Realism
was the literary movement that started in the 1850s as a reaction against
Romanticism and aimed at showing "life as it was" in literature all
over Europe. Although the concept of Realism is questioned by some critics, it
is a useful term to understand the general spirit of the second half of the 19th century: a reaction to Romanticism, a stress
on reason and positivism, and a faith in the power of the artist to show
reality. Interestingly enough, some of the writers from Romanticism were also
considered to be Realistic authors due to the way in which they deal with the
reality in their books. Two of the authors we are going to study in this
lesson, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, are referred to as both Romantic and
Realist writers but it was our choice to deal with their works as
representative of Realism due to the degree of realism they added to them.
Charles Dickens, on the other hand, is considered a true representative of what
was known as “critical Realism” due to the way he described the British
capitalist society of his time.
Generally speaking, some of the features of Realism include:
·
Reality being rendered closely
and in detail. It is described selectively with an emphasis on verisimilitude;
·
Characters being more important than the action or the plot and often having to
deal with complex and ethical choices; they appear in their real complexity of
temperament and motive and are in inexplicable relation to nature, to each
other, to their social class, to their own past;
·
Social issues portraying different social classes; the novel served the interest and
aspirations of a rising middle-class;
·
Plot dealing with plausible events
which avoid the sensational and dramatic elements of naturalistic novels;
·
Language being natural, not
poetic; being a real representation of the way people really spoke.
The Brontë Sisters
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), Emily Brontë
(1818-1848) and Anne Brontë (1820-1849), the Brontë Sisters, were born in
Thornton in the West Yorkshire, England. They are well known both as poets and
novelists and published their poems and novels under masculine pseudonyms,
following the custom of the times practised by female writers. Many of the
novels written by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were based on women in Victorian
England and the difficulties that they faced such as: few employment
opportunities, dependence on men for support, and social expectations. The
Bronte's novels can be seen as expressions of early feminism where the
protagonist struggles to gain independence and self-reliance.
Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre
Charlotte was the oldest of the three sisters.
Amongst her works we find Jane Eyre,
Villette, Emma, The Professor and other pieces of poetry.
In Jane
Eyre, Charlotte Bronte portrays a woman's desperate struggle to attain her
identity in the mist of temptation, isolation, and impossible odds. She
possesses a strong soul but she must fight not only the forces of passion
and reason within herself, but the will of others which were constantly imposed
on her. In its first publication, it outraged many for its realistic
portrayal of life during that time. Ultimately, the controversy of
Bronte's novel lied in its realism, challenging the role of women, religion,
and mortality in the Victorian society.
In essence, Bronte's novel became a direct
assault on Victorian morality. Controversy based in its realistic exposure of
thoughts once considered improper for a lady of the 19th century. Emotions any
respectable girl would repress. Women at this time were not to feel
passion, nor were they considered sexual beings. To conceive the thought of
women expressing rage and blatantly retaliating against authority was
challenged the traditional role of women. Jane Eyre sent controversy through the literary community. For
not only was it written by a woman but marked the first use of realistic
characters. Jane's complexity lied in her being neither holy good nor
evil. She was poor and plain in a time when society considered "an
ugly woman a blot on the face of creation." It challenged Victorian class
structure in a strictly hierarchal society. A relationship between a lowly
governess and a wealthy nobleman was simply unheard of. Bronte drew criticism
for her attack on the aristocracy who she deemed as hypocritical. She assaulted
individual's already established morals by presenting a plausible case for
bigamy. Notions which should have evoked disgust and outrage from its reader.
Yet its most shocking aspect was its open treatment of love. The passionate
love scenes were extremely explicit for their day.
Other features in Jane Eyre include:
·
depiction of feminist
ideals (women being responsible for her own destiny, equal rights in marriage,
marriage for love) which would shock the Victorian society;
·
rejection of the
catholic doctrine of self-sacrifice; and,
·
a desire to indulge in a few
earthly pleasures.
In the following extract, Jane considers her
appearance in several different ways. She starts by thinking about being
dressed as neatly and carefully as it would be expected from a woman at her
time. But this pride in her appearance quickly turns into a lament that she
isn’t more of a classic beauty. The passage also shows her inner conflict of
being such a simple person and that was what society expected.
“I rose; I dressed myself
with care: obliged to be plain – for I had no article of attire that was not
made with extreme simplicity – I was still by nature solicitous to be neat. It
was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance, or careless of the
impression I made: on the contrary, I ever wished to look as well as I could,
and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted
that I was not handsomer: I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight
nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately and finely
developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and
had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these aspirations and
these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it
to myself; yet I had a reason, and a logical, natural reason too.” (Jane Eyre, Chapter 11)
Jane Eyre was made into a movie in 2011 and
starred by Mia Wasikowska, Jamie Bell and Su Elliot. You can watch the trailer
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1vSb318d74.
Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights
Like
the other Brontë sisters, Emily was also born in Thornton, Yorkshire, England.
She lived a quiet life in Yorkshire with her father, brother, Branwell Brontë,
and the two sisters, Charlotte and Anne. Under the pseudonym of "Ellis
Bell," Emily wrote Wuthering Heights,
which gained wide critical and commercial acclaim. She died one year after the
publication of her first and only novel, in Haworth, Yorkshire, England, on
December 19, 1848.
Wuthering Heights
is a novel of revenge and romantic love. It tells the
stories of two families: the Earnshaws who live at the Heights, at the edge of
the moors, and the genteel and refined Lintons who live at Thrushcross Grange.
When Mr. Earnshaw brings home Heatcliff, a young man, to live with the family,
complex feelings of jealousy and rivalry as well as a soulful alliance between
Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw develops. Believing that he has been rejected
by Catherine, Heathcliff leaves to make his fortune. When he returns, Catherine
is married to Edgar Linton, but she still feels deeply attached to Heathcliff.
Disaster follows for the two families as Heathcliff takes revenge on them all.
Only the second generation, young Cathy and Hareton Earnshaw, survive to go
beyond this destructive passion in their mutual love.
Some
of the Realistic elements in the novel include:
·
Social
classes: the main characters belong to the middle and lower class with clear
cut lines drawn e.g. between haves (Lintons) vs. have nots (Earnshaws,
peasants);
·
“Domestic"
subjects focused on key stages, relationships, conflicts, socio-economic
factors that characterize and affect ordinary human life (e.g. birth,
childhood, adolescence, adulthood, death; family relations, love, courtship
& marriage; money, class, social status, security, etc);
·
Cultural
geography featured and chronology of family history are carefully worked out;
·
Regional
descriptive detail accumulates to realistically particularize the time, place,
culture of the setting – e.g. Wuthering
Heights landscape of the moors;
·
Plot: despite incursions of irrational excess in
some characters and super-natural elements, the plot and conflicts of the novel
advance by plausibly logical chain of cause-effect events traceable to the
characters' natures, choices/decisions, interactions, and their consequences;
·
Narrative
Frame structure of Double Narrators (Lockwood & Nelly Dean): the
narrative frame structure helps monitoring readers "suspend
disbelief" by providing a plausible scenario for the telling of the story
(e.g. Nelly Dean helps make this "strange story" believable, because
she has been a direct witness to many of the scenes in the story she relates);
besides Nelly’s character is conventional, down-to earth, and ruled by common
sense.
Below, you can read the extract from Wuthering Heights in which Heathcliff
gets to the Earnshaws’ home. It’s told through Nelly’s point of view and is a
clear example of a Realistic text:
“We crowded round, and over
Miss Cathy's head I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big
enough both to walk and talk. Indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's;
yet when it was set on its feet it only stared round, and repeated over and
over again some gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and
Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors. She did fly up, asking how he
could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own
barns to feed and fend for; what he meant to do with it, and whether he were
mad. The master tried to explain the matter; but he was really half dead with
fatigue, and all that I could make out, amongst her scolding, was a tale of his
seeing it starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets of
Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired for its owner. Not a soul knew to
whom it belonged, he said; and his money and time being both limited, he
thought it better to take it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses
there, because he was determined be would not leave it as he found it. Well,
the conclusion was that my mistress grumbled herself calm; and Mr. Earnshaw
told me to wash it, and give it clean things, and let it sleep with the
children.” (Wuthering Heights, Chapter
1)
If you are interested
in more information on the novel, go to
www.wuthering-heights.co.uk or download the
original text from www.classicly.com/download-wuthering-heights-pdf.
Like Jane
Eyre, Wuthering Heights was also
made into a movie in 1992 and starred by Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.
The trailer is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=4clztbOrFps .
Charles Dickens
Dickens (1812 –1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created
some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is considered to be
one of the greatest novelists of the Victorian period. During his life, his
works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary
genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His books gained an
enormous popularity all over the world and were edited in millions of copies,
translated into hundreds of languages. Among his works we can cite: The Pickwick Papers (1836), Oliver Twist (1838), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Cooperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale
of Two Cities (1859) and Great
Expectations (1860).His novels
attracted attention of film producers and many of them were screened (e.g. David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby,
Dombey and Son, Great Expectations,) and
had many remakes.
Dickens is a representative of what is known as the critical realist
literature, due mostly to its distinct and forceful exposure and criticism of
reality. Dickens' main idea was that of
the capitalist humanitarianism. He was sympathetic towards the oppressed,
although he could not think of effective measures to solve the social problems
except that he hoped that people could change the situation by reform. He in
favor of freedom, equality, and charity, thinking that human nature decided
human value.
Great Expectations
Great
Expectations is Dickens’ thirteenth novel, and the second novel to
be fully narrated in the first person (the first one had been David Copperfield). It depicts the growth
and personal development of an orphan named Pip. It is set among the
marshes of Kent and in London from the
early to mid-1800s. Since the very beginning, the reader is faces the
terrifying encounter between Pip, the protagonist, and the escaped convict,
Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is a graphic book, with lots of
extreme imagery, poverty, prison ships, barriers and chains, and fights to
death. It therefore combines intrigue and unexpected twists of autobiographical
detail in different tones. Regardless of its narrative technique, the novel
reflects the events of the time, Dickens' concerns, and the relationship
between society and man.
Realism is a relative
concept, a representation of reality which holds to a loose collection of
conventions. Many of these conventions can be found in Great Expectations, a narrative which follows the life and
struggles of the protagonist and narrator, Pip. Dickens uses techniques such as
a chronological linear narrative, an omniscient narrator, the celebration of
the ordinary, and the resolution of the enigma to drive the moral conditions of
Pip's everyday existence. This constructed realism is essentially a
representation of reality based on Dickens ideology, offering social commentary
and reflecting the values and attitudes of nineteenth century England.
The basic structure of Great Expectations follows a chronological
development of Pip's life; from his childhood innocence, to his disillusioned
expectations, finally his rejection of the high life and a circular succession
ending back at the beginning. This chronological structure of which Dickens
narrates exemplifies Pip's learning process through his moral and emotional
turmoil and complies with the opportunity to generate a realistic setting. For
example, Pip's description of his journey to London is full of details and
provides the reader with a very peculiar portrait of the city:
THE journey from our town to the metropolis, was
a journey of about five hours. It was a little past mid-day when the four-
horse stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic
frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London.
We Britons had at that time particularly settled
that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of every-
thing: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I
might have had some fuint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked,
narrow, and dirty.
Mr Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was,
Little Britain, and he had written after it on his card, `just out of
Smithfield, and close by the coach-office.' Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman,
who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old,
packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier
of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box,
which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green
hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful
equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don't
know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent
amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation.
I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a
straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the horses'
nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman beginning to get down,
as if we were going to stop presently. And stop we presently did, in a gloomy
street, at certain offices with an open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.
(Great Expectations, Chapter 20)
Great Expectations was made into a movie in 2012 and starred by Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, among others. You can watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h96_gT3Mgw4 .
You can download the pdf
version to the book at http://www.classicly.com/download-great-expectations-pdf
.
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