with the black “Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green.” After a quick marriage they return to his “primitive flock” in Alabama, where she sinks into the quicksand of primitive religion and sexuality. Her “palpitating, amorous” emotions sprang up in her “like rank weeds … with a vitality so strong that it devoured all shoots of reason,” leaving her not only with the several children she had contributed to her “despised race” but an overpowering sexual “aversion” to Green and his belief that his persistent lovemaking is “a natural thing, an act of God” (125, 127).

Other Harlem novelists, however, were committed to the idea of evolutionary progress and saw great promise in the female’s power to select. In Du Bois’ Dark Princess , the promising couple (Matthew Towns, a black man from Virginia, and Kautilya, a woman from India) meet at an international conference, “The Great Council of the Darker Peoples.” In an incident there, Matthew stands out as a beautiful and combative—that is, Darwinian—male, when he drives away a white man who made a pass at Kautilya. As Kautilya later recalls, “you knocked him down quite beautifully,” and “I had a curious sense of some great inner meaning to your act” (17). Eventually, the two consummate their love and produce a son whom Kautilya’s countrymen view as a “Messenger and Messiah to all the Darker Worlds!” (311). Projecting an evolutionary future that was attuned to the music of “Go down, Moses!” and definitely not the blues, Dark Princess is something between “outright propaganda” and “quaint romance,” as Arnold Rampersad remarks (204); but it is scarcely more of a romance than Frank Norris’s narrative of Anglo-Saxon supremacy in The Octopus , which Du Bois had in mind.

In a much more inventive variation on the theme of female choice in the Harlem Renaissance, in The Walls of Jericho Rudolph Fisher introduces a “young Titan” of a male, noting that “an acknowledged master of men is usually attractive to women” (13, 80). Indeed, the heroine Linda quickly selects the hero Shine at the “General Improvement Association’s Annual Costume Ball,” after he had rescued her from an offensive male: she “flung herself impulsively toward him” (132). Fisher eventually sends his ideal couple “into another land,” toward a scene overspread with “sunrise like a promise … straight into the kindling sky,” but not until he has subjected both lovers, especially the titanic male, to his own kind of “general improvement.” Linda initiates this improvement in Shine by taking him to church, where they hear a sermon counseling that a man’s tendency to “boast that he is evil and merciless and hard” is only a shield to hide his true spirit of compassion and gentleness. Developing this point, in part by having Linda frequently advise Shine that mere muscle isn’t everything, and that he isn’t as hard as he pretends he is, Fisher suggests that much of Shine’s violence stems from his sexual repression, a neurosis that is most evident when Shine turns into “a gigantic madman” in a battle with his sexual rival. Thus, writing during the years when popular Freudianism was at its height, Fisher the physician suggests again and again that Linda and, especially, Shine will enter the evolutionary future only if they overcome the sexual repression that each exhibits along the way when they block impulses to reach out to the other. Fittingly, a key moment in Fisher’s effort to improve these two lovers comes in a hospital, where Shine is a patient. When, “not fully aware of his gesture,” Shine reaches out to Linda, she responds, creating a spark that Fisher describes as “the closing of a switch, the making of a circuit through which leaped new, strange, shattering impulses” (260–61).

Related Elements in the Puzzle of Human Nature

While we can learn a great deal about the naturalists’ views of human nature by focusing on the courtship plot and the theory of sexual selection, it is important to note that some naturalist novels and many short stories are not structured around the courtship plot (e.g., The Red Badge of Courage and “To Build a Fire”) and that the naturalists were also quite interested in several related pieces of the evolutionary puzzle, such as heredity, the environment, and other elements of evolutionary psychology not directly related to courtship. The naturalists’ views on these issues vary, but, in general, their increasing pessimism about biological determinism follows certain key developments in evolutionary thought over the decades. One very important example came in 1889, when August Weissman was credited for disproving the Lamarckian principle that traits acquired through training or education could be passed on to one’s offspring. This diminishment of the Lamarckian possibility gave renewed emphasis to the power of heredity in determining one’s fate—a power that grew even more oppressive with Ernst Haeckel’s studies in embryology over the next decade, and finally with the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics shortly after the turn of the century.

One of the unfortunate effects of the growing emphasis on heredity was to reinforce the already virulent strain of racism that promoted the idea of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Virtually every naturalist was affected by this malaise, whether in portraits of African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Irish, or Southern Europeans. Though it is hard to imagine any uglier examples of Anglo-Saxonism in American writing than those to be found in the novels of Thomas Dixon Jr., Frank Norris comes close in his portraits of Maria Macapa, Zerkow (the red-headed Polish Jew), and their child in McTeague . Relying in part on his mentor Joseph LeConte’s writings on mixed races, Norris describes the sickly, short-lived child as “a strange, hybrid little being … combining in its puny little body the blood of the Hebrew, the Pole, and the Spaniard” (431). Even with her much more impressive scientific credentials, Gertrude Stein’s studies of characters such as the black woman Malanctha and the German women Anna and Lena (in Three Lives ), as well as Julia Dehning (in The Making of Americans ), suggest that such people’s hereditary makeup leaves them in a nearly sub-human state. And writing only a short time later, F. Scott Fitzgerald combined the Darwinian elements of sexual selection with those of modern genetics to explain the tragic fate of Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald was only one of many writers (such as Edith Wharton and Jack London) to have been influenced by Ernst Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe . He was especially impressed by Haeckel’s study of embryology and the idea that one’s identity is determined at the moment of conception, leaving the individual locked by accident within “the chain of generations” (Haeckel 143); and his sense of hereditary determinism was powerfully reinforced by the widespread interest in eugenics that was fostered by E. G. Conklin at Princeton University. Partly from these elements, he produced demeaning portraits of blacks and Jews while constructing a character (Gatsby) whose life and death are subject to a number of accidents. The first and most important of these is the accident of his lowly birth, which his wealth and social glitter cannot hide from Daisy’s selective eye, but his fate is further sealed by the famous automobile accident and finally by the “accidental” circumstances that Fitzgerald emphasizes in his description of the dead Gatsby afloat in his pool.

The environment as another shaping force in human nature did not engage the naturalists’ interest to the extent that sexual selection did, perhaps because it was not so easily fitted to the courtship plot. Still, writers such as Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Eugene O’Neill depicted the environment created by American industry as a crushing influence on workers’ lives and quite possibly their evolutionary fates. “The air in the collar and cuff establishment strangled” Maggie, causing her to realize that she was “surely shriveling in the hot, stuffy room” where other women bent over their machines like “mere mechanical contrivances.” Thus, she began to worry about her “youth” and “to see the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable” (Crane 34). London, too, presents his heroine Saxon Brown as “an entrapped animal” in the laundry where she works. Before Saxon can find her way into the evolutionary future that London has in mind for her, she must escape the crushing conditions that are “enough to kill a dog” (4). In London’s analysis, attuned to the emerging Freudian interest in female hysteria, Saxon’s workplace posed an explicit threat to her reproductive health because the women’s restricted and mechanically repetitive movements created an atmosphere of sexual repression that brought on occasional outbursts of hysteria. And even more melodramatically, the working environment of the steamship’s low-ceilinged stokehole in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1921) caused the character Yank and his fellow firemen to walk with the stooped posture of apes.

Occasionally, naturalists such as Norris also drew on scientific theories that were only very tenuously connected to Darwinian evolution, such as Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Man (1876) and Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892), but there is a far more important, though unrecognized, trend in naturalist writing that gradually drew on Darwinian and related theories to explain and justify not the abnormal or monstrous, but the range of normality in human nature. That is, in our efforts to understand nature in naturalism, or the ways in which the realist/naturalist movement has explored human nature, it helps to remind ourselves how that approach to understanding humankind’s place in nature was initiated by “the biological blow” that Darwinian evolution dealt “to human narcissism,” according to Freud’s famous remark (Freud 17: 141). Looking at the realist/naturalist movement in this way, it is clear that the first realists, such as Howells or James, were far less troubled by the blow than were older writers such as Melville or Tennyson, who received it as a great spiritual wound. Though the young Howells and James were no doubt troubled by the biological blow, they could both welcome it as the new world view that helped them shoulder their older rivals aside (as in James’s critique of Hawthorne), and fend it off by imagining that, as highly civilized citizens of the new world, they were relatively untouched by the evolutionary past. They were encouraged by the evolutionary hierarchy that modern anthropology had erected, wherein the animals, certainly, and then the “savages” and “barbarians” served to define their difference as almost a new species of highly civilized Americans whose main worry was that, like Winterbourne, they might have become overcivilized.

Only later in Howells’s career did he, and then naturalists such as Crane, London, Norris, and Chopin, begin bolder explorations of their characters’ place within the community of common descent. Howells referred to his character Dylks (in The Leatherwood God , 1916) as a stallion, because of his sexual passion, and London suggests the animal nature in his character’s name, Wolf Larsen (in The Sea-Wolf , 1904). In the heat of battle, Crane’s soldiers in The Red Badge of Courage express many of the emotions that Darwin had described in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals ; and Norris described McTeague’s “hereditary evil” (285) and the degenerative beast that lurked in and finally came to life in Vandover (in Vandover and the Brute , 1914). All these characters embody aberrations, to be overcome, in London’s case, when the female selects against the brutal captain to signal his evolutionary extinction. Unlike these explorations of human nature, however, Kate Chopin’s study of Edna Pontellier is a landmark in our culture’s gradual awakening to, and acceptance of, the human’s place within the community of common descent. Edna’s awakening sexuality is certainly problematic in its threat to her marriage and because it leads to her own emotional instability, but Chopin gives her liberated character a certain dignity and beauty, as when Dr. Mandelet sees Edna “palpitant with the forces of life,” with “no repression in her glance or gesture,” like a “beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun” (952).

Chopin’s prescient reference to Edna’s freedom from repression echoes Darwin’s pre-Freudian use of the term (in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals ), but it occurs in the history of naturalism at precisely the time when Freud was building on Darwin’s analysis of sex and the emotions to construct his own theory of hysteria and related neuroses as arising from sexual repression. Inspired by Darwin, Chopin celebrated the daring idea that a woman’s sexual emotions were natural and normal. Also, during the first decades of the twentieth century a number of other naturalists had begun to deal with the biological blow in similar ways. Whereas Howells had presented Bartley Hubbard’s mere flirting as a kind of evolutionary weakness in A Modern Instance (1882), Dreiser would somewhat confessionally analyze the male’s polygamous sexual appetite as normal though socially disruptive. Moreover, building on Darwin’s analysis of the bisexual embryo (and subsequent studies of the same phenomenon by Havelock Ellis and Freud), a range of novelists such as London, Anderson, Stein, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway explored the normality of their own androgynous sensibilities. And many African American writers embraced Darwin’s theory of race as justifying their claims to equal footing within the natural community of mankind, rather than outcasts by Biblical design. As T. S. Stribling wrote in Birthright (1922), a novel which created a great stir within the Harlem Renaissance, “what Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,—he democratized it” (219).

Such developments in naturalist thought certainly met with powerful resistance. Chopin’s The Awakening , for example, was highly offensive even to readers such as Willa Cather. And a good many newly uncovered facts or supposed facts about evolutionary biology were so disturbing that only the most courageous writers could include them in their explorations of human nature. Some wondered, for example, whether the frog’s sexual impulse, persistent even in males whose heads had been cut off, was related to that in human beings; whether cannibalism as a reproductive strategy among certain organisms reflected in any way on human “love”; what we can make of the startling sexual impulse among human infants; or to what extent the connection between sexual pleasure and pain might be considered within the range of human normality. In short, contemplating such questions about human nature, many naturalists grew increasingly introspective and shared what Gertrude Stein specified as her character’s “deepest interest”: in exploring “the varieties of human experience” and desiring “to partake of all human relations” ( Fernhurst 19). By the time Stein wrote this (sometime between 1903 and 1905), naturalists had explored many new and troubling questions about the human being and his/her place in nature, but it would be a mistake to claim that the naturalist movement as a whole produced anything like a clear, general advance toward ultimate “truths.” In her later work, Stein, for example, came under the sway of Bergson’s Creative Evolution .

Human Nature and the Ecological Web

By 1913 at least one naturalist, Jack London, had extended his study of human nature to the point that he was prepared to write the first novel in American literature to explore what, from our point of view in the early twenty-first century, seems the most urgent question involving people’s place in nature: how we can accept our place in the ecological web and devise sustainable economies. In The Valley of the Moon , London built on his impressive studies of Darwinian evolution to imagine a couple who overcome the personal and social troubles that his earlier characters had encountered regarding sexual selection and marriage and who then proceed to find a new way of life in small-scale farming. In this way, they save themselves from the industrial pollution and labor strife then troubling the San Francisco Bay area, help bring an end to large-scale farming’s rape of the soil, suggest ways to deal with the world’s exploding population, and also insure their own survival by preserving their marriage and achieving reproductive success. London’s ambitious novel was certainly not the last word in literary naturalism. By the 1940s, Aldo Leopold and John Steinbeck were exploring ecological questions in their non-fictional works A Sand County Almanac (1949) and The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1941). And in The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Ernest Hemingway probed an essential feature of human nature that London and other naturalists before Steinbeck left untouched—Santiago’s struggle to accept and deal not with his reproductive needs (as many other Hemingway characters must do), but with his need to kill and eat (i.e., the second of the two forces that move the world, as Freud put it, love and hunger).

Whatever questions involving humankind’s place in nature might arise to shape naturalist fiction in years to come, it seems inevitable that the chief motive in generating such work will endure in our culture’s general resistance to the idea that there is any human nature. Similarly, organizations like the Center for Naturalism will no doubt redouble their efforts to counter our culture’s reluctance to embrace Darwinian evolution—its devotion to the ideas that human beings enjoy complete free will and that super natural forces define humanity. Still addressing the old question that Steinbeck posed in 1941 in The Log from the Sea of Cortez , why do we “so dread to think of our species as a species?” (266), the Center for Naturalism believes that, “by acknowledging our origins in evolution, the naturalist perspective” can enhance “our feeling of kinship with the other species with which we share this planet, and our desire to sustain and nurture the planet itself” ( Center ). Regarding recent American fiction, it is clear that the evolutionary view of humanity’s place in nature is still a vibrant theme in a number of works such as T. C. Boyle’s Drop City (2003). There, quite in the tradition of Jack London (including a reference to “To Build a Fire,” 390–91), Boyle portrays a community of hippies in California who talk about “getting back to the earth” (16) and believe in free love; but as that experiment collapses of its own weight, he ends the book in celebrating an Alaskan couple’s survival in the Alaskan wilderness. Like London, Boyle constructs this elemental social unit largely from the heroine’s painstaking selection of her mate, whom we see at last looking around to appreciate “the natural order” while “heading home, … a man clothed in fur at the head of a team of dogs in a hard wild place, going home to his wife” (444).

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Naturalism in English Literature – Meaning and Characteristics

Back to: Literary Movements in English Literature

Table of Contents

Introduction

Naturalism was a literary movement that arose during the Victorian era in the 19th century. It was seen as a continuation of the Realism movement that preceded it. It had its central point in determinism and was influenced by science, especially Darwin and his “Theory of Evolution”.

Characteristics of Naturalism

Determinism.

Determinism functioned on the principle that humans had no free will. It stated that the external environment is what determines a human being’s actions and that their destinies are pre-determined with them having no control over it whatsoever.

Social Commentary

Naturalists produced work that commented on and critiqued society. In challenged societal norms and traditions, they also often came off with pessimistic and cynical undertones that shed light on human suffering and the futility of everything they did.

Taboo Topics

In this manner, such works also covered the darker side of human beings with the exploration of taboo topics. These included themes of sexuality, violence, and substance use.

Naturalism Major Poets List and Their Important Works

Stephen crane.

Crane perhaps was the most prominent of the Naturalist poets. He is renowned for his work “The Red Badge of Courage” in addition to “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets”.

Theodore Dreiser

Dreiser was yet another eminent Naturalist. His most noted works are “Sister Carrie” and “Twelve Men”.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dunbar again was a notable Naturalist. Famous works of his include “Lyrics of Lowly Life” and “The Sport of the Gods”.

Naturalism thus was a significant movement in the Victorian literary landscape. It tested the limits of Victorian ideals, morals, and ethics and introduced new, revolutionary philosophical ideas and themes.

The Literary Impacts of Naturalism in Literature

This essay about Naturalism in literature discusses its emergence as a movement influenced by Darwinian principles, emphasizing realism and the deterministic nature of human existence. It explores how writers like Émile Zola and Theodore Dreiser depicted characters ensnared by hereditary and environmental factors, devoid of agency. Naturalistic narratives, typified by works such as “McTeague” and “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets,” convey a sense of fatalism and pessimism regarding human condition, challenging notions of free will. The essay highlights the profound impact of naturalism on character delineation, societal critique, and the evolution of modern literature by integrating sociological perspectives into storytelling.

How it works

The concept of Naturalism in literature delineates a style and theoretical framework rooted in the meticulous portrayal of detail. Emerging as a literary movement, primarily sprouting from the realms of realism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, naturalism aspired to present an unadorned rendition of reality. Its genesis was profoundly influenced by Darwinian principles, accentuating the primal facets of human existence and the sway of the environment on human conduct. This discourse endeavors to delve into the inception, attributes, and ramifications of naturalism in literature, shedding light on its profound imprint on the literary domain.

The genesis of naturalism is often attributed to Émile Zola, hailed as the progenitor of the movement. Zola espoused the notion that literature should emulate a scientific inquiry. Through his monumental twenty-volume opus Les Rougon-Macquart , Zola dissected how the destinies of characters were dictated by hereditary lineage and environmental factors, often delineating lives ensnared by circumstances beyond their purview. His oeuvre, encompassing works like “Nana” and “Germinal,” delineates individuals ensnared in the web of their genetic heritage and societal milieu, bereft of agency over their fates.

In the United States, naturalism found advocates in luminaries such as Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris, who utilized the genre as a vehicle for critiquing societal disparities and human vulnerabilities. Crane’s “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” stands as an archetypal American naturalistic narrative, presenting a bleak tableau of urban destitution and the struggle for survival in a callous, indifferent milieu. The protagonist, Maggie, emerges as a casualty of her socio-economic milieu, ultimately succumbing to her dire circumstances. Similarly, Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie” dissects the repercussions of industrialization on individuals, with the titular character entangled in a labyrinth of economic machinations beyond her comprehension or control.

A salient hallmark of naturalism lies in its exploration of the somber facets of existence. Naturalistic narratives often harbor an air of fatalism, contending that individuals are consigned to predetermined destinies owing to hereditary and environmental influences. These works are characterized by an unvarnished realism and frequently exude a prevailing sense of pessimism regarding the human condition. This sentiment is palpable in Frank Norris’s “McTeague,” where the protagonist is depicted as a product of his primal instincts, inexorably hurtling toward his downfall. Naturalistic works challenge the notion of free will, presenting life as a deterministic saga shaped by forces beyond individual agency.

The literary reverberations of naturalism are profound. By spotlighting the impact of environment, heredity, and societal circumstances, naturalism compelled both writers and readers to contemplate the socio-economic forces that mold human behavior. This paradigm shift engendered a heightened emphasis on character delineation and intricate, often gritty narratives that illuminate the struggle for existence within a preordained social hierarchy. Furthermore, naturalism subverted the traditional moral narratives of literature, proffering a worldview diametrically opposed to the romantic idealism prevalent in earlier literary epochs. It paved the way for a more candid exploration of societal maladies, such as poverty, race, and class disparities, in a more unvarnished manner.

Furthermore, naturalism has contributed to the metamorphosis of modern and contemporary literature by foregrounding the role of social sciences in literary construction. It has catalyzed the emergence of a genre of writing that blurs the boundaries between fiction and sociological inquiry, prompting numerous writers to adopt a more investigative approach to storytelling. This development has not only enriched narrative tapestries but also broadened the horizons of literature as a reflection of reality.

In conclusion, naturalism in literature has etched an indelible legacy by furnishing a prism through which to scrutinize the human experience under the sway of internal and external forces. Through its unflinching portrayal of reality, naturalism has widened the thematic panorama of literature and deepened the exploration of the human predicament. As a movement, it has played an indispensable role in the evolution of modern literature, advocating for a deeper, more analytical comprehension of characters and their environments. Through the lens of naturalism, literature continues to plumb the depths of human nature within the expansive canvas of the world it inhabits.

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The importance of realism and naturalism in American Literature Essay

Realism and Naturalism in American Literature

In American literature, realism is a literary technique that shows the realities in life while naturalism on the other hand attempts to apply scientific analysis and detachment in its study of human beings. In the Norton anthology of American literature, the editor discusses the role of these two literary techniques in America’s history. In the period 1865-1920 the United States experienced high industrialization rates. The innovation of the telegraph, telephone and electricity accelerated economic growth.

Furthermore the completion of the railway in 1869 enabled businessmen to come and exploit the land for gold and other minerals. There was a high inflow of workers from Europe coming to look for work. The development however brought serious consequences. With the rapid increase in population the people needed more land and territory. The ordinary people could not protect themselves from the mighty and wealthy.

The railway company stole land from the natives. It also shrewdly eliminated other competition and became a monopoly. Other industries like steel and oil were also in the hands of a few wealthy and powerful men. Working conditions and pay for workers was poor as the monopolies had all the power. The corrupt government turned a blind eye to the actions of these monopolies.

With the increase of populations in cities there arose new publishing opportunities through several newspapers. The marginalized and under-represented people had a voice now to speak out. The writers spoke out against social injustices and inequalities due to the rapid industrialization. These were writers who had the courage to speak up. The editor of the anthology stresses the importance of realism in this period since several social issues were spoken of boldly.

These were the issues of the railroad monopoly that took the land of small farmers and the corruption of government officials. Helen Hunt Jackson spoke of the US injustices against Native Americans, Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoke of wealth and human rights and Thorsten Veblen spoke of the greediness of the extremely wealthy businesses. These writers affected the sociology, philosophy, and economy of the people. There were also writers who spoke against racial injustices.

These issues were highly challenging causing the authors to turn to aesthetic realism where they used descriptive and colorful language to represent life as it was. It was known as local color writing where dialects, social relationships and the current natural environments were depicted in their novels. Mark Twain is an example of this generation of authors who showed the vernacular dialects and added humor. This caused the readers to sympathize with the characters. American naturalism came later.

It was a continuation of realism but with a detailed focus on the lower class and marginalized communities who had bleak chances of survival while realism focused on middleclass and upper class. It was more logical than realism. Naturalism was different though in a scientific and deterministic approach. This literal technique was highly influenced by Charles Darwin book, Origin of species that spoke of survival of the fittest (Baym, 2007, p 7).

These writers for example Frank Norris and Stephen Crane attempted to show life scientifically. The characters in the novels lived in an environment with chance occurrences and the strong people usually victimized the weak. The situation was very tough and the characters lacked the intellect and resources to overcome adversity. The characters had to join forces to survive against the tough environment. At the end of the day the novels still worked towards providing social solutions.

Reference List

Baym, N. (2007). The Norton Anthology of American Literature. (7 th Ed, Volume C) . New York, NY: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Naturalism — Comparison Of Naturalism And Realism In Literature

Comparison of Naturalism and Realism in Literature

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Naturalism in Literature: Definition & Examples
The History of Naturalism. Jules-Antoine Castagnary, a French art critic, first used the term naturalism to describe a style of lifelike painting that became popular in the early 1860s. Émile Zola then applied the term to literature.Zola's seminal essay "The Experimental Novel," published in 1880, presents a detailed examination of the novel as a preeminent naturalistic literary art form.
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Definition of Naturalism. Naturalism is a literary genre that started as a movement in late nineteenth century in literature, film, theater, and art. It is a type of extreme realism.This movement suggested the roles of family, social conditions, and environment in shaping human character.Thus, naturalistic writers write stories based on the idea that environment determines and governs human ...
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Naturalism As a Literary Theory. In his essay Le roman expérimental (The Experimental Novel) (1880), the French novelist Émile Zola developed an elaborate analogy between experimental or empirical fiction and the medical science of the French physician Claude Bernard. According to Zola, the experimental (that is, the naturalistic) novelist ...
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pessimism and deterministic ideas of naturalism pervaded the works of such writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, Henry Adams, Theodore Dreiser, and Hemingway etc. This essay intends to deal with the application of naturalism in American literature and thereby seeks a broader understanding of naturalist literature in general.
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Variously defined as distinct philosophical approaches, complementary aesthetic strategies, or broad literary movements, realism and naturalism emerged as the dominant categories applied to American fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Included under the broad umbrella of realism are a diverse set of authors, including Henry James ...
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This essay provides an overview and reinterpretation of American literary naturalism as practiced by classic naturalists Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London, by later naturalists such as Phillips and Steinbeck, and by those whose contributions to naturalism deserve more recognition, among them women writers and writers of color such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Ann Petry.
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The novels of the French writer Émile Zola (1840-1902) move toward a more extreme form of realism known as naturalism, taking its name from its allegedly scientific impulse to base its characters, events, and explanations on natural rather than supernatural or divine causes. Perhaps more than any other major literary figure, Émile Zola registered in…
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Naturalism is a literary movement beginning in the late nineteenth century, similar to literary realism in its rejection of Romanticism, but distinct in its embrace of determinism, detachment, scientific objectivism, and social commentary.Literary naturalism emphasizes observation and the scientific method in the fictional portrayal of reality. Naturalism includes detachment, in which the ...
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NATURALISM. Naturalism was one of a wave of "isms" that swept through the cultural world of the late nineteenth century. Its most vocal advocate was the French author É mile Zola (1840 - 1902), a prolific novelist, dramatist, essayist, and critic. Highly controversial in the period between the heyday of realism (1830 - 1860) and the emergence of early forms of modernism at the end of the ...
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This essay about Naturalism in literature discusses its emergence as a movement influenced by Darwinian principles, emphasizing realism and the deterministic nature of human existence. It explores how writers like Émile Zola and Theodore Dreiser depicted characters ensnared by hereditary and environmental factors, devoid of agency.
The importance of realism and naturalism in American Literature Essay
Realism and Naturalism in American Literature. In American literature, realism is a literary technique that shows the realities in life while naturalism on the other hand attempts to apply scientific analysis and detachment in its study of human beings. In the Norton anthology of American literature, the editor discusses the role of these two ...
Comparison of Naturalism and Realism in Literature
This type of realism make readers more intrigued on the character's story and how they will overcome adversity. Realism is very important in today's literature world. Many authors have learned this way of writing and has thrived in this portion of literature. Naturalism basically is the assumption that everything happens for a reason.
How to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills in 10 Simple Steps
This allows you to focus more on the content of your essay rather than the tedious task of manual citation. It's like having a personal assistant at the click of a button. 10. Revise, Revise, Revise. The single best thing you can do to improve your writing is to get into a habit of constant revision.

What Is Naturalism? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

The History of Naturalism

The Elements of Naturalism

The Function of Naturalist Works

Naturalism vs. Realism

Notable Naturalist Writers

Examples of Naturalism in Literature

Further Resources on Naturalism

Related Terms

Definition of Naturalism

Naturalism vs. Realism

Examples of Naturalism in Literature

Example #2: The Open Boat (By Stephen Crane)

Example #3: The Awakening (By Kate Chopin)

Example #4: To Build A Fire (By Jack London)

Function of Naturalism

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Realism As a Literary Theory

Howells and the Realism War

Realism As Literary Practice

Naturalism As a Literary Theory

Naturalism As Literary Practice

Twentieth-Century Developments

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Realism and Naturalism by John Dudley LAST REVIEWED: 29 August 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 29 August 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0059

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