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Realism is the arts and the attempt to represent the subject with truth, without any artificial matter and avoiding artistic conventions.

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Realism is a literary technique practices by many as a tool of writing. Realism is a technique that is a particular subject, especially represented of the middle- class life

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Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the visual appearance of scenes and objects i.e., it is drawn in photographic precision. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism.

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The name "George Elliot" is only a title for Mary Ann Evans. She used a man's name to ensure that her works would be taken seriously. She wanted to be far from the stereotype of women's works being lighthearted romances.
She was born on November 22, 1819; died on December 22, 1880.
She wrote books, exploring human psychology. She developed this method of psychological analysis characteristic of modern fiction. She was celebrated as the greatest of contemporary English novelists.

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"Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another."

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together."

"I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with."

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Henry James was social realism author in (1843-1916).  He was born in the mid- nineteenth century in New York City.  He was known for his sophisticated  style, precise language, and his great novel form.  Henry James is ranked one of the greatest American writers.  His father was a philosopher  and intended that his son would become a life long habit of travel.

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Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

Deep experience is never peaceful.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.

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realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms, perspective, and the details of light and colour

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Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers.Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344

The dominant paradigm in novel writing during the second half of the nineteenth century was no longer the Romantic idealism of the earlier part of the century. What took hold among the great novelists in Europe and America was a new approach to character and subject matter, a school of thought which later came to be known as Realism. On one level, Realism is precisely what it sounds like. It is attention to detail, and an effort to replicate the true nature of reality in a way that novelists had never attempted. There is the belief that the novel's function is simply to report what happens, without comment or judgment. Seemingly inconsequential elements gain the attention of the novel functioning in the realist mode. From Henry James, for example, one gets a sense of being there in the moment, as a dense fabric of minute details and observations is constructed. This change in style meant that some of the traditional expectations about the novel's form had to be pushed aside. In contrast to what came before, the realistic novel rests upon the strengths of its characters rather than plot or turn of phrase. The characters that the realistic school of novelists produced are some of the most famous in literary history, from James's Daisy Miller to Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov. They are psychologically complicated, multifaceted, and with conflicting impulses and motivations that very nearly replicate the daily tribulations of being human.

Realism coincided with Victorianism, yet was a distinct collection of aesthetic principles in its own right. The realist novel was heavily informed by journalistic techniques, such as objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter. It is not a coincidence that many of the better known novelists of the time had concurrent occupations in the publishing industry. The idea of novel-writing as a "report" grew out of this marriage between literature and journalism. Another fair comparison would be to think of the realist novel as an early form of docudrama, in which fictional persons and events are intended to seamlessly reproduce the real world. The Victorian Period saw growing concern with the plight of the less fortunate in society, and the realistic novel likewise turned its attention on subjects that beforehand would not have warranted notice. The balancing act that the upwardly mobile middle class had to perform in order to retain their position in the world was a typical subject for realistic novels. There arose a subgenre of Realism called Social Realism, which in hindsight can be interpreted as Marxist and socialist ideas set forth in literature.

Advances in the field of human psychology also fed into the preoccupation with representing the inner workings of the mind, and the delicate play of emotions. William James, brother of novelist Henry James, was a gargantuan figure in the early history of human psychology. One can imagine that their conversations proved highly influential in Henry's creative development. Psychologists were just beginning to understand that human consciousness was far more complicated and various than had previously been considered. Debates about nature versus nurture were as popular then as they are today. More than anything, the understanding that in the human mind there are very few absolutes was critical for the realist sensibility. To put it another way, Realism embraced the concept that people were neither completely good or completely bad, but somewhere on a spectrum.

The overriding concern of all realist fiction is with character. Specifically, novelists struggled to create intricate and layered characters who, as much as possible, felt as though they could be flesh and blood creatures. Much of this effect was achieved through internal monologues and a keen understanding of human psychology. Not surprisingly, the field of psychology was in the process of evolving from metaphysical quackery into a bona fide scientific pursuit. Students of the human mind were beginning to realize that an individual is composed of a network of motivations, interests, desires, and fears. How these forces interact and sometimes do battle with each other plays a large part in the development of personality. Realism, at its highest level, attempts to lay these internal struggles bare for all to see. In other words, most of the "action" of the realist novel is internalized. Changes in mood, in perceptions, in opinions and ideas constitute turning points or climaxes.

Realist novelists eschewed many of the novel's established traditions, most notably in the form of plot structure. Typically, novels follow a definite arc of events, with an identifiable climax and resolution. They are self-contained and satisfying in their symmetry. Successful careers have been built on the scaffolding of a single story arc. The school of Realism observed that life did not follow such patterns, so for them, neither should the novel. Instead of grand happenings, tragedies, and epic turns of events, the realist novel plodded steadily over a track not greatly disturbed by external circumstances. Nothing truly earth shattering happens in James's The Portrait of a Lady, despite it hundreds of pages. The same can be said of Dostoyevsky - He composed lengthy and weighty fiction where most, if not all of the action happened in the minds of the characters. Narrative style also changed with realistic fiction. Instead of an omniscient narrator calmly describing the persons and events, readers often confront unreliable narrators who do not have all the information. Often, the narrator's perceptions are colored by their own prejudices and beliefs. A popular device for many realistic novelists was the frame narrative, or the story inside a story. This device compounds the unreliable narrator by placing the reader at a further remove from the events of the novel. The purpose of all of these innovations, as with the whole of Realism, was to more accurately simulate the nature of reality - unknowable, uncertain, and ever-shifting reality.

The beginnings of the realist narrative style can be attributed to French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac. His portraits of ordinary French life were remarkable in their careful attention to details. Balzac reportedly consulted with associates in order to learn more about specific subjects, so as to portray them in their fullness. He expressed the idea that characters come to life through the painstaking accumulation of environmental details. His methodology was a departure from the Romantic tradition which was near its zenith when he was crafting his stories. Balzac also put enormous emphasis on the settings of his stories. Whether urban or provincial, the locale almost becomes a character of its own. His most famous work, which was left unfinished, was The Human Comedy, an assortment of interwoven tales and novels which depict life in early nineteenth century France. The effect of the narrative buildup in The Human Comedy is the realization of an epic that is more than the sum of its parts. Like the realists who would follow in his footsteps, Balzac did not rely on profound or spectacular events to move his stories along. Instead, he paid attention to the small things, the nuances that made up the experience of typical French life.

In America, Samuel Clemens was the early pioneer of Realism. Writing under the pen name Mark Twain, he was noteworthy for his faithful reproduction of vernacular speech patterns and vocabulary. He more or less gave birth to "local color," a sub-genre of the novel that still enjoys wide appeal today. Replicating natural speech required not just great listening skills, but a sense of how the written version sounds to the imagination. In addition to the use of vernacular, Twain was an innovator in focusing on middle and lower class characters. Previously, novels had concentrated on the experiences of the elite. Presumably, the upper crust enjoyed seeing their lives of privilege reflected back to them in art, while salt of the earth readers had something to aspire to and fantasize about. It was a revolutionary concept to incorporate unremarkable characters into an art form as serious as the novel. In a development that continues to bewilder, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most frequently banned books in the public school system. One imagines that certain language is indeed offensive; however Twain was doing nothing other than representing honest speech. Huck Finn was in all reality an astonishing leap forward in racial awareness - Jim, the freed slave, is as fully realized a character as Tom or Huck.

A great friend of Mark Twain, and an eminent American realist in his own right, was the magazine editor William Dean Howells. In charge of the Atlantic Monthly for several years, Howells exercised a lot of authority over the currents of taste on his side of the ocean. In his role as editor, he was instrumental in promoting the fame of literary rising stars, such as Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Howells wrote copious volumes of fiction of his own, and was an unqualified success in that regard. For a time, he was widely considered the most accomplished of all American Realists. That reputation faded somewhat and today Howells's work as an editor is held up as his most important contribution. That being said, several of his novels are in the first rank of American Realism. Published in 1885, the ironically titled The Rise of Silas Lapham tells the story of an ambitious businessman who tumbles out of fortune through his own mistakes and poor judgment. It is an anti-success story, and illustrates one of the central ideas of Realism, that of crafting honest narratives rather than feel-good sentimental fantasies. In short, there is a kind of grimness to Realism that many readers have found unappealing. A Modern Instance highlights this same principle in detailing the steady disintegration of a seemingly happy marriage.

Without a doubt, American expatriate Henry James represents the most skilled and accomplished practitioner of Realism in fiction. He was fascinated by encounters between representatives of the New World, America, with members of the Old World, or Europe. He observed a distinct set of traits that permeated each of these groups. With Americans, he witnessed vigor, innocence, and strict moral righteousness. Europeans, on the other hand, represented decadence, lax morality, and deviousness. With such seeming prejudices built into his aesthetics, one is surprised to learn that James renounced his American citizenship and became a British subject. Nevertheless, James made a cottage industry out of examining what happened when these two worlds collided. Arguably his most famous work was the novella Daisy Miller, which relates how a young and rich American girl touring Europe is victimized by sophisticated schemers, with no compunctions about right or wrong.

At the height of his powers, Henry James crafted intricate novels that featured completely realized characters. He was remarkable for his ability to dispense with commentary or subjectivity within his narratives. The reader sees the events through the eyes of the characters; James the author makes himself as invisible as possible. In terms of prose style, he was admired for the simplicity and directness of his language, a quality not generally noted during the Victorian Period. His most successful novel was The Portrait of a Lady, published as one volume in 1881. With Portrait he expands upon many of the themes one finds in Daisy Miller - greed, power, and the exploitation of the New World by the Old. Revealingly, film adaptations of the novel have generally not made good impressions. As with the bulk of fiction that earns the title of Realist, the narrative simply does not lend itself to visual reproduction.

Realism came under attack largely because it represented such a bold departure from what readers had come to expect from the novel. The fascination with things falling apart was unpleasant to many, and critics sometimes accused the practitioners of Realism of focusing only on the negative aspects of life. Additionally, the intense focus on the minutiae of character was seen as unwillingness to actually tell a story. Readers complained that very little happened in realistic fiction, that they were all talk and little payoff. Henry James in particular was criticized for his verbosity, especially in his later years. By the end of the nineteenth century, Realism in the pure sense had given way to another form called Naturalism. With Naturalism, authors looked to heredity and history to define character. Ironically, many of the qualities that people found distasteful in realism - the obsession with character, the superficially mundane plots - were all intensified in Naturalism.

This article is copyrighted &copy 2011 by Jalic Inc. Do not reprint it without permission. Written by Josh Rahn. Josh holds a Masters degree in English Literature from Morehead State University, and a Masters degree in Library Science from the University of Kentucky.
Major Realist Writers

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Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers.Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344 The dominant paradigm in novel writing during the second half of the nineteenth century was no longer the Romantic idealism of the earlier part of the century.

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More info
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hamlin-Garland

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Hannibal Hamlin Garland was an American novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer, Georgist, and psychical researcher. He is best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers.

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Henry James and the Realism Movement

One of the most distinct writers of the realism movement was Henry James. James, who spent his early years living in both the United States and Europe, created work that revealed the tension between what he experienced of this new American culture and the old European world (remember, and this is important in his work, the United States was considered the youthful and flashy relative of the traditional and alluring Europe). He did this through stories that were grounded in social and political commentary and driven by multidimensional characters. In the literary sense, as an , critic and author, James was like other writers of the realism movement. He revealed through his writing what he felt were the social realities of life in the 19th century and how the new and the old mostly clashed. However, he focused on themes like the morality (or lack thereof) of the class system, feminism, perception and freedom. If you think about it, these were really kind of modern and risky ideas for the time period. Throw in some Victorian values and cross that with some assertive American behavior and bam - you've got an instant readership. Known most widely for novels, like The Portrait of a Lady, and shorter narratives, like The Turn of the Screw, James actually wrote over 20 novels and over 100 short fiction pieces in his lifetime, all of which showed originality in storytelling (he was fond of playing with point of view and internal monologue) as well as social relevance on a larger scale.

An American in Europe

As a result of his father's stature as a theologian and prominence in intellectual circles, Henry James and his family traveled quite a bit, which meant the children would grow up in both Europe and the United States throughout the mid-1800s. James knew at a young age that his education was important and was lucky enough to learn firsthand of European culture by living and touring Western Europe. He read voraciously, learned from private tutors and began to write at a young age, ultimately deciding to focus solely on his writing by the age of 21. While he did travel back to the States, he spent much of the rest of his life in Europe, eventually becoming a British citizen around the time of WWI.

Why is all of this important? Well, one of the themes that ties much of James's work together is the concept of the American (remember, the new, exciting and at times flashy American) in the middle of old Europe (and tradition and social rules and all of that 'status' stuff). While this certainly isn't inclusive of all of his work, James's legacy includes stories that reveal the uncomfortable and unavoidable confrontation that occurs between these worlds when an American character is placed in European society. While most stories include characters with a certain amount of wealth and education, the obvious tension and social separation still exists.

Within the context of the story of the American abroad, James explores concepts of class and behavior among both societies, what each believes about themselves and each other, while digging deeper into what he sees as the incompatibility of American values and British tradition. In his novel The Portrait of a Lady, we learn about an American woman living in Europe and dealing with life in between these new and old worlds after she inherits a large amount of money. The American is a novel about the adventures of an American businessman on his first European trip where his less-than-refined behavior defines him as different (to say the least). The Ambassadors is a novel about an American man who travels to Europe in search of his fiancée's son and in the process finds himself fascinated by Europe. As you can see, James's pattern was one that allowed for an entertaining story along with an examination of clashing cultures (without really showing allegiance to either side). One of the best examples of this story framework and one of the most commercially successful of all of James's stories was his novella, 'Daisy Miller'.

Daisy Miller: Characters and Setting

'Daisy Miller' is a novella about a young girl named Daisy Miller. She is a beautiful and wealthy American traveling around Europe with her brother, Randolph, and her mother, Mrs. Miller. Winterbourne is a young American expatriate (an American who has chosen to leave the country and live abroad) who has spent much of his life in Switzerland (sounds a little bit like James himself, right?) Mrs. Costello is Winterborne's aunt. The story begins in Vevey, Switzerland at a hotel where Daisy (who is vacationing) and Winterbourne (who is visiting his aunt) meet.

Daisy Miller Synopsis

We start with Winterbourne meeting and being quite fascinated by the young Daisy Miller. Initially, Winterbourne does not know what to make of Daisy - to him, she behaves in a way that's direct, uncultivated and flirtatious, but still he senses an appealing innocence about her. And she's beautiful (in, of course, an unrefined kind of way). When she declares a desire to see a nearby castle, Winterbourne agrees to escort her there. This is a bit of a scandal for the time period - she would go with Winterbourne (a man she just met) to a strange castle without a chaperone (which all ladies would have used).

Although Daisy would like to be introduced to Winterbourne's aunt, Mrs. Costello, it won't happen for a couple of reasons. Mrs. Costello has heard about the Millers and believes that they are uncivilized. When Winterbourne mentions their little outing plan, Mrs. Costello is all the more aghast, believing that Daisy is a young girl without manners and with only undignified thoughts in mind. She warns her nephew to be careful.

So, Daisy and Winterbourne visit the castle. There, Daisy carries on animated conversations, and although some attention is paid to the castle itself, Daisy focuses on conversation with Winterbourne. She learns that he will be returning to his home, Geneva, in a few days. Daisy is disappointed and talks little for the rest of their time together but does ask him to visit her in Rome the next winter.

The next winter, Mrs. Costello writes to her nephew from Rome. There, the Millers have also been staying, and according to Mrs. Costello, creating quite a reputation for themselves. According to her, Daisy had been palling around with one too many Italian men in a way that appeared to be less than proper or decent. There was one specific man, Giovanelli, with whom she'd been spending quite a bit of her time recently.

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the american in europe: henry james' daisy miller - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The American in Europe: Henry James' Daisy Miller - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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One of the most distinct writers of the realism movement was Henry James. James, who spent his early years living in both the United States and Europe, created work that revealed the tension between what he experienced of this new American culture and the old European world (remember, and this is important in his work, the United States was considered the youthful and flashy relative of the traditional and alluring Europe).

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1. concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary
2. a) a doctrine that universals exist outside the mind; specifically: the conception that an abstract term names an independent and unitary reality
b) a theory that objects of sense perception or cognition exist independently of the mind--compare nominalism
3. the theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization

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more info
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Eliot

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The short fiction of Hamlin Garland is combined with literary realism and the author's concern for Midwestern farmers in the decades following the American Civil War. The result is a group of stories that illustrate the hardships of rural labour, the myth of farm life that was in the United States since the country's inception. The stories, especially in his initial collection, Main-Travelled Roads, also proved influential in their use of detail, their inclusion of Garland's political views, and of the sentimental characters and plot devices that were common in the literature of the late 1800s. Garland is viewed as a author whose impact was greatly evidence by a number of writers, including literary descendants such as Frank Norris and Stephen Crane, as well as twentieth-century authors like Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, and John Steinbeck.