1. Realism
Regionalism
Naturalism
Edith Wharton
Kate Chopin
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Ambrose Bierce
Bret Harte
Jack London
Mark Twain

2. Remember the Romantics?
 1828-1865
 Included Transcendentalists and
Anti-Transcendentalists
 Included Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman,
Hawthorne, and Poe
 Believed in the individual, emphasized the
imagination, emotions, and creativity, etc.
Now, on the Realists…

3. Edith Wharton
a good transition from Romanticism to
Realism & Regionalism
 Ethan Frome shows harsh realities of life in
a small town in the East
 Ethan is a Transcendentalist (in some
ways) who is affected by harsh realities of
life

4. Realism & Realists
1865-1910
Reaction against
Romanticism
Turned from strange things
to ordinary things (a slice of
life and how life is really
lived)

5. Realism
any effort to offer an accurate and
detailed portrayal of actual life
based on careful observation of
life (often focused on middle &
lower classes)

6. What does Realism mean?
 “Letfiction cease to lie about life; let it
portray men and women as they really are.”
 “Realism is nothing more and nothing less
than the truthful treatment of material.”
--William Dean Howells
(1837 –1920)
American realist author and literary critic

7. Realism
Finds the drama and tension
beneath the ordinary surface
of life
Believed that humanity’s
freedom of choice is limited
by the power of outside
forces

8. Realism
 Realist authors are more descriptive than
symbolic.
 Readers were attracted to the realists
because they saw their own struggles in
print. They also had little patience for the
slow-paced narratives, allegory, and
symbolism of the Romantics writers (can
you relate?).
 Realists’ writing was often regional.

9. Regionalism
accurately represents the speech,
manners, habits, history, folklore,
and beliefs of people in specific
geographic areas

10. Regionalism
Because America was leaping
into a new modern age with the
industrial revolution
(standardization, mass
production of goods, etc.),
people feared that local folkways
and traditions would soon be
forgotten.

11. Connection: Realism &
Regionalism
Responding to these sentiments,
realistic writers set their stories
in specific American regions,
rushing to capture the “local
color” before it was lost.
Regionalism grew out of Realism

12. Local Color
 Captures the special atmosphere of the
area and its people
 Often contains regional dialects, well-
known places, customs, etc. of a
particular area
 Because of lack of communication and
transportation, it shows how people lived
in other parts of the country

13. Naturalists
 1900-1914
 Extension of Realism
 A reaction against the emphasis on the
“ordinary” lives realist writers portrayed
 Naturalist writers insisted that the
extraordinary is real, too.

14. Naturalism
offshoot of Realism; sought to
describe people and events
realistically; emphasizes how
instinct and environment
influence human behavior; the
fate of humans is beyond
individual control

15. Naturalists
Instead of middle-class realities,
naturalists wrote about the
fringes of society—the criminal,
the fallen, the down-and-out.

16. Naturalists
 Were Darwinists—they believed that
individuals have no choice in life because
a person’s life is dictated by heredity and
the external environment
 We inherit compulsive instincts such as
hunger, the drive to accumulate
possessions, and sexuality; and then we
are subject to the social and economic
forces in the family, class and
surroundings into which we were born.

17. In other words, people are
caught within the forces of
nature or society that are
beyond their
understanding or control

18. Naturalism
 Facts-only approach (avoids idealistic
solutions to problems)
 “Brutal Realism”
 The protagonist, a pawn to multiple
compulsions, usually disintegrates, or is
wiped out, by the end of the story.
 Aimed at bettering the world through
social reform (bringing a situation to the
eyes of the public so as to improve it)

19.  Realism- any effort to offer and accurate and
detailed portrayal of actual life based on
careful observation of life (often focused on
middle & lower classes)
 Regionalism- accurately represents the
speech, manners, habits, history, folklore,
and beliefs of people in specific geographic
areas
 Naturalism- offshoot of Realism; sought to
describe people and events realistically;
emphasizes how instinct and environment
influence human behavior

20. Genre American Perceived Presents Freedom
the life of
Author (s) individual as… choice?
as…
Transcendentalists R. W. Emerson A god We would Do whatever
R H.D. Thoreau have it pleases
O Walt Whitman be, want you –
M it to be limitless
A possibilities
N
T
Dark Romantics Nathaniel Hawthorne Filled with the Potentially Choice
I
Edgar Allan Poe potential dark possible,
C
for sin but tends
S
to the
dark side
Realists/Regionalists Edith Wharton Simply a As it really is Choices are
R Mark Twain person limited by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman outside
E Mary Wilkins Freeman forces
A Ambrose Bierce (class,
L race, etc.)
I Naturalists/Regionalists Kate Chopin A helpless Determined No choices –
S Jack London object only by we are
heredity pawns of
T and our
S environ- background
ment and
current
environ-
ment

21. American Realist
Authors:

22. Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
New York

23. Charlotte Perkins Gilman

24. Mary Wilkins Freeman
New Jersey

25. Realist authors who
were Naturalists:

26. Kate Chopin
Missouri

27. Jack London
Northern California
London was the first American author to
make a million dollars from his writing.
He was also known to drink a quart of
whiskey/day, which caused him to have
numerous accidents, including once
falling off of a pier into the San
Francisco Bay.

28. Bret Harte
Surrey, England

29. Ambrose Bierce
Mexico—his actual death
date and place are
unknown