Transcript The Age of Realism

The Age of Realism
The Literature of the Late
Nineteenth Century
The Age of Realism:
Marked by the End of the Civil
War: 1861-1865
• Cost of the Civil War
• The Human Cost
• 1,094,543 Casualties
• The North lost one out of ten
• 110,100 in battle
• 224,580 to disease
• The South lost one out of four
• 94,000 in battle
• 64,000 to disease
• Two percent of US population died in the Civil War, with
only WWII claiming more lives;
• Economic Cost
• Estimated at 6.6 billion, which would be 165 billion today
By the end of the Civil War
• The Emancipation Proclamation and 13th
Amendment had abolished slavery
• The industrial North had defeated the
agrarian South
• Social order grew based on mass labor and
mass consumption;
• Steam power replaced water power
• Machines replaced hand labor
• The Industrial Revolution had begun
The Effects of The Industrial
Revolution
• Migration from rural to urban areas
• Independent, skilled workers
replaced by semi-skilled laborers;
• Large corporations were established,
devaluing the personal relationship
between management and workers or
company and customers.
Political Upheaval
• Political power shifted to the laboring
classes;
• Political patronage and graft caused civic
corruption;
• The power of the federal government
expanded during the Civil War;
• National conscription laws;
• Federal income taxes levied;
• Paper money backed by federal government
rather than individual states issued.
Mass Communication and
Migration
• Coast-to-coast communication
• Pony Express (1860)—10 days
Telegraph (1861)—just seconds to communicate
across country
Transatlantic telegraph cable (1866) allowed
instant communicate with Europe
Telephone patented (1867)
By 1900, 1.3 million telephones in U.S.
Coast-to-coast travel
Transcontinental Railroad (1869)
By 1889, coast-to-coast travel—4 days
Alexander Graham Bell
Samuel Morse: Inventor of the
Transcontinental
Railroad
Telegraph
Effects of Transcontinental
Mobility
• Increased commercial development
• Farm and ranching products available
nation wide
• National retail organizations undersold
local shop keepers
• Richard Sears and Montgomery Wards
• Ready-made goods and clothes less expensive
than local, hand-produced wares
• Time zones reduced from 56 to 4 in 1883
Other Social Changes
• Migration westward expanded the U.S. from the
Atlantic to the Pacific
• Native American populations displaced and subjugated;
• Growth of Industry
• Steelmaking, the nation’s dominant industry
• Alternating electrical current (1886)
• American petroleum industry begins
• Growth of population
• Total population doubled from 1870 to 1890
• National income quadrupled
• Gap between rich and poor widened
Civil Rights Changed
• Reconstruction in the South ends by 1877
• Poll taxes and literacy tests disqualified black voters
• Separate and unequal schools created
• White supremacy re-established
• Women’s rights increase
• More women entered the workforce
• All female colleges were formed: Vassar, Wellesley and Smith
• Women gained the right to vote in 1922
• Foreign immigration increases
• By 1910, one-third of largest cities foreign-born
• Need for public education increases
• The Morrill Acct of 1862—land given to states for
establishment of “land-grant” universities
Intellectual Revolution:
Changes in Thinking brought
about by Changes in Society
• Changes in science
• Changes in psychology
• Changes in philosophy
Science: Charles Darwin
• Published The Origin of
Species,
• Hypothesized that man is
the product of evolution,
• Man is special not because
God created him in His
image,
• but because man had
successfully adapted to
changing environmental
conditions
• and had passed on his
survival-making
characteristics to his
progeny.
Psychology: Sigmund Freud
• Believed that the mind
could be understood in
terms of repressed
urges, usually sexual;
• Theorized an
unconscious system of
ideas that governs
human reactions and
response;
• Id, Ego, and Super-ego
Philosophy: Karl Marx
• Explained human
history as the
result of class
struggles;
• Human identity is
defined by social
context;
• It is human nature
to transform
nature.
Philosophy: American
Pragmatism
• Truth is tested by its
usefulness or practical
consequences;
• Truth is a commodity
accessible on the surface
of things;
• It’s perceptible to the
senses and verifiable
through experience;
• Permanent truths exist
apart from the material
world—the mind of God,
Plato’s ideal forms
William James
From these social changes come
two literary movements
• Realism,
• first begun as the local color movement
• Naturalism
Realism
• Begins in France, as realisme, a literary
doctrine calling for “reality and truth in
the depiction of ordinary life.”
• Grounded in the belief that there is an
objective reality which can be portrayed with
truth and accuracy as the goal;
• The writer does not select facts in accord with
preconceived ideals, but rather sets down
observations impartially and objectively.
A Reaction against Romanticism
• These authors
sought to portray
life as they saw it,
insisting that the
ordinary and local
were just as
suitable for art as
the sublime.
“Nothing more and nothing less than the
truthful treatment of material. “ William
Dean Howells
Realism began in America as
Local Color
• A synthesis of romantic plots and
realistic descriptions of things;
• Definition of Local Color:
• Literature that focuses on the
characters, dialect, customs,
topography, and other features
particular to a specific region that
exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms,
and habits of that specific region .
Characteristics of Local Color
• Setting—often remote and usually integral
to the story;
• Characters—more concerned with the
character of the region than an individual—
quaint, stereotypical;
• Narrator-- an educated observer from the
world beyond who’s often deceived
• Emphasis on dialect
• Use of stock characters
• Plot—nothing much happens, revolves
around the community and its rituals
Themes in Local Color
• Dislike of change, nostalgia for an
always-past Golden Age;
• Triumphant trickster or trickster
tricked;
• Tall tale-tradition, conflicts
described humorously, larger than
life
Characteristics of Realism
• Subject matter—ordinary people and events;
• Purpose—Verisimilitude, the truthful
representation of life;
• Point of View—omniscient and objective
• Characters—middle class, psychological realism
• Plot de-emphasized
• Focus on everyday life
• Complex ethical choices often the subject
• Events are made to seem the inevitable result of
characters’ choices
Themes in Realism
• Humans control their destinies
• characters act on their environment
rather than simply reacting to it.
• Slice-of-life technique
• often ends without traditional formal
closure, leaving much untold to suggest
man’s limited ability to make sense of his
life.
Naturalism: A Harsher Realism
Definition: A literature that depicts
social problems and views humans as
victims of larger biological,
psychological and social and economic
forces.
• Scientific determinism
• Psychological determinism
• Historical determinism
Scientific, Biological or
Darwinian Determinism
• Man has no direct control over who or what
he is. His fate is determined by outside
forces that can be discovered through
scientific inquiry;
• Humans respond to environmental forces
and internal stresses and drives, none of
which can be fully controlled or understood
• People are driven by fundamental urges like
fear, hunger, sex
• The world is a “competitive jungle,”
Psychological Determinism
• Man is a victim of
his inner and
subconscious self
(Freud).
Historical Determinism
• Historical or socioeconomic
determinism
(Marx): the world
is a battleground
of economic and
social forces;
Objectives of Naturalism
• Presentation is objective and detached
• Subject matter—raw and unpleasant
experiences which reduce people to
degrading circumstances in order to
survive;
• Setting commonplace and un-heroic
• Novelist discovers qualities in lower class
characters usually associated with heroes
• Suggestion that life on lowest levels is more
complicated
Themes in Naturalism
• Man is fundamentally an animal, without
free will;
• Governed by determinism
• External and internal forces, environment or
heredity control behavior;
• Characters have compensating humanistic
values which affirm life;
• Struggle for life becomes heroic and affirms
human dignity
• Pessimistic view of human capabilities—life
is a trap
The Ultimate Problem in
Realism
• Whose reality is portrayed?
• Those in power, usually male, white and
privileged
• Whose reality is marginalized and
ignored?
• Those without power: women, people of
color, people of lower economic means