Prof. Derek P. Royal

ENG 442 – Survey of American Literature II

 

Naturalism

 

In many ways, naturalism grew out of the foundations laid by earlier realist writers, leading some to call it an “emphasized realism.”  It also grew out of the work of French writer Emile Zola (himself influence by the earlier writings of Balzac and Flaubert), who believed in a world not governed by choice, but determined primarily by heredity and environment.  Scientific determinism became Zola’s primary means to understand human behavior.  He called this new kind of writing Le roman experimental, and here the novelist functioned as more of a scientist.  For the writer, direct observation took the place of creative imagination.  Life furnished abundant plots and themes for the writer’s purposes.  The significant period of fruition for American naturalist writing is typically seen as stretching from the 1890 to the first two decades of the 20th-century.  But dramatic changes had taken place in the United States since the 1870s, and many younger writers felt that we needed a more robust literature to understand the changing times.  Writers such as Frank Norris (who profoundly influenced by Zola), Stephan Crane, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser—all of whom were born in the 1870s—absorbed many of the cultural changes going on during this time.  As a result, they created a body of writing where the world seemed indifferent to its human inhabitants. 

 

There were dramatic events that were taking place in late 19th-century America.  The 1890s were a watershed period, including such changes as:

·         The closing of the frontier

·         An end to the great days of railroad building, an industry that had helped propel the economy

·         The late 19th-century rise of science

·         The mid- to late-19th-century influences of Charles Darwin, as well as the later influences of Sigmund Freud

·         Technology was growing at a rapid pace

·         Powerful monopolies owned by a small number of robber barons based their philosophy of business not on classical republican ideology but on social Darwinism and laissez faire practices

·         A large influx of immigrants helped lead to the creation of urban slums (with bad sanitation, poor living conditions, crime gross poverty, and ward politics)

·         Industrialization increased rapidly, leading to child labor and poor labor organization

 

In a land that had once believed in the dream of progress, poverty was now a growing nightmare.  All of this made realism seem obsolete, because:

·         The idea of the individual negotiating his own fate seemed ridiculous

·         Realism is based largely on character choice, the world presented in naturalist text viewed as a matter of coercion

·         The notion of the unified self seemed an illusion

·         The idea of tragedy is excluded from naturalism, because if there is no choice there can be no tragedy

·         Because people delude themselves into believing that there are real choices in the world, the theme of illusion-vs-reality takes on special significance in much naturalist writing

·         The notion of a “surface” world (reality) seemed obsolete compared with determinants from “below” (economics, basic physical needs, sexual drives, natural and social environment, etc.)

·         Unlike romanticists, life for naturalists was not beneficent, but downright hostile

·         By the 1890s, realism’s individual problems seemed nothing compared to crushing forces seemingly outside human control

·         Realism’s concern with everyday life seemed a luxury compared to events from social and economic forces

 

In the world of naturalist fiction:

·         Characters are motivated by sexual desire, greed, and mob psychology.  Many are stereotypes and absolutes

·         Details are not important in and of themselves as in realism.  In naturalism the symbolism is found in large world issues

·         Society is divided into the have and have-nots, predator and prey

·         Life is ugly, brutal, and short

·         Men and women are not far removed from the animal world

·         Free will is an illusion

·         Nature and fate are indifferent to humans

·         Words like “courage” and “virtue” have no meaning

·         The world is made up of random events

·         Everything and everyone is shaped by blind chance and environmental determinism

 

Many naturalist writers, such as Crane, Norris, and Dreiser, began their careers as newspaper reporters, observing the world that was seemingly indifferent to human fate.  As both journalists and as writers of fiction, they wrote to alert everyone to the bad conditions.  This leads to the paradox of naturalism: if the writer writes to change things, how can you change a determined world?