Differences between Realism and Naturalism

 

Realism

Realism, as the name suggests, was an attempt to represent the exact aspect of human life, which essentially revolves around the optimistic or the favourable side of the central character. Which was indeed reaction against the supernatural conventions of romanticism.

Realism was the major literary style in nineteenth century British and American fiction.  Realistic literature portrays ordinary people in everyday situations. They depicted events that could happen to anyone in real life without idealizing, flattering, exaggerating or romanticizing.

Before Realism, the literature aimed to concentrate on nobles, royals, and divinity which were of little relevance to the middle classes. But Realism movement broke out this convention by portraying characters that belong to working classes. There were no great heroes; the protagonists were ordinary characters with whom the audience can easily relate with.

 

Realism also paid great attention to detail; this was necessary to create a realistic feel and life likeness. The language used in literature during this period was also ordinary and colloquial, unlike in Romantic period. Common vernacular and dialects were used to render the texts more believable and realistic. Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Ibsen’s Doll’s House, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure are some examples of realistic literature.

 

 

Naturalism

Naturalism can be considered as an offshoot of realism But it focuses the sad and unpleasant aspects of human life. They consider human beings nothing but dolls in the hands of destiny. As the great naturalist writer Thomas hardy puts in his novel  ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’,  “Happiness was but the occasional episode in the general drama of  human pain.”. This was the realisation reflected in the works of naturalists.

While realism offered supposedly objective descriptions of real conditions with the hope of improving society, Naturalism often focused on determinism, or the inability of human beings to resist the biological, social, and economic forces that dictated their behavior and their fate.

Naturalistic novels were written on the  themes of violence, poverty, corruption, prostitution, etc.

 

The works of the French novelist Emile Zola is often considered to be the origins of the Naturalistic movement. His Les Rougon-Macquart (a family history) is considered to be one of the finest works in Naturalistic movement. Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Jack London’s To Build A Fire, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Thomas Hardy‘s The Mayor of Casterbridge are some notable examples of Naturalistic novels.