Definition of American Naturalism (1890 - 1915) |
| Naturalism in American grew out a dissatifatction after
the Civil War (1861-1864). The literature before the war
and shortly after is can be described as Romantic. Romanticism wanted to present life as we wanted it to be.
So in Romantic works the hero always surmounted the odds
and won in the end, the good girl always gets the man of
her dreams, and things always have a way of working out.
After the civil war, along with romanticism was a
movement called
Victorianism,
named after Queen Victoria of England. The people who
wrote in this vein were concerned with the styles,
morals, and proper conduct of high society and class. A
good example would be Defoe's Swiss Family
Robinson about a family that averts death and
lands on an unmapped island paradise and manages to fight
off scores of pirates, tigers, and dangers to survive. It
is adventurous stuff, but not in the least likely or
possible. In some ways The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn is romantic in the way Twain
depicts life on the Mississippi as completely idyllic and
relaxed. Both of these artistic movements left the soldiers coming home without a voice. Their experiences in the war showed them a different world that the one depicted in Romantic and Victorian art, music and literature. They knew from experience that the good, the strong, and the moral don't always win. They knew that even the richest, strongest, and most popular person in the world can't escape the realities of nature, particularly a harsh nature. They also had a suspicion that perhaps not all prayers are answered the way we would like them to be. They were very pessimistic about their place in the universe and whether one man or woman can really make a difference. Their feelings and new eyes to the world around them, made this generation ripe for new ideas quite different from their elders. The term Naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Charles Darwin's book The Origin of the Species was a big factor in this movement. In his observations, Darwin saw man as an animal whose ascendency to the top of the kingdom a result of luck and man's ability to adapt to its enviornment quickly and completely. If a species can not adapt to the enviornment it will become extinct. The world is a harsh place and it is "survival of the fittest" organism. Other catch phrases of naturalism is "kill or be killed" and "You are either the hunter or the hunted." As I said, it is a pessimistic outlook for some people. Through this objective study of human beings, naturalistic writers believed that the laws behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood. Naturalistic writers thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels, short stories, and poems; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and enviornment. The naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions. The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic work and the conctep of man which emerges from this subject matter. The writer populates his story primarily from the lower and middle class. The characters are average and have no distinguishing feature. The naturalist is concerned with how an average person would react and think about the setting or situation he/she is placed in. So instead of studying how the great kings or leaders would react in battle, the naturalist is more interested in how the person in the trenches would react to the stress of battle. To test the will of the average man, the artist will also place the characters in extreme situations such as in subzero temperatures hundreds of miles from the nearest town or in a tiny boat in the ocean during a storm. In this way, no one can help or aid the character including God. The second tension involves the theme of the naturalistic novel. The naturalist often describes the characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also suggests a compensating humanistic value in the characters or their fates which affirms the total lack of specialness in the character. Nothing will change in the world should anything happen to the character. The world will contine to spin and rotate around the sun. Life will go on pretty much the same way it has for millions of years. There are three characteristics I will want to really drive home to you in this unit. 1. Man is insignificant 2. Nature is ambivalent (it doesn't care about man's problems) 3. The psychological stress of the average person in times of extreme stress I want you to think also of Theodore Dreiser's famous line: "All of us are more or less pawns. We're moved about like chessmen by circumstances over which we have no control." Got comments or questions? See Mr. Jay Edwards [back to Naturalism] [Stephen Crane - The Open Boat] [Characteristics] |