Realism/BA III/ Special English/Literary Criticism/Semester V

                                              (E-content developed by Dr N. A. Jarandikar)

Realism

Realism is the 19^th century movement. It is related to painting, music, theatre, cinema, photography and especially the novel form. Realism as a literary movement began in France around the 1830s. It arose as a reaction against Romanticism. Realism emphasized facts, logic, and everyday life instead of dreams and emotions. Realism became the dominant literary style in Europe roughly from 1850 to 1900.

It is believed that the movement of realism began with Stendhal (the French writer) and   Alexander Pushkin (the Russian writer). Rise of new middle class, rapid urbanization and industrial revolution were the main reasons for the emergence of realism. Industrial revolution and urbanization brought along with them the social evils like health problems, legal problems, women’s problems, education problems, etc. Realism focused mainly on this kind of society.

The salient features of realism are as follows:

1. Faithful Representation of Life: Realist literature portrays life as it is. It doesn’t glorify the life unnecessarily.
2. Focus on Ordinary People: Realist literature deals with common men and women — clerks, farmers, workers, housewives — instead of heroes or kings.
3. Everyday Situations: Events are taken from daily life — family, marriage, poverty, class difference, factory, etc.
4. Social Observation and Criticism: Realist writers often show social evils such as inequality, greed, and injustice, hoping to make society more aware.
5. Detailed Description: Realist works include small but vivid details — clothes, houses, conversations, habits — to make the scene real.

Realism in England: The 18^th century English novelists namely, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding paved the way for the realism. Later in the 19th-century George Eliot's Middlemarch, which is considered as the greatest novel in the English language, is a work of realism. The novel encompasses the important issues of the day, including the Reform Bill of 1832, the beginnings of the railways, and the state of contemporary medical science. With Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Charles Dickens realism reached to its zenith.

Realism in Europe: Balzac from France is the most prominent representative of 19th-century realism in fiction. Many of the novels in this period portrayed the hidden side of urban life such as crime, police spies, criminal, slang. Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary (1857) is an important realist novel. The novel represents perhaps the highest stage in the development of French realism.

Later important realist writers included Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, and, Émile Zola, whose naturalism is often regarded as an offshoot of realism.

Realism in the theatre

Theatrical realism was a general movement in 19th-century.  It gave importance to a greater fidelity of real life to texts and performances. It focused on everyday middle-class drama, ordinary speech, and dull settings.  G. B. Shaw, John Galsworthy (England), Anton Chekhov (Russia) are the important dramatists who followed the realist tradition. It was mainly influenced by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen.

Conclusion

By the early 20th century, realism began to change into Modernism. Modernist writers like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Kafka focused more on the inner mind and experimental techniques rather than external social reality. However, realism continued as a strong influence throughout the 20th century.

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