Realism

Realism

1. Purpose

   • Socio-economic commentary
     • Draws attention to the exploitive conditions endured by poor immigrant workers
     • commentary on the middle-classes
       • The "Great Gulf" that exists between classes
         • Divided Time
           • Class
           • race
           • Gender
         • The worker works in hell, but has a soul and is as worthy of redemption as "you" the middle class reader
   • Appeal to the middle class readers
     • Higher literacy levels
   • Amy Kaplan: "A strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change"
   • Reaction against Romanticism
     • Hawthorne
       • The Social Novel

2. Tone

   • Matter-of-fact
     • Narrator's use of "you"
       • "I want you to hide your disgust...come right down with me- here, into the thickest of the fog, mud and foul effluvia"
   • Satiric
   • Comical
   • Natural Vernacular

3. Realism?

   • Realistic, banal activities
   • Verisimiltude
   • Period from the Civil War to the turn of the century
     • 1860-1890s
   • Harmon and Holman: "Where romantics transcend the immediate to find the idea;, and the naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the scientific action and the verifiable consequence"

4. Emphasis on

   • weather
     • "A cloudy day"
     • "the air is thick, clammy with the breath of human beings"
   • Setting - descriptive
   • Characters> Plot/Action
   • Sensual

5. Industrialization

   • Heard before it's seen
     • "like thunder from a thousand engines"
   • Hugh: Laborer - Sculpter
     • Welsh Immigrant
       • Hugh is a man who believes he can alter his existence; his position is not merely hereditary and transformation can be realised through social integration