That Zola s is not purely romantic as was Hugo s, lies chiefly in the choice of milieu. These great terrible dramas no longer happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility, those who are in the forefront of the marching world, but among the lower almost the lowest classes; those who are falling by the roadway. This is not romanticism this drama of the people working itself out in blood and ordure. It is not realism. It is a school by itself, unique, somber, powerful beyond words.
It is naturalism Frank Norris Zola as a Romantic Writer Human progression and the coming of the industrial age brought forth great social and economic change in the United States. A series of factors, including rapid industrialization, extensive European immigration, and swift urbanization gave birth to a new social class in America: the proletariat. There emerged a noticeable class distinction between the affluent bourgeois capitalists and the impoverished working masses. In a new world of poverty, suffering, and degradation, the Romantic ideal seemed intangible and implausible. Consequently, a new philosophical and literary movement arose which sought to portray the reality of late nineteenth century capitalist America: Naturalism. Naturalist philosophy adopts the clinical method of empirical sciences to every aspect of human life.
The Term Paper on Class Inequality
Social class is one of the oldest and most persistent inequalities in British society. In the past, people were very aware of their social class and their expected roles and responsibilities. People would have worn different clothes, behaved in different ways and had a very different culture from each other and they would have accepted this as a perfectly normal element of behaviour. We are still ...
As Canadian scholar Greig Henderson put it, Zola [and other naturalists] argues for a literature of observation rather than one of fabrication. In other words, to the Naturalists, the Romantic Movement was nothing but a series of fabrications manufactured by na ve, idealistic thinkers. However, other Naturalists, such as Frank Norris, believed Romanticism dealt with the atypical, or that which was concerned with the variations from the type of normal life. Conversely, the Naturalist concerned himself with the normal aspects of life. Norris called them, the smaller detail of everyday life, things that are likely to happen between lunch and supper. The Naturalist movement was a progression of the Realist movement that preceded it.
While both rejected the ideal and attempted to portray the authentic, conceptually, they differed in certain aspects of their respective ideologies. George J. Becker defined Naturalism as, no more than an emphatic and explicit philosophical position taken by some Realists [That position being one of] a pessimistic, materialistic determinism. The Naturalist, Deterministic philosophy argued that man did not have free will (as the Realists argued), but was instead shackled by his fate. Naturalists reasoned that man s determinism was a result from his instinct, emotions, or social and economic conditions. Because man could not alter these factors, he was subject to a biological and economic determinism.
Charles Darwin developed the notion of biological determinism in The Origin of Species. The first two chapters of the work, entitled Variation under Domestication and Variation under nature argue that animals and their actions are dictated by their nature and / or domestication. The Naturalist movement fused this environmental (or biological) determinism with the doctrines of social determinism, as developed by German philosopher Karl Marx. Marx argued that man belonged to one of two classes: the thesis or the antithesis. The thesis class, who were the bourgeoisie of capitalist society, oppressed the antithesis, or more numerous proletariat classes. Members of these classes were bound to a system of dialectic materialism from which they could never flee.
The Essay on Women In Pompeii Woman Class Men
The ancient city of Pompeii is best known for being covered by an erupting volcano and being almost forgotten. From the time the city was rediscovered in the 1700 s scientists and archeologists have managed to piece together evidence to show not just how people died but how they lived. We now know that before the eruption of Mt Vesuvius on August 24 79 AD Pompeii was a resort town. From the ...
The subject matter and characterization of Naturalist Literature is distinct from that of Realist Literature, or any other, for that matter. Rather than dealing with the splendor of Rockefeller or Carnegie families, the Naturalist author deals with the degradation of the lower-middle and / or lower classes. These factions of capitalist society are deprived, impoverished, and uneducated. In order to survive, individuals belonging to lower classes must resort to demeaning and corrupt actions in order to insure their survival. Violence and passion are not treated with the heroism implied in Romanticism, but instead with desperation and death. These events occur throughout the Naturalist novel all while the protagonist is being driven and manipulated by the society he is part of.
As Dr. Donald Pier put it, The primary goal of the late nineteenth-century American Naturalists was not to demonstrate the overwhelming and oppressive reality of the material forces present in our lives. Their attempt, rather, was to represent the intermingling in life of controlling forces and individual worth. The Naturalists do not dehumanize man. Frank Norris Mc Teague character is a classic example of this interplay between the instinctual drives and environmental conditions of an individual.
By referring to his characters as human beasts, Norris implies that all men are driven by their instincts and emotions qualities driven by man s exposure to social conditions and social evils. Upton Sinclair, another literary Naturalist who dealt specifically with the class struggles of the proletariat worker in the meat packing industry of Chicago, described the life of an immigrant who leaves his farm in Lithuania in pursuit of the American ideal, only to be confronted by the harsh reality of the capitalist system, in The Jungle. Sinclair s work adopts the somber mood espoused by many Naturalist writers. Jurgis Ruckus, the story s protagonist, and his family become enslaved into the capitalist system when they arrive in Chicago. What had been the aspiration for prosperity quickly became the necessity of survival, as members of the family died, became indebted, or where forced into crime and prostitution. The Jungle is a classic example of the social evils which dictate and determine the lives of everyone.
The Essay on Man Prefers Water Life Passage
The five colors can blind, the five tones can deafen, the five tastes cloy. The race, the hunt, can drive men mad. And their booty leave them no peace. Therefore a sensible man prefers the inner to the outer eye." (Ch. 12) This passage obviously refers to the temptations of our senses. When he refers to sight, the pleasing aesthetics of an object can lure people into traps. Everything around us is ...
Jurgis, who had once arrived with fresh optimism to Packing town, was abused by his employers and other bourgeois to the point were his livelihood is totally and utterly destroyed. Throughout the Jungle, there does not exist a trace of the Romantic ideal; instead, the reader is presented with the realistic and predetermined reality of nineteenth-century capitalist America. Naturalism, as a philosophy and its literature, attempts to portray the world as it is, much like the 19 th century realists. However, the Naturalist depicts an amoral world in which the chains of determinism bind man; this determinism is dictated by his heredity, his environment, and the natural forces of his society..
