Discussion Forum 2

Below are the characteristics of Realism–pick one piece of literature. Then, pick three of the characteristics below  and explain how the piece of literature you chose is a good example of  them. This response should be (at least) 250-300 words in length. 
 
Definitions
Broadly  defined as “the faithful representation of reality” or  “verisimilitude,” realism is a literary technique practiced by many  schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique,  it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the  representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an  interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of  documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all  affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh  Holman, “Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal,  and 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 specific  action, and the verifiable consequence” (A Handbook to Literature 428).
Many  critics have suggested that there is no clear distinction between  realism and its related late nineteenth-century movement, naturalism. As Donald Pizer notes in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London,  the term “realism” is difficult to define, in part because it is used  differently in European contexts than in American literature. Pizer  suggests that “whatever was being produced in fiction during the 1870s  and 1880s that was new, interesting, and roughly similar in a number of  ways can be designated as realism, and that an equally new,  interesting, and roughly similar body of writing produced at the turn of  the century can be designated as naturalism” (5). Put rather too  simplistically, one rough distinction made by critics is that realism  espousing a deterministic philosophy and focusing on the lower classes  is considered naturalism.
In  American literature, the term “realism” encompasses the period of time  from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which William Dean  Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others  wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of  American lives in various contexts. As the United States grew rapidly  after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the  rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population  base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence  provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in  understanding these rapid shifts in culture. In drawing attention to  this connection, Amy Kaplan has called realism a “strategy for imagining  and managing the threats of social change” (Social Construction of American Realism ix).
Realism  was a movement that encompassed the entire country, or at least the  Midwest and South, although many of the writers and critics associated  with realism (notably W. D. Howells) were based in New England. Among  the Midwestern writers considered realists would be Joseph Kirkland, E.  W. Howe, and Hamlin Garland; the Southern writer John W. DeForest’s Miss Ravenal’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty is often considered a realist novel, too.
Characteristics
(from Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition)
Renders  reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of  reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a  well-made plotCharacter is more important than action and plot; complex  ethical choices are often the subject.Characters appear in their real  complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to  nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.Class  is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and  aspirations of an insurgent middle class. (See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel)Events  will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational,  dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.Diction is natural  vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or  matter-of-fact.Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly  important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the  century progresses.Interior or psychological realism a variant form.In Black and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between realism and sentimentalism is  that in realism, “the redemption of the individual lay within the  social world,” but in sentimental fiction, “the redemption of the social  world lay with the individual” (75-76).

The realism of James and  Twain was critically acclaimed in twentieth century; Howellsian realism  fell into disfavor as part of early twentieth century rebellion against  the “genteel tradition.