Content. Introduction. Chapter. I. History of Realistic Victorian Novels

CHAPTER.II. 19th Century Literary Movements : Realism and Naturalism.
2.1. Sub-Genres of Literary Realism
Social Realism is an international art movement that includes the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. While the movement's artistic styles vary from nation to nation, it almost always uses a form of descriptive or critical realism. Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, which used a style of social realism. Its protagonists usually could be described as angry young men, and it often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies. The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the genre. The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders. In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist–type scenes of domestic life.²
Socialist Realism
Socialist realism is the official Soviet art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and was later adopted by allied Communist parties worldwide. This form of realism held that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress. The Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934 stated that socialist realism is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development.
Science took on a heretofore undreamt-of importance in the Victorian age. The whole world was brought closer together, first by the building of railroads, then by the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, and the beginnings of travel by air. Everywhere machinery was revolutionized by the use of steam and electricity. Superficially scientists could claim that they were vastly improving the pleasures of living though their inventions benefited as yet only the few.
The growth of material well-being of the middle class and the development of scientific invention provoked violent reactions on the part of some writers. There were men then alive who felt that all this progress was suicidal to the soul. Carlyle was sick at the sight of the sordid lives led by men and women in the factories and he sought refuge from the tentacles of the machine by preaching the doctrine that human labor alone was sacred. An enemy of industrialization, he looked back to the Middle Ages to prove that consecration to humble labor had made great souls. John Ruskin was 10 a certain degree his disciple. Pre-eminently concerned with art, Ruskin concluded that only great spiritual values can make for great art; he denounced Utilitarianism as an apology for the evils of industrialized society. He too found in the Middle Ages a noble spiritual ideal which the modern world had lost.
In the Victorian Age this escape to the Middle Ages became a favorite resource for many who could not bear the ugliness, of contemporary life. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which the leaders were Rossetti and Morris, franidy imitated medieval painters and poets in their own work. In the field of religion, John Henry Newman, leader of the Oxford Movement, found in the ritual of the Medieval Church a beauty nourishing to the soul; he sought to annihilate the traditions of Puritanism which he felt had impoverished the English Church. In the end he was drawn to the Roman Catholic Church, of which Le became a Cardinal. His own spiritual struggles mark the beginnings of a rebirth of Roman Catholicism and the conversion to that faith of thousands in England.
Perhaps most cataclysmic of all new ideas were those advanced in natural science. The Theory of Evolution, which for some time had been undermining the prestige of the idea that the universe had been created for man, was finally summed up in the writings of Charles Darwin. He was able to put before the public a mass of facts justifying the theory of organic evolution, in a manner which could no longer be gnored. The very foundations of religion began to rock, and the authority of the Bible was subjected to such doubts as the world had never known before. Many felt that the whole groundwork of ethics and morals was crumbling. The doubt and despair occasioned by the Darwinian theories can be read in a number of Victorian writers, notably in the poetry of Matthew Arnold. But Darwin's disciple, Thomas Huxley, went up and down the English-speaking world to acquaint the average man with what the Darwinian teachings actually were. Through his influence agnosticism was understood to be by no means inconsistent with high ethics, and towards the close of the century Huxley's view became increasingly that of the English intellectual.
Social Realism is an international art movement that includes the work of painters, printmakers, photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and who are critical of the social structures that maintain these conditions. While the movement's artistic styles vary from nation to nation, it almost always uses a form of descriptive or critical realism. Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, which used a style of social realism. Its protagonists usually could be described as angry young men, and it often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies. The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents and slang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the genre. The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as Coronation Street and EastEnders. In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted social realist–type scenes of domestic life.
Socialist realism is the official Soviet art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and was later adopted by allied Communist parties worldwide. This form of realism held that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress. The Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934 stated that socialist realism is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism.
The strict adherence to the above tenets, however, began to crumble after the death of Stalin when writers started expanding the limits of what is possible. However, the changes were gradual since the social realism tradition was so ingrained into the psyche of the Soviet literati that even dissidents followed the habits of this type of composition, rarely straying from its formal and ideological mold. The Soviet socialist realism did not exactly emerge on the very day it was promulgated in the Soviet Union in 1932 by way of a decree that abolished independent writers' organizations. This movement has been existing for at least fifteen years and was first seen during the Bolshevik Revolution. The 1934 declaration only formalized its canonical formulation through the speeches of the Andrei Zhdanov, the representative of the Party's Central Committee.
The official definition of social realism has been criticized for its conflicting framework. While the concept itself is simple, discerning scholars struggle in reconciling its elements. According to Peter Kenez, "it was impossible to reconcile the teleological requirement with realistic presentation," further stressing that "the world could either be depicted as it was or as it should be according to theory, but the two are obviously not the same.³
Literary Realism is the idea or tradition of dependability to outlook or to existent vitality.
it is precise image which is just a admiration of everyday life.in 18th-century literary production
of Defoe, Fielding as well as Tobias Smollett are among those of first examples of pragmatism
in English literature. This was also deliberately implemented as an aesthetic course outline in
France in the middle of 19th century, after it gained its high status in record of earlier unobserved
aspects of contemporary cheerfulness and society. The importance of practical person on
objectivity and objectivity became a very rational attitude but it restrained gathering criticism. It
also became essential to prose and novel in the later 19th century. This specific word has been
utilized very significantly only to denote undue minuteness of detailed or anxiety with the
trivial, disgusting or sordid subjects.
It was about 20th century, when models of literary criticism which were very
predominant, drew a demonstration between realistic person and anti-realist literature, by the
supplement of realistic machinery on one opposite side of the background and fantastic
installation . In spite of the reality of this inherent questioning of all these limitations and
production of reality, the global literary fields have remained for the most consistent in its
assignment of magical practicality in the anti-realist category. Moreover, the undercurrent
important climate furthers the differentiation between realism and magical pragmatism in such a
premium that it heads on magical realism at removal of the former public sensible personal
tradition, which is denigrated for producing imaginatively little narratives without any durable
aesthetic values
Literary Realism is the idea or tradition of dependability to outlook or to existent vitality.
it is precise image which is just a admiration of everyday life.in 18th-century literary production
of Defoe, Fielding as well as Tobias Smollett are among those of first examples of pragmatism
in English literature. This was also deliberately implemented as an aesthetic course outline in
France in the middle of 19th century, after it gained its high status in record of earlier unobserved
aspects of contemporary cheerfulness and society. The importance of practical person on
objectivity and objectivity became a very rational attitude but it restrained gathering criticism. It
also became essential to prose and novel in the later 19th century. This specific word has been
utilized very significantly only to denote undue minuteness of detailed or anxiety with the
trivial, disgusting or sordid subjects.
It was about 20th century, when models of literary criticism which were very
predominant, drew a demonstration between realistic person and anti-realist literature, by the
supplement of realistic machinery on one opposite side of the background and fantastic
installation . In spite of the reality of this inherent questioning of all these limitations and
production of reality, the global literary fields have remained for the most consistent in its
assignment of magical practicality in the anti-realist category. Moreover, the undercurrent
important climate furthers the differentiation between realism and magical pragmatism in such a
premium that it heads on magical realism at removal of the former public sensible personal
tradition, which is denigrated for producing imaginatively little narratives without any durable
aesthetic values
he 19th century was characterized by sharp contradictions. In many ways it was an age of progress: railways and steamships were built, great scientific discoveries were made, education became more widespread; but at the same time it was an age of profound social unrest, because there was too much poverty, too much injustice, too much ugliness; and above all, fierce exploitation of man by man.
The growth of scientific inventions mechanized industry and increased wealth, but this progress only enriched the few at the expense of the many. Dirty factories, inhumanly long hours of work, child labour, exploitation of both men and women workers, low wages, slums and frequent unemployment — these were the conditions of life for the workers in the growing industries of England, which became the richest country in the world towards the middle of the 19th century. By the thirties of the 19th century English capitalism had entered a new stage of development. England had become a classical capitalist country, a country of industrial capitalism. The Industrial Revolution gathered force as the 19th century progressed, and worked profound changes in both the economic and the social life of the country. Quiet villages, sailing vessels and hand-looms gave way, within a hundred years, to factory towns, railroads, and steamships. Queen Victoriawas monarch of England from 1837 to 1901, and it has been found convenient to group the writings produced during that long stretch of years as "Victorian". But the classification is perhaps too facile.
To begin with, the Queen had very little to do with the best productions of her times. In an age that abounded in great literature and music, her own preferences were for second-rate authors and composers whose works are already forgotten. Moreover, no earlier period of English literature exhibits so vast a variety of traits, style, and ideas. It is absurd to pretend that the label "Victorian" communicates any idea common to the works of writers so different as Macaulay, Dickens, Emily Bronte, Tennyson, Browning, Rossetti, Arnold, Swinburne and Meredith. The term "Victorian" itself is often used in a fashion that is, misleading. Popularly it connotes bad taste, stuffy morals, and moral priggishness. These were attributes true enough of the Queen's private household and for that reason they are indeed "Victorian". But they are certainly not to be found among the ideas and beliefs of Browning, Rossetls, Arnold or Meredith, to mention only a few. Finally, although our own contemporaries are fond of thinking of themselves as reacting against "Victorianism", in the field of political theory the dogmas of the 20th century are essentially only elaborations of principles "laid down in the 19th.
The concern with specific social problems is the most noticeable distinction between Victorian literature and the literature of the preceding centuries. The impulse is generally recognized to have started before Victoria came to the throne, with the First Reform Bill (1832). That act of Parliament recognized the economic dominance of the middle class by finally placing direct political power in its hands. The vote was thus extended to all members of this class. At this time the old concepts of "Whig" and "Tory" made way for "Liberal" and "Conservative." Liberals were anxious to see operating in full effect the principle which Adam Smith had laid down — the economic "law" of unlimited free Competition"-in trade. They flattered themselves that the world, under their leadership, was becoming more and more attractive, in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act had been passed; in 1833 slavery was abolished; in 1846 free trade became a national policy with the repeal of the Corn Laws; in 1845 Jews were made eligible for public office; and in 1872 the institution of voting by ballot was inaugurated. The Conservatives were as responsible as the Liberals for the passage of these acts; for a long time there was little difference between the two parties. Both were committed to the teaching of Utilitarianism, as promulgated by Bentham, that it was necessary to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. Bentham's disciple was James Mill: and Mill's son, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), became the most influential of Victorian Utilitarians. The last-mentioned taught that the only reason that can be adduced for limiting the rights of any Individual in the community "is to prevent harm to others."
This philosophy of unrestricted individualism in economics vastly increased the holdings of the middle class as well as its material comforts. The British Colonial Empire expanded in Asia and Africa by conquest and colonization. There were many who could exclaim with the Mr. Boebuck whom Matthew Arnold made immortal by attacking, "I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last."
But there was a less attractive side to the picture which industrialists chose to overlook. The philosophy of noninterference by the government meant unrestricted hardship to the legions of workers who were dependent for their very existence upon their employers. Labor was cheap, the birth rate high, and slum conditions became increasingly worse. The earliest attempt of workingmen to combine for better living conditions met with ferocious opposition in Parlia­ment. A law of 1825 fixed punishment at hard labor as he penalty for attempting any act inconsistent with the freedom of employers to make contracts. The Victorian Age, from a working-class point of view, is the record of a long struggle of wage-earners to win recognition from the government. A People's Charter was drawn up in 1838, and began the so called Chartist movement, which demanded universal manhood suffrage, the secret ballot, and abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament. Universal manhood suffrage was perhaps inevitably the foundation of any further progress. Actually it was not until 1917 that the point was won in the Manhood Suffrage Bill. Before that act was passed, the decades were punctuated by a series of strikes and riots in urban centers. Though the Chartist movement was for a long time unsuccessful, it served the function of making the general public aware of the problems involved. By unceasing protest small gains were realized. In 1847 a ten-hour working day was established. In 1842 women and children were forbidden employment in the mines. In 1867 and 1873 women and children were excluded from heavier agricultural work. By 1875 a series of public health acts had become law.
Meanwhile, Liberal and Conservative alike had no intention of impeding the solid profits of British Industry. As long ago as 1798, Malthus (in his answer to Godwin) had given them the theory which justified governmental indifference. Malthus's Essay on Population had insisted that poverty, disease and war are necessary to prevent the greater catastrophe of overpopulation; to coddle the people, it warned, was to upset natural law. Among the many idealists who arose to dispute this official view were some who dreamed of a return to manufacture by hand — an idea that appealed powerfully to certain important authors. One of the few-who looked to the future instead of the past was Robert Owen (1771-1858), who originated the idea of cooperatives. He was convinced that the machine must be controlled for the benefit of the people who run it. His socialistic self-supporting communities made their experiments in Ireland, Scotland and the New World. Some succeeded at first; all eventually failed. But Owen's teachings have had important bearing on the history of trade unions, and various species of socialistic theory.

Even though they seemed dominant during the second half of the 19th century, Realism and Naturalism never had a position of hegemony. The presence of the Fantastic opened up other avenues to the construction of literary meaning and questioned the very scientific and rational outlook on which these movements were based. The epistemological flaws of a belief in the transparency of reality and language soon spelled their demise under the onslaught of Modernism.

Yet the impetus to describe other realities in order to make the reader evaluate or questioned them remained alive for a while (Naturalism lasted until the 1940s in the States) and has not, even today, lost all its appeal or usefulness.
Everything is seen through her subjectivity; even the narrator becomes less and less omniscient as the book develops. This elicits doubts about the possibility of absolute knowledge, as corroborated by the “impressionistic” style and the open ending, which keeps several possible conclusions available to the reader’s imagination. The novel stands between Realism and Modernism, and announces the “stream of consciousness” technique. Another reaction against the strictures of Realism was to be found in the movement called Aestheticism, whose most famous practitioner was Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). A famous dandy, Wilde was very popular among the Victorian higher classes, yet this open homosexuality brought about a trial and prison sentence, and the end of his career.
His works, celebrated for their incisive wit and many paradoxes expose the arbitrariness of conventional wisdom and morality. Plays like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) are a sharp critique of Victorian morality and hypocrisy, satire under the veil of comedy. His only fantastic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) betrays the influence of aestheticism (Dorian Gray is a dandy like Wilde himself), establishes the independence of art from morality, and uses the fantastic as a means of contesting a “realistic” conception of life and art. Wilde also wrote tales (“The Happy Prince”) and short stories (“Lord Arthur Savile’s crime”). The latter is a parody of Victorian moralistic stories, often aimed at the education of young gentlemen. It is centre on the paradox of a moral crime, or a murder committed out of a sense of duty. Being told by a cheiromantist that he will commit a crime, Savile decides to kill before marrying, for fear of bringing dishonour on his bride. He ends up killing the cheiromantist and lives happily ever after.