1. The Awakening Literary Context
Realism
&
Naturalism

2. Critics consider The Awakening
as a study in Realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism and stressed the real over the fantastic.

3. The movement sought to treat the commonplace truthfully and used characters from everyday life.

4. Writers probed the recesses of the human mind via an exploration of the emotional landscape of characters.

5. This emphasis was brought on by societal changes sparked by
The Origin of Species by Darwin,

6. the Higher Criticism of the Bible,

7. and the aftermath of the Civil War.

8. Realism Deal with ordinary people
Focus on the thoughts & feelings of ordinary people (note neoclassicism and romanticism)
Be faithful with the development of characters even at the expense of action
Examine social problems/institutions with the aim of reforming them
Depict people’s politically & psychologically oppressive environments

9. Major Writers

10. Mark Twain

11. Huckleberry Finn

12. Stephen
Crane

13. Red Badge of Courage

14. Jack London

15. The Call of the Wild

16. Henry James

17. Portrait of a Lady
Daisy Miller
The Ambassadors

18. Charlotte P. Gilman
“The Yellow Wallpaper”

19. Sarah Orne Jewett
“The White Heron”

20. Kate Chopin

21. A deeper, more pessimistic, literary movement
called Naturalism grew out of Realism and
stressed the uncaring aspect of nature
and the genetic, biological destiny of man.

25. Realism vs. Naturalism
Realism is concerned directly with what is absorbed by the senses. Naturalism, a term more properly applied to literature, attempts to apply scientific theories to art.

26. Naturalists believed
that man's instinctual,
basic drives
dominated their
actions and
could not
be evaded.

27. instinct

28. Life was viewed as relentless, without a caring presence to intervene.

29. It differs
from realism
in adding
an amoral attitude
to the objective
presentation
of life.

32. and the economic determinism of Karl Marx.

34. Émile Zola
In the early 1870s French writer Émile Zola created a new type of novel in which he attempted to apply methods of scientific observation to describe social ills and human pathological behavior. Between 1871 and 1893 Zola wrote 20 novels in this style, which he called naturalism.

36. “the conscience of mankind.”
As novelist Anatole France
declared in his eulogy, Zola had become
“the conscience of mankind.”

37. One of the first
American exponents
of naturalism
was Frank Norris,
whose novel McTeague
(1899) is a classic study
of the interplay
between instinctual
drives and
environmental
conditions. (See article)

38. Other notable writers of naturalistic fiction were Sherwood Anderson,

39. John Dos Passos,
His attacked American materialism and hypocrisy in the 1920s and 1930s. He later became more conservative in his views, but he continued to win acclaim for innovations in literary technique.

40. Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser’s distinctively American novels pioneered the naturalist style of writing, which sees the individual as the victim of uncontrollable forces. An American Tragedy, published in 1925, is considered his greatest work.

41. James T. Farrell.
( ), American novelist, born in Chicago. He wrote in a brutally frank, naturalistic style that shocked readers in the early 1930s. Protest against social and economic inequalities is present in all his fiction.

42. The aspect of naturalism most evident in The Awakening is the portrayal of Edna as hostage to her biology.

43. She is female,
has children,
and is a wife
in a society
that dictates
behavioral norms
based on those
conditions. These
factors drive
the novel and
drive Edna.

44. She makes
no attempt
to suppress
her amatory
impulses,

45. she bases her decisions on the welfare of her children,

46. and she is in her difficult situation because of the men in her life: father, husband, lover, and would-be-lover.

47. The inherited biological aspect continues with the idea that her character traits may have been tainted by bad stock.

50. The novel is also
true to the real life
aspects of Realism
and Naturalism
in its forthright
dealing with
sexual matters:

51. Arobin's seduction

52. the hot kisses she gives to Robert,

53. Leonce's allusion that they no longer sleep together,

54. the naked man on the rock.

55. This type of
description was
actually advanced
for both movements;
Chopin provided a
more detailed
and full range
of sexual emotions
and activities than
most other
American novelists
had.

56. The relationship between men and women and the economic aspects that go along with that issue
are also realistic.

57. Edna is "owned"
at various points
in the novel by
her father,
husband,
Arobin,
and Robert.

58. Victor speaks of women
in terms of possession,

59. Leonce is shown to class her as property, and to see her as a symbol
of his social status.

60. Edna herself remarks that as she moves into the pigeon house she feels
she is lower on the social rank.

61. Another naturalistic element in the novel is the portrayal of Edna as a victim of fate, chance, of an uncaring world, pulled into a consuming, but indifferent sea.

62. In the end, despite her developments into selfhood, the only escape from her biological destiny as a woman in society, possessed, sexual, and ruled, is death.

63. Twentieth-century
American poet
Sylvia Plath
wrote poems
that often
focused on the
painful plight of women,
young people,
rebels, and misfits.

64. Plath’s attempts to exorcise the oppressive male figures that haunted her life served as one of the fundamental themes in her poetry. The opening stanza of “Daddy” demonstrates this theme .