ing group, he cannot hope for great sue. this last point, Mr. Washington is espe­ s tended to make the whites, North and problem to the Negro's shoulders and imistic spectators; when in fact the bur­ Realism and Naturalism ands of none of us are clean if we bend at wrongs. did and honest criticism, to assert her race she has cruelly wronged and is still Realism and naturalism are closely related but disputed terms in American literary his­ r in guilt-cannot salve her conscience tory, used interchangeably and also as opposites. Is naturalism merely realism with an t settle this problem by diplomacy and emphasis on pessimistic determinism? Or is naturalism something separate from real­ e come to worst, can the moral fibre of ism and at odds with it, an idealistic form of romance? As cultural conditions changed g and murder of nine millions of men? rapidly in mid-nineteenth-century America, artists of all types turned to realist styles duty to perform, a duty stern and deli­ to address such new concerns as the rise of the middle class and the struggles of the )Se a part of the work of their greatest working class. Literary realism, then naturalism at the start of the nev\ century, gave voice Americans' changing a\\areness of the meaning of such concepts as caches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial to "Nature"-including human nature-in such new environments as the frontier and old up his hands and strive with him, fast-growing cities. in the strength of this Joshua called of Realism as a movement in novei-\Hiting developed in early nineteenth-century ost. But so far as Mr. Washington apol­ Europe and the United States. \Vriters as seemingly different as \\'illiam Dean Hm\·­ does not rightly value the privilege and ells and Mark Twain offered objective, detached views of everyday life appropriate for ating effects of caste distinctions, and middle-class readers. Critic George J. Becker's definition of the realist nm·el as a sub­ ition of our brighter minds,-so far as stantial work in prose that offers verisimilitude of detail, a norm of experience, and an this,-we must unceasingly and firmly objective view of human nature fits not only the\\ ork of early realist authors hut also peaceful method we must strive for the that of their literary descendants. By the mid-nineteenth century, realism was simp!~ n, clinging unwaveringly to those great considered modern, and readers assumed that contemporary f-iction would aspire to offer verisimilitude. \'Ould fain forget: "\Ve hold these truths The heights of American realism were reached in the work of Howells, 1\\ a in, .reated equal; that they are endowed by Henrv James. and Edith \Vharton. Hm,ell's The Hise of Silas Laplw11z ( 18111) trans­ le rights; that among these are life, lib- formed the novel of manners into a critique of the American Dream, as a familv is nearly undone by the father's unexamined desire for high society-yet all is mostlv well 1903 in the end, lessons learned. Regarded as "the father of Americ:m Realism," llo\\clls, like Twain, rejected romanticism (if not sentiment) and its distortions. 1\lore signif-i­ cant for literary history than Howells's fiction were his editorships at prestigious mag­ azines such as Harper's and Atlantic Monthly. in v\·hich he published T\\ain. James, and other innovators, including Charles Chesnutt and naturalist Frank ;\'orris. If not for Howells in his editorial dimension, Twain's publishing career might never hav·e taken off. Though T"ain and James represented two very different instances of American real­ ism (and disliked each others' writing). Howells championed both of them. As T\\ a in pushed realism toward satirical exaggeration and den• loped the \·crnacular \Oice in his fiction, James used the voice of high culture and pushed realism toward premodern psychological realism, particularly in Ihe Portrait ofu Lud1 ( lHH2) and his other nov­ els of Americans unprepared for situations they encounter in Europe. In later nm cis, such as The Hi11gs of the Do1·e ( 1902), James de\-eloped realism into an absorbing. complex interior discourse, his narrator e\·oh-ing into an ironic blend of first- and third-person points of vie\\, a perspective described hv- critic l'ercv Luhhock as hm er­ ing somewhere on·r the shoulder of the "focal character."\\'hart on's satiric and often tragic nm·els and stories of Gilded :\ge ;\'e\\ ){Jrk societv- c"\lend the penetrating insights of H<HI·ells and James, hut mon' more ttl\lard naturalism: the la\\s of Oar­ Winian sun·i,·al are not, in her \\ork, in operation onh- among the poor or along the frontier. but in the upper-crust dr<m ing rooms and summer homes she kne\\ from birth. l) l l 7 J '- ntALI~M ANU l~ATURALISM 71:> .,., Realism \\as a broader movement than naturalism, and of course helped give rise WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS to naturalism. But they present sharp differences. The realist novels of the nineteenth century attacked social mores and manners but were rarely critical of the political foundations of society itself. \\'ith its clearer doctrines, more restricted time period Enormously influential as author, editor, and critic. \\'illiam Dean li<l\\ells I I Hii­ !920) was one of the prime innovators of American realism; his nmels and e\en more (I 890-1920), and pro\"ing grounds mainly in France and the United States, natural­ his editorial work shaped American flction of his day. \Vhen Howells left his edi­ ism more speciflcally critiqued the industrial wealth of the bourgeoisie. Naturalist so torship at The Atlantic i\lo~tthl) in 1881, he had already established himself as a "lit­ nmels had extreme settings, in contrast to the e\ eryday, believable locales of realist erarY Columbus," as Cosmopolitan editor Perriton t\lax\\ell called him, ha,ing nm·cls. Realistic characters were usually middle class; naturalistic ones lower-class, "a flock of brilliant essayists, poets, and storytellers ''hose 'oices \\ ou ld Realist plots worked tm\ard the restoration of order and characters' proper location disc~verecl have died ... had he not been the conscientious listener for the ne\\ er notes borne in class hierarchies. i\linor crises lead to a major confrontation, followed by resolu­ Bostonward from everywhere in these broad States of ours." IncreasinglY as his career tion. In naturalist novels, the characters confront major crises and are destroyed by progressed Howells felt American writing should be "simple, naturaL and honest" and them. A realist might suggest that good will ultimately prc\·ails, but in naturalist nov­ should refrain from "romantic exaggeration." Unlike Henry James or t\lark T" a in, his els humans are doomed by their own (animalistic) shortcomings. ;\laturalist heroes never have a chance. fel]m\· realist innovators, Howells was not interested in the unconscious and irrational in humankind. Though he was criticized bv Frank Norris among others for his By the end of the nineteenth century, naturalism, with its "scientific" point of view, "teacup tragedies" that take place in front parlors, as an editor and critic ll<l\\ ells had cle,eloped narrative techniques that reflected this orientation, embracing such responded deeply and sensitively to novelistic complexitv. In his essay "Henrv James, new technologies as photography and grappling with Freud's theories of a primitive '"id" and the Unconscious, a new inner landscape. But the most important force Jr.," Howells praises James's "impartiality" as that which lean·s conclusions about characters up to the reader: "\\'e must take him on his own ground, for clearly he\\ ill behind naturalism was Darwin. Life as a series of e\·ents gm·crned by natural selec­ tion, as proposed in Dam in's Origizz of Species ( 18 59) and Tize Descent ofiHan ( 1871 ), not come to ours." ":\'ovel-\Vriting and ;\Jovel-Reading" was not published until well after Hm\ells's suggested that the strong sun·i,·c and the weak are destroved: this scientiflc "law of life," as its adherents thought of it, ran counter to religion and genteel morality. death; in his clay it was a widely praised lecture he gave on a tour through the East and Midwest in 1899. In the essay Howells shows a change from the "Boston" llo\\­ In France, nm·elist and social critic Emile Zola wrote naturalist nm·els of the lives ells to the "New York" Howells. t\lming to Ne\\ York in I 89 I, Hm\ells de\ eloped a of poor people at the mercy of biology and class, featuring themes of power and sur­ growing concern with "social" and "race" questions in literature. He came to sec nmel­ ,i,al. In the preface to Therese Raqui11 (I 86 7 ), Zola compares the naturalist to a sur­ reacling as a more serious endeavor than e\·er. And for nm·elists, he felt, "comtruction geon dissecting a corpse-the nm el exposes social conditions in a way that might ultimatelv help right political and economic \\Tongs. and criticism go hand-in-hand." From his ne\\ column in Harper·\ ,\Taga=inc, llo\\Tlls campaigned for the importance of realism in the noyel, arguing that the reader's 0\\ n American litcrarv naturalists-most born after the Civil \\'ar-grcw up in a differ­ "experience of life" was the only test of" 'realism.'" But, in the end, realism is less "pic­ ent \\orld than did the realists, one dominated by \\hat critic Donald Pizer calls a turesque" than historical and ethical. In his earlier career. H<l\\ells had insisted on "struggle to survin· materially rather than to preYail moral h." Between the economic eliding those passions that could not be re\·ealed in polite nmels; In this point, he had panics of the 1890s, which put masses of people out of \\ork, and \\'orld \Var I, there come to belieYe that "realism excludes nothing that is true," and that trutlz is S\nom­ den· loped naturalist literature of great di,·ersitv.