3-Realism and naturalism (the beginning of the 20

th

century)

Local colour is a realist fiction, but local colour deals with the specific characteristic of a particular group. The colour fiction still keeps some characteristics of the romance and the romantic fiction. American realism grew out of local colour literature by virtue of its greater sophistication. It yielded in time to the movement know as naturalism (the concept of determinism). This is too simplistic a statement because there are writers that are difficult to classify (for example: Mark Twain-a local colourist and a realism writer at the same time, Henry James-realism). Even Francis Marian Crawford, who wrote thirty-odd novels about 15th century Venice (medieval times that inspire romantic writers) and tried a kind of neo-romantic revival, wrote about the corruptions of the Gilded Age. Writers have different kinds of writing. Realism is a label that helps isolate certain features that were common to a great deal of fiction written in the last third of the 19th century. For William Dean Howells the life of common people was worth transcribing accurately. He wrote about the life of common people. In contrast with romance, realism insisted on daily life explanations of cause and effect, and in this point of view showed its kinship with the ascendant empiricism of nineteenth-century science. People want to see their own experience in fiction. People are going to demand an illustration of their own experiences and life. They want to read real situations and experiences. This demand is imposed by the big change in American society. America was altering with enormous rapidity. Population grew quickly. Towns appeared overnight and grew to cities within a decade. Its a time of vast industrial enterprises (Carnegies, Vandervilt, Rockefeller, etc...) Immigration from central and Eastern Europe grew. The rapidity of change led to look for explanations and panaceas. Utopian novels like Edward Bellamys Looking Backwards 2000-1887. Utopian novels describe the perfect society and the perfect way of living. This subgenre became very famous by the end of the 19th century. Darwins theory of evolution, popularised by Herbert Spencer, made an extraordinary impact on the general public and influenced writers such as Hamlin Garland (in Main Travelled Roads 1891, he tries to demolish the Jeffersonian myth of agrarian virtue) . Darwin provided a biological analogy for the struggle for survival within the social world. Darwins affirmed human beings belong to other species, and we developed though the time. That comes out with the idea that the strongest one will adapt to the society and will succeed in there. Darwins theory became attractive for fiction, and they used it to describe how life was like in cities, and the life conditions they had. They use characters who were victims of society and they had a very sad end, usually they died by the end of the story because of their hard conditions of life and their many problems. Science transformed the intellectual as well as the physical life of the nation (technology that produced bridges and skyscrapers) and this appealed to Americas utilitarian temper. Science influence culture and intellectual life (writing and literature)

Naturalism had both native and foreign sources. The Civil War had given undeniable testimony that life was a mortal struggle, and the price of progress was spilled blood. The rapacious laissez-faire capitalism that flourished after the war called forth defensive appeals to inevitability. There was a time of growth but at the same time they had a capitalist system, where not all men had the same opportunity (capitalism didnt have any rules)