1861- 1914

In a nutshell
When you think about the classics of world literature, some
of the first things you think of are probably humungous
novels like War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Great
Expectations, Madame Bovary, or Middlemarch.
So do those meganovels have anything in common besides
the fact that they are mega and novels?
Sure do. They're also works of Realism.
Realism is a literary movement that developed in the middle
of the 19th century in France and then spread like wildfire
throughout the rest of Europe, all the way to Russia, and
then overseas to the US.
Realism, as you might guess by its title, is all about
portraying real life. Realist writers write about regular
folksbored housewives, petty government officials,
poor spinsters, poor teenagersliving ordinary lives.
Let's face it: most of us don't live crazy exciting lives, after
all. What Realist writers are really good at doing is showing
us how even ordinary lives are meaningful, andhello
always full of drama.
Some of these writers were reacting against the
Romantic movement, which often stressed nature over
culture, the solitary individual against society. Realist writers,
unlike the Romantics, like to focus on groups of people. They
give us the big picture: a panorama of a village, a city, or
a society. And because Realism is about giving us the big
picture, it tends to be associated with the novel genre,
which is huge and flexible. Most of the famous Realists
like Tolstoy and Dickenswere novelists, who wrote pretty
gigantic works.
Realism as a movement with a capital R ended sometime
around the turn of the century, but the techniques of Realism
have lived on. Lots of novels written today are written in

straightforward language about contemporary issues, for

example. Hey, who can resist the soap operas of daily
life, all packaged up as a 500-page slice-of-life novel?

Why Should You Care?

Ever get curious about the lives of people you don't know?
Like, what's up with those neighbors of yours who scream at
each other all the time? And what about that cute boy in
biology class, who never says a word to anyone? Does he
have friends? And what about that woman you see laughing
to herself every day on the subway platform? Is she crazy? Or
just crazy happy?
Strangers are fascinating. We know that they're like us,
but we also know that they're different from us. They've got
their own little dramas, dilemmas, crises, hang-ups. We're
always interested in hearing about why that woman left her
husband, or why that guy ended up an alcoholic, or why that
kid ran away from home.
This is why Realist literature is so great. Reading it is like
peeping through a keyhole into the lives of others:
these may be ordinary lives, but like ours they're full of
drama. After all, who doesn't have family drama, or boyfriend
or girlfriend drama, or frenemy drama? When you read
Realist literature, you don't just learn about other
people, you also learn a whole lot about yourself.

The Must-Knows of Realism

(1) Detail
Why do you think Realist novels are so long? Because they're
chock full of detail. Realists love the little things; open up
any Realist novel, and you'll probably find loads of
descriptions of food, dress, social habits, nature, and
physical appearance. One reason for this is that the

more detail you have, the more realistic your writing

seems.
(2) Omniscient Narrator
The omniscient narrator is the superhero of narrators.
These narrators know everything and can be everywhere at
once. They can jump from one character's mind to another's;
they can move between one location and the nextthey're
like God, basically.
(3) Transparent language
The language of Realism tends to be fairly simple, even if
the subject matter is complex. Since Realist authors write
about regular people, they tend to use regular, ordinary
language; Realist language echoes the language that we all
use in our everyday speech.
(4) Verisimilitude
Verisimilitude is the appearance of being true or real. You
won't find any unicorns or Martians in a Realist novel,
because Realist authors want us to believe that what we're
reading is actually happening somewhere out there in the
world. If the story they're telling doesn't seem real, then none
of their commentary on character or social issues will have
any impact.
(5) The Novel
A novel is a prose narrative that's book length and tends to
focus on character and plot. This is, hands down, the favorite
genre of Realist authors, who like to stuff their novels with
loads of detail about real life.
(6) The Quotidian
Here's a fancy-pants term referring to the ordinary, common
events of daily life. We're talking about things like
brushing your teeth, eating lunch, or taking out the
trash. Realist novels are full of this kind of detail.

(7) Character
Character refers to the emotional, psychological, and
moral qualities that make each of us who we are. You
might be stubborn, or hotheaded, or really depressed. You
might be courageous, or cowardly, or stingy. Realist writers
love to explore the qualities that make up character, and
they're especially interested in figuring out how these
qualities motivate people's actions.
(8) Social Critique
Why are some people so poor and others so rich? Why
don't the same standards apply to both men and
women? What's up with the way we treat old people?
Realist works often raise these types of questions; they're
totally into critiquing the social and political structures that
govern our lives.
(9) Class
Class refers to the way that social groups are divided up
based on economic and social status. If you own three
Ferraris, you're probably a member of the upper class. If
you're a kindergarten teacher, you're probably a member of
the middle class. Some Realist writers are especially
interested in depicting members of the middle class, but
Realism in general is totally into thinking about class issues
like inequality and class mobility.
(10) Rising Literacy
Realism as a literary movement was directly influenced by
the fact that by the mid-19th century, more and more people
were going to school and learning to read. Those regular folks
becoming literate loved Realist literature partly because it
reflected their own lives, so Realist writers found a much
broader audience than writers of previous time periods.

Take a peek at the big kahunas of Realism

Honor de Balzac

Rebecca Harding Davis

Gustave Flaubert

Sarah Orne Jewett

Leo Tolstoy

Mark Twain

George Eliot

William Dean Howells

Charles Dickens

Oscar Wilde

Henry James

Gustave Flaubert (French)

Guy de Maupassant (French)
Anton Chekhov (Russian)
George Eliot (English)
Oscar Wilde