The Background

THE AGE OF REALISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

By the 1880s the happy well-educated romantic world of the New England Brahmins was dead and gone. Rich businessmen had replaced the old 'aristocrats of literature' as the leaders of American life. Many American writers of the late 1800's were inspired by an international literary movement called realism. Realism was in part a revolt against romanticism and its idealized portrayal of life. The realists sought to show life as it is. Realism encouraged writers to examine the problems and conditions around them and to use the language of ordinary people, including dialects. In this way, it encouraged the emergence of a distinctively American literature.

Unlike romantics who wished to ‘transcend’ the real to find the ideal, the realists thoroughly explored the new economic conditions and often called for social reforms. Besides economics, a new inspiration was also provided by the emerging sociology, psychology, developing biology and other sciences.

The writers’ perception of life and reality changed dramatically. Writers at the Turn of the Century were beginning to think about traditional social morality in a new way. Traditional values had been based on the idea of individual responsibility: the individual can and must choose between good and evil. But now writers were asking whether the individual could really make the choice. At the Turn of the Century words and phrases like 'uncontrollable forces', 'energy', and 'evolution' were appearing in novels which were greatly influenced by Zola's 'scientific' study of man, Darwin's theory of evolution and the works by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which attacked Christianity and introduced the concept of superman. When American writers looked at so many outside social, economic, and philosophical forces influencing a person, the area of individual choice and responsibility would seem quite small to them. On the other hand, they had to take into account the fact that each person has a will to power – the will to control oneself, the world and the others.

So this was the time of the rise of the philosophy of Pragmatism which stated that there were no fixed truths and only such moral principles that would lead to success were right. Such philosophy provided American literature with a new point of view upon the timeless American dream: the American novelists now focused on the immoral side of this "rags to riches" success, because they saw that success brought also greed, materialism, and corruption.

Realism and the writers of the turn of the century prepared the transition from the literature of the XIXth century to modern American literature of the XXth century, which is different from earlier literature in many significant ways. It is possible to list several of its characteristics which are implied in the term ‘modern’:

1. The scope of modern literature is broad. For example, writers are able to treat ugliness and violence freely.

2. The meanings of modern literature are deeper and more complex than in earlier writing because life itself has become more complex. Present-day writers have learned much about economics, sociology, anthropology, and especially psychology; and their works often embody ideas drawn from these new areas of thought.

3. Modern writing is technically sophisticated. To write about the life of today, authors have discovered new ways to express their ideas. These ways are fresh and stimulating, but they sometimes make severe demands on readers.

4. If technique is complicated, the language of modern writing is simpler than that of earlier times. In place of the old formal language, thought proper for literature, contemporary writers have substituted language much closer to that of everyday speech.

5. Modern literature exhibits more variety than that of earlier periods. Because life today is varied, so is the writing that reflects it -- in subject, in region portrayed, in philosophical outlook, in scope (broad and sociological or concentrated and psychological), and in form and technique.

But it will not be true to say that the literature of the XXth century had a completely new start. It had its roots in the American tradition and initially it continued the trends of the end of the 19^th century. In a way, the XIXth century continued in US literature till 1914.

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