Beginning Realism

Steven Earnshaw

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847794048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Realism is an essential concept in literary studies, yet for a variety of reasons it has not received the attention and clarity it deserves, often being dismissed as 'too slippery' to be of use. This accessible study remedies that failing for students and scholars of English Literature and Literary Theory alike, plainly setting out what realism is, the issues surrounding it, and its role in other major literary modes such as modernism and postmodernism. Beginning Realism gives detailed coverage of the nineteenth-century realist novel through its focus on novels by Gaskell, Eliot, Trollope, Dickens, Mrs Oliphant, Thackeray and Zola. As well as discussing 'the novel', the book also includes chapters on the use of realism in drama and poetry and a chapter on 'the language of realism', another aspect often overlooked in analysis of the concept.

1
The nineteenth-century Realist novel: two principles

Characteristics of the Realist novel

The Realist novel presents stories, characters and settings that are similar to those commonly found in the contemporary everyday world. This requires events to take place in the present or recent past, and the events themselves are usually organised in a linear, chronological sequence, and located in places familiar to author and audience either through direct observation or report. The characters and storylines are plausible, and in this they are therefore commonplace rather than out of the ordinary. The desire to portray contemporary everyday life entails and requires a breadth of social detail, and, as a consequence, the classes represented tend to be those categorised as working class and middle class, since these form the majority of the population. The medium of representation is prose fiction, and the prose itself is functional rather than poetic, accessible rather than elevated or ornate – it is the language of newspapers and Parliamentary reports, for instance, and aims to accurately represent the real life it draws upon.

Similarly, rendering of dialogue should be authentic and plausible. The subject matter for the Realist novel is whatever is to be found in everyday life, good and bad. The narrative point of view is characteristically omniscient. The novels often engage with social issues of the day, for instance, employment relations, or the place of women in society. Related to this, the Realist novel may thus offer some moral viewpoint, but there is a Realist sensibility that pressures this to be subordinate to neutrality and objectivity as the novel strives for accuracy in its representation. As part of the drive to be accurate, the representations are often given in detail. Characters, events, places, dialogue should all be ‘true’ in the sense of being ‘verifiable’, where that means being true to the experience of the readership, or to what it knows or believes to be true. The Realist world is one in which cause and effect explains everything, in that one event happens as a direct consequence of an event or events that have preceded it.

This is about as general – yet as specific – as I can make my definition of the nineteenth-century Realist novel. It is a description that nineteenth-century Realist novelists would recognise, even if they would not necessarily put it in such codified terms. The cluster of characteristics proffered here defines a body of literature that dominated the literary scene, both aesthetically and in terms of popularity, from the end of the 1840s to the close of the nineteenth century. In Europe it starts to be superseded aesthetically by modernism, most noticeably from the 1880s onwards, while Realism gathers momentum in the United States only towards the end of the nineteenth century. Realism has continued to be significant until the present day, and it could be argued that it boosted the previously more diffuse realist impulse to the point where realism has continued to be the most popular mode of artistic representation, in the visual arts as well as in literature, although critically the most maligned.

The remainder of this chapter looks at the above characteristics in more detail, as well as suggesting reasons why Realism dominates art in this period.

First principle: the faithful copy

There were numerous claims in the nineteenth century that the aim of art should be to represent the world faithfully, and this can be taken as the first principle of Realism. The reasons why artists, critics, philosophers and aestheticians make these claims are various, and the ways in which they believe the principle might be realised in and by art are various, but this first principle is dominant.

Stendhal’s novel from 1830, Le Rouge et Le Noir (Red and Black), offers the quotation ‘a novel is a mirror walking down the road’^’, and this idea that the novel is an unmediated reflector of the real world gains a hold throughout the nineteenth century. Vissarion Grigorovich in 1835 talks of ‘the poetry of reality’ (where poetry is art in general): ‘Its distinct character consists in the fact that it is true to reality; it does not create life anew, but reproduces it, and, like a convex glass, mirrors in itself, from one point of view, life’s diverse phenomena, extracting from them those that are necessary to create a full, vivid, and organically unified picture’ (in Becker 1963: 42). Grigorovich here notes some modification on the part of the mirror-artist – ‘extraction’ – but the essential Realist aim is the same, to mirror reality. It could be argued that the dominance of the mirror metaphor suggests a certain naivety, or lack of sophistication on the part of these writers, but while this may be true in some instances, in general I think that such a judgement is misplaced and does a disservice to the leading Realist novelists. Fernand Desnoyer’s declamation, ‘I demand for painting and for literature the same rights as mirrors have’, certainly may seem to be an abuse of the language of rights, one that reflects the heated exchanges in French Realist debates, but more usually the mirror metaphor acts as a guiding aesthetic principle, rather than the mirror being an agent that somehow acts independently of the author in an unmediated manner. In George Eliot’s first novel, Adam Bede (1859), the narrator takes stock of the novelist’s role:

‘This Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!’ I hear one of my readers exclaim. ‘How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things – quite as good as reading a sermon.’

Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then, of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box, narrating my experience on oath. (Eliot 1948: 178)

That the novelist does have a part to play in ordering material taken from the real world is evident, but once again the guiding idea is that the novel mirrors reality. The mirror may be in the novelist’s mind, and subject to defects, but it is the novelist’s duty to minimise this distortion. The guiding idea, for Eliot and others, means that ‘accuracy’ of representation is at a premium, and that the real world and the narrator’s experience of it that will provide the measure of this accuracy. We also get a sense of the common expectations of art, which Eliot is working against in this period, for example, that the novel should offer moral improvement on what is to be found in the real world, and that it should aim for what is beautiful.

As already suggested, there is an overriding impulse in Realist art that moral viewpoints should be subordinated to the idea of the neutral, reflecting mirror. It is clear here, therefore, that the Realist novel should also avoid being didactic, a vehicle for the author’s sermonising. Again, we can see that the mirror metaphor continues to act as a guiding principle for, after all, a mirror cannot be expected to have its own opinions. On one level there are obvious contradictions, since the narrator is claiming a mirror-like neutrality and yet foregrounding the role of the novelist as an individual witness involved in narration, but this level is subordinate to the overriding Realist tenets avowed here.

Not only does the principle of the faithful copy work as a general guideline for novelists and their approach to novels, but it becomes the measure of success for the Realist novelist, and the measure of failure for others. Trollope, for instance, was not alone in his dismissal of Dickens on the grounds that he grossly distorted reality. In Trollope’s novel The Warden (1855) the Reverend Septimus Harding receives money for looking after a group of retired wool-carders who have fallen on hard times. The money should arguably go directly to the men, but instead they only receive a small amount of this income. The issue is taken up by The Thunderer (a thinly-disguised version of The Times) and Harding finds himself in an unwelcome spotlight and the pawn of church politics. There is an entertaining passage in which Trollope recasts the narrative as it might appear in a serialised Dickens novel, The Almshouse. He does not name Dickens directly, but instead calls him Mr Popular Sentiment. Serialisation and Dickens’s general style are criticised for encouraging only superficial engagement with the real nature of things: ‘ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling numbers’ (Trollope 2004: 135). He goes on to imagine Dickens’s recreation of the put-upon Mr Harding:

The demon of the ‘Almshouse’ was the clerical owner of this comfortable abode. He was a man well stricken in years, but still strong to do evil: he was one who looked cruelly out of a hot, passionate, bloodshot eye; who had a huge red nose with a carbuncle, thick lips, and a great double, flabby chin, which swelled out into solid substance, like a turkey cock’s comb, when sudden anger inspired him: he had a hot, furrowed, low brow, from which a few grizzled hairs were not yet rubbed off by the friction of his handkerchief: he wore a loose unstarched white handkerchief, black loose ill-made clothes, and huge loose shoes, adapted to many corns and various bunions: his husky voice told tales of much daily port wine, and his language was not so decorous as became a clergyman. Such was the master of Mr. Sentiment’s ‘Almshouse.’ (Trollope 2004: 136)

Trollope’s chastisement of Dickens is for his unfaithful copy of the real world, summed up as: ‘his good poor people are so very good; his hard rich people so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very honest’ (2004: 135). While Dickens himself was generally recognised as a literary giant, the increasing clamour for the ‘faithful copy’ led to criticism of his distortive style. Trollope is one of many authors acting as the Realist ‘corrective’ to the sensationalist, sentimental, melodramatic side of Dickens. And just as Trollope finds fault with Dickens’s Realism, Mrs Oliphant finds fault with Trollope and others in her novel Phoebe Junior (1989). There is a point in the novel when Reginald is about to leave his father’s house in order to take up the job of a warden (with fewer qualms than Harding – itself a testament to a certain realistic pragmatism which Mrs Oliphant mixes in with the Realist aesthetic) – and will be replaced by a paying pupil, Clarence Copperhead. Reginald says that a pupil is often trouble.

‘A pupil is a nuisance. For instance, no man who has a family should ever take one. I know what things are said.’

‘You mean about the daughters? That is true enough, there are always difficulties in the way; but you need not be afraid of Clarence Copperhead. He is not the fascinating pupil of a church-novel. There’s nothing the least like the Heir of Redclyffe about him.’

‘You are very well up in Miss Yonge’s novels, Miss Beecham.’

‘Yes,’ said Phoebe; ‘one reads Scott for Scotland (and a few other things), and one reads Miss Yonge for the church. Mr. Trollope is good for that too, but not so good. All that I know of clergymen’s families I have got from her. I can recognize you quite well, and your sister, but the younger ones puzzle me; they are not in Miss Yonge; they are too much like other children, too naughty. I don’t mean anything disagreeable. The babies in Miss Yonge are often very naughty too, but not the same.’

In addition then to the dig at Trollope, Mrs Oliphant has Phoebe view Reginald through the prism of Miss Yonge’s church novels, and is puzzled by the lack of match between Miss Yonge’s representation of children and ‘real’ children. Other than that, Phoebe tells Reginald that she knows what he is like, thanks to Miss Yonge: ‘“See how much I have got out of Miss Yonge. I know you as well as if I had known you all my life; a great deal better than I know Clarence Copperhead; but then, no person of genius has taken any trouble about him.” / “I did not know I had been a hero of fiction,” said Reginald, who had a great mind to be angry’ (1989: 175).

Critics at the time noted the contradictions inherent in the Realist stance, and some of these contradictions would eventually lead to the undermining of Realism as the self-consciously dominant artistic mode, but for the moment let us accept Realism on its own terms and look at how novels carried out this mission to faithfully mirror everyday reality. We focus on just a few of the main considerations for the Realist novel – setting, description and characterisation – before turning to a second principle.

Setting

The subtitle of George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch is A Study of Provincial Life, and this directs the reader to the fact that a certain type of social environment is the unifying feature and central focus of attention for the novel. This is quite typical for Realist writing, and not just because it provides a convenient method of bringing together what otherwise might be a disparate group of characters. The subtitle indicates that a certain type of behaviour – provincial life – is to be objectively observed. What we therefore have, if the title is anything to go by, is a scientific or naturalist approach to the study of human behaviour in a prescribed habitat. I deal with the ‘study’ part of the title later on when discussing the influence of science. It is enough to point out here that setting in the Realist novel is not merely incidental, providing colourful or recognisable backdrops for dramatic stories, but it often demonstrates the wholly interdependent connection between humans and their environments – determining character and behaviour in the way that an animal’s character and behaviour are determined by its habitat.

In expanding upon the importance of place we see that it manifests itself in different ways. Eliot’s use of a provincial setting is typical for English Realist novels. Gaskell’s Cranford (1851) is another prime example. ‘Provincial’ in this usage means a preponderance of genteel society, ‘bourgeois’ life. The setting and the type of people to be found in that setting are co-dependent. Similarly, Trollope’s The Warden, the first novel in the Barchester Chronicles, opens by giving us a sense of Barchester and what, therefore, we are likely to expect from such a place:

The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of—; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected. Let us presume that Barchester is a quiet town in the West of England, more remarkable for the beauty of its cathedral and the antiquity of its monuments than for any commercial prosperity; that the west end of Barchester is the cathedral close, and that the aristocracy of Barchester are the bishop, dean, and canons, with their respective wives and daughters. (Trollope 2004: 1)

Note how the narrator lists interchangeable cathedral towns from the west of England. This is a typical Realist gambit as regards place, suggesting that life in the fictional Barchester can be observed in any number of real towns in this area. The lighthearted determination to avoid any hint of ‘personalising’ allows it to offer up Barchester as generic, another study of everyday life, here set among the clergy, a more familiar social set then than now.

Next to a provincial location, the other typical setting for the Realist novel is an industrial town, and similar types of co-dependency between the characters and their environments are evident. Mary Barton opens with a description of the outskirts of the town, which has the partial effect of allowing us an overview of the location, and aiding objective consideration. When there is a fire at Carsons’ mill the narration focuses on a specific area within the town that again reflects the importance of setting:

Carsons’ mill ran lengthways from east to west. Along it went one of the oldest thoroughfares in Manchester. Indeed, all that part of the town was comparatively old; it was there that the first cotton mills were built, and the crowded alleys and back streets of the neighbourhood made a fire there particularly to be dreaded. The staircase of the mill ascended from the entrance at the western end, which faced into a wide, dingy-looking street, consisting principally of public-houses, pawnbrokers’ shops, rag and bone warehouses, and dirty provision shops. The other, the east end of the factory, fronted into a very narrow back street, not twenty feet wide, and miserably lighted and paved. Right against this end of the factory were the gable ends of the last house in the principal street – a house which from its size, its handsome stone facings, and the attempt at ornament in the front, had probably been once a gentleman’s house; but now the light which streamed from its enlarged front windows made clear the interior of the splendidly fitted-up room, with its painted walls, its pillared recesses, its gilded and gorgeous fittings–up, its miserable squalid inmates. It was a gin palace. (Gaskell 2003: 50–1)

Once again we have a detailed physical description of a location, more integrated into the storyline than usual, and one which carries meaning beyond its ostensible description, for example, in the proximity of gin palace and factory. Phrases such as ‘miserably lighted and paved’ and ‘dirty provision shops’ are evaluative, and the repetition of ‘miserable’ in ‘miserable squalid inmates’ and ‘miserably lighted’ firmly links characters and environment in a typical Realist fashion. In such a passage adjectives such as ‘miserable’ and ‘squalid’ function equally as descriptions of the physical, mental and moral worlds of the inhabitants, a consequence of the belief in the interdependence of environment and human character.

Within the settings of city, town or village, and within particular areas (as above), we often then get descriptions of individual houses, again as evidence of the interdependence of character and environment, and also as part of the need to objectively describe the habitat in as much empirical detail as possible. For example, early on in Mary Barton we get a lengthy description of the Barton house:

Mrs. Barton produced the key of the door from her pocket; and on entering the house-place it seemed as if they were in total darkness, except one bright spot, which might be a cat’s eye, or might be, what it was, a red-hot fire, smouldering under a large piece of coal, which John Barton immediately applied himself to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The nineteenth-century Realist novel: two principles
• 2 The nineteenth-century Realist novel: particulars
• 3 Problems in defining the Realist novel
• 4 The idea of poetry
• 5 Realist drama
• 6 Modernism
• 7 Before, during and after postmodernism
• Interlude
• 8 Theorists of Realism
• 9 The language of Realism
• 10 Philosophy, science and the ends of Realism
• Index