Realism and Naturalism: Verisimilitude, Determinism, and the Color Line
What this domain tests
1865–1910: realism, regionalism or local color, and naturalism, together with the period's African American and women's writing. Passages tend to ask you to classify a narrative's method - realist observation versus naturalist determinism - and to identify authors with their signature subjects.
Core rules and concepts
- Realism: verisimilitude, ordinary characters, restrained narration, ethical choice rather than melodrama. Howells, the movement's chief advocate, favored the "smiling aspects" of American life (The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885). James pursued psychological realism instead (The Portrait of a Lady, 1881; "The Art of Fiction," 1884).
- Regionalism: Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Chopin's Louisiana, Harte's West, Twain's Mississippi.
- Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884 Britain, 1885 United States) is built on vernacular first-person narration; Huck's decision to "go to hell" rather than betray Jim carries the moral weight.
- Naturalism: determinism, with character produced by heredity and environment, following Zola's example. Crane (Maggie, 1893; The Red Badge of Courage, 1895; "The Open Boat," 1897), Norris (McTeague, 1899), Dreiser (Sister Carrie, 1900), London ("To Build a Fire").
- Race and gender: Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) gives "double consciousness," "the Veil," and "the problem of the color line"; Washington's Up From Slavery (1901) answers it differently; Chesnutt, Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892), Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and Dunbar's dialect and standard-English poems extend the record.
Worked example
In "The Open Boat," the correspondent calls nature "indifferent, flatly indifferent" and imagines "seven mad gods who rule the sea." Step 1: identify method - exact sensory detail and limited perspective are realist technique. Step 2: identify premise - fate is governed by forces outside the men's control, which is naturalist. Step 3: note the counterweight - the "subtle brotherhood" formed in the dinghy implies value without providence. Step 4: answer with both terms: naturalism executed through realist technique.
Traps that cost marks
- Labeling Crane a romantic because The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel.
- Assigning Howells to naturalism; he rejected its grimness.
- Crediting "double consciousness" to Booker T. Washington instead of Du Bois.
- Assuming The Awakening was praised in 1899; it was condemned and Chopin wrote little fiction afterward.
- Treating dialect as automatically unliterary; Dunbar wrote in both registers on purpose.