Realism in Fiction
the delineation of life as it actually exists. Idealism depicts life as it should be. Romanticism pictures an imaginary existence, to which the remote and the unknown lend a glamour which charms and fascinates. The writer of a romance is a painter who may use his brush to color his scenes as his fancy dictates. The realist is a photographer whose plate reveals the minutest details of the scene upon which he focuses his camera. The idealist uses the camera, but he selects only beautiful subjects; he studies to get the best possible view, he drapes defects, and always "takes" his picture in a good light.
In a romance the plot is of vital consequence; incident stands next in importance; the characters last. In realism this order is reversed. The characters are of first consequence, incident of less moment, and plot unnecessary, since the average human life is without such entanglements. The characters themselves must be the real people of everyday life; such people as we all know, as we all are. Realism is not opposed to idealism in the truest sense. As a commonplace man or woman, such for instance, as Adam Bede, leading a humdrum life, may, by cheerfulness, unselfish fortitude, and hopeful courage, inspire those about him, so a novel, though strictly realistic, may offer a wholesome consolation for the inevitable sorrows of life and awaken higher aspirations and more worthy ambitions. This is idealized realism and is found in the highest type of novel, although undoubtedly that writer is also a realist whose stories are filled with low and sordid characters, vulgar scenes, and incidents of hopeless crime and misery.
It will be seen readily that these qualities of fiction, realism, romanticism, idealism, cannot be kept absolutely distinct. For instance, in Robinson Crusoe we have a tale of adventure--pure romance in subject--but in method of treatment it is realistic--the commonplace doings of a difficult and even sordid life hold our interest because they are so real, so natural. For the time being the reader himself lives the daily life of Crusoe on his desert isle, and is fascinated, not by the romance of a situation, but by the reality of that existence.
Jane Austen is a pure realist. She depicted the life she knew and trusted to no fanciful situations to awaken interest. It must be confessed, however, that Pride and Prejudice is a wearisome story and that the author's talent is admired rather than enjoyed. Mrs. Gaskell in Cranford focused her camera on the simplest of lives, but produced pictures worth looking at again and again. Tolstoi, Zola, and Ibsen are realists who selected, not beautiful and tranquil scenes, but sterner, coarser, more wretched views. They did this that these evils might be corrected, and their works are powerful and effective. The realist, however, who gives us a painful picture with no other object than to show us how well he can do his work, is false to his art and can win no enduring fame.
Among English writers, Scott, Stevenson, and Kipling may be mentioned as romanticists. Thackeray was a realist, although in depicting certain characters, notably Henry Esmond and Colonel Newcome, he lets his imagination idealize the picture. Dickens occasionally indulges in the romantic subject. He is a realist in method, and always an idealist. He throws a glamour over his men and women, but they are nevertheless intensely real to the reader as they were to the writer. George Eliot is a realist, she aims to reproduce to the life what she has seen. She does not reject a romantic situation, however, and of purpose she presents ideal characters. Thomas Hardy and Mrs. Humphry Ward are distinctively realistic writers.
Our first American story writers were romanticists. Irving mingled humor and pathos in his tales. Cooper wrote stories of adventure. Poe selected the horrible and the mysterious, while in the novels of Hawthorne we find the spiritual and the ideal. Then, after the Civil War, and perhaps because of it, romance dropped into disfavor. Public taste demanded the commonplace in fiction,-quiet stories of ordinary people, such as Mrs. Stowe's later novels, Miss Alcott's, read by young and old, J. G. Holland's, Mrs. Whitney's, Edward Eggleston's. These are all realistic, as are the dialect stories so popular a little later. Toward the latter part of the nineteenth century a reaction set in in favor of romance. Weir Mitchell, Mary Johnston, and Marion Crawford wrote popular tales. At present it may be said that the two schools are almost equally in favor. The realistic school, as such, was founded by William Dean Howells and Henry James, who are still its most noted exponents. Mary Wilkins ranks high as a writer of realism. Stockton writes romances in a realistic manner.
Critics may argue for the realistic or the romantic novel, each according to his own view. The novel writer will obey the law of his own nature. The novel reader will continue to demand both romance and realism and rejoice that he has both to read.-MARY BLANCHARD MURPHY.