Presented by: Ana Rebello,

AMERICAN REALISM Beatriz Muniz, Bruna Aló, João

Pedro, and Sabrina Medeiros.

1
INTRODUCTION, BACKGROUND AND Beatriz Muniz and Sabrina Medeiros
CHARACTERISTICS
2
INTRODUCTION George Bellows, Both Members of This Club, 1909, oil on canvas, 115 x 160.5 cm (National Gallery of Art,
Washington D.C.)

❑A literary historical phenomenon.

❑Novels written in the late 19th century.
❑An attempt “to ferret out meaning and
value from an ongoing engagement with
the particulars of daily existence”
(Crane, 2007)
❑A commentary and a participation in
the Evolutionary process of human
existence (Crane, 2007)
❑Distinghishment between the notion of
literary realism and of verisimilitude.

3
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND: HISTORICAL CONTEXT
“Wars are no time for belles-lettres”, Edmund Wilson.

❑Attitudes toward history itself were changing. 19th science undercut the ancient theories that humankind moves
in recurring cycles; instead, the myth of progress sprang into dominance.
❑Progress: discarging the outmoded as much as it demanded openess to the new.
❑The Civil War (1861-1865): the conflict ended in victory for Northern capitalism and its bureaucracy, its
network of railroads, and its factories.
❑“America’s Industrial Revolution […] acceleration after the Civil War changed the United States from a rural
country […] to, by the start of the twentieth century, a primarily urban nation” (BARRISH, 2011, p.2)
❑Novelists felt the need to explain and record the onrushing changes.
❑Wars, violence, and strikes during the 1870s-1890s ended the dream that postwar prosperity would last
forever.
❑Three important groups’ movements: the freed slaves’ denounce of their condition, white women’ fight for legal
and political rights, and immigrants’ arrival, shaking American society’s values. 4
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND: INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES
❑Domestically, the origins of realism can be traced back through
famous passages of Emerson, such as “What would we really know
the meaning of? The mean in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the
ballad in the street…” (BUDD, p.22)
❑Realists drew much of their strength from their interaction with
common people rather than from dialogue with intellectuals.
❑Egalitarian Ideas stimulated realists to present marginal groups
more empathetically.
❑Baudelaire, “The painter of modern life” (1863). He was the one
who argued about what modernity was.
oThe Flaneur and Spectator Culture conceived in realism’s emphasis
on observation.
oDistinguishment between public and private spheres.
oWork against the distinction between high and low art. 5
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND: INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES
❑It is empiricist: focus on concrete examples of experience.
❑Seek truth not from a bottom up movement, through an
Twain’s summary: “The Taine of the twentieth century who
exploration of the here and now. It is, then, exploratory,
shall study the literature of the nineteenth will note an
inductive, experimental and open to uncertainty.
epochal earmark. He will discover a universal drenching of
❑John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism: principle of the greatest belles-lettres with science and sociology, while the ultimate,
good for the greatest number. dominant tinge in our era he will observe to be Darwinism.
Not only does all physical research take color from the new
❑The Radical Club of Boston (1867): organized meetings theory, but the doctrine sends its pervasive hues through
about scientific and educational problems. “We are no longer poetry, novels, history. A brisk reaction betrays its
sentimental, but firmly quizzical instead.” (BUDD, p.27) disturbing presence in theology. Journalism is dyed so deep
Sciente taught objectivity. with it that the favorite logic of the leading article is
"survival of the fittest," and the favorite jest is "sexual
❑Darwin’s influence: “Homo may act far less from sapience than selection." In the last new book, in the next new book, you
from instinct, that physical needs may override the conscience, will detect it.”
that life is a chancy process rather than a path toward
redemption, that nurture within an inescapably specific
environment shapes organisms in fascinating but sometimes grim
ways.” (BUDD, p.29)
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THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND: CRITICISM AND THE MARKETPLACE

❑Theodore Dreiser: “Life for them [romanticists] is made up of a variety of interesting but immutable forms and
any attempt either to picture any of the wretched results of modern social conditions or to assail the critical
defenders of the same [realists] is naturally looked upon with contempt or aversion.” (Crane, p.157)
❑Technology, finance capital, and advertising would often influence what readers bought and so what got
published.
❑Publishing, as a business, shaped the literary realists more than they were able to realize.
❑Preference for novels.
❑Mainstream firms resisted fiction that questioned the reigning code or lacked idealism.
❑Historians of realism identify journalism as the common road of apprenticeship.

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THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND: CONCERNS

❑Excesses of capitalism, the circumstances of marginal groups, the struggle of the poor, adultery, crime,
alcoholism, racial violence, labor strife, and political corruption.
❑Realism’s honest depiction was engaged with change and reform for the welfare of future generations.
❑Emphasis on the cultural and religious conventions of the group being described. By virtue of the
frankness of its depiction of such local details, realism reached out to a wide audience.
❑Realists’ mission: Fiction as a means of encouraging a common culture in which all classes could
partake.
❑Religious doubt: after the Civil War, people were more disillusioned and discredited in divine
authority. Thus, daily life became the means by which people could ascertain moral imperatives and
find meaning and value in life. It is not a God-guided universe, but a Capital-guided one.
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REGIONALISM AND NATURALISM: IS THERE ANY
DIFFERENCE?
❑ Realists insist more on the importance of consent and human agency.
From the contractual paradigm dominant in commerce and politics in
❑Authors agree that is difficult to distinguish the late 19th century, realists extract a utopian possibility of
these subcategories from realism. The distinction organizing society through an exchange of promises. This exchange
functions only to distinguish writers deemed of promises would then replace the status relations with consensual
minor from other more important realists. ones.
❑ However, they realized that the status in race, gender, and class
❑Regionalism/Local color: realist novels with relations, recorded in their novels, are often determinative. Thus, they
rural settings, describing Midwestern or New expose the extent to which consensual relations was unrealized.
England communities or places relatively distant ❑ Realists believed people are endowed to some extent with moral
from the urban centers of commerce and agency. By contrast, naturalists tend to portray agency and consent
politics. as illusory and to emphasize the determinative force of social
divisions. (social status > consent)
❑Between naturalism and realism, the ❑ Naturalists focus more on lower-class or more marginal characters,
difference lay more in the themes and subject while the realists explored more the bourgeois milieu.
matter rather than in form. However, both finds ❑ For naturalists, the absence of common ground of moral judgment is
meaning in experience, not in religious doctrine both a cause and effect of determinative differences of background,
or sentimental melodrama. blood, and condition. The social relation and the individual’s fate is
largely determined by social strains stronger than one’s power.
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CHARACTERISTICS
1) Depiction of details present in the scene described, conveyed through what is circumstantial: manners, ways of
dressing, speech patterns, social habits, topics of conversation, and main concerns.
“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal
property which has suffered some damage…[...] He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole
object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation.

- Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the
"grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from
its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a
pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden.”

- Henry James, Daisy Miller

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CHARACTERISTICS
2) Use of distinctive speech patterns and dialect. Characters behave and speak more naturally.

“… en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on the head er dey fren’s en
makes ‘em ashamed.” (Chapter 15)

- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

‘Literal Translation’: … and trash is what people is that puts dirt on the
head of their friends and makes them ashamed.

‘Modern English Translation’: Someone who would try to make a fool of

their friend and make them feel ashamed is cruel.

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CHARACTERISTICS
3) Examination of subjects, images, or actions previously scorned by sentimental novelists and romancers as
common, brutal, or even sordid/vulgar. They described with frankness war, suicide, adultery, disease, violence,
crime, and poverty.

In the Awakening, Kate Chopin explores themes such as adultery, mental illness, marital oppression, and
motherhood’s struggles:

“He approached his wife with her in attention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother’s place to
look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business.” (p.24)

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CHARACTERISTICS
4) They brought this frank and close attention to detail to their portraits of the inner workings or psychologies of
characters, including their sexual desires.

“And what is the evidence you have offered?" asked Winterbourne, rather annoyed at Miss Miller's want of
appreciation of the zeal of an admirer who on his way down to Rome had stopped neither at Bologna nor at
Florence, simply because of a certain sentimental impatience.”

- Henry James, Daisy Miller.

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CHARACTERISTICS
5) Reflection of a cultural tendency toward anti-modernism.

Nostalgia [from the Greek: suffering for a desire to return home]: in contrast to the new values of urban and
industrialized urban centers, some realist authors recalled, in their fiction, pre-industrial times, especially in
rural settings, reflecting upon the “shift from close-knit communities bound by blood and shared tradition
toward an urban world of strangers bound only by contract.” (Crane, p.168)

Illusory changes: this anti-modernism did not mean that realists criticized efforts to modernize the country, but
that the attempts proved of little impact or were altogether illusory.

“if with an empty sleeve, then he should have three arms instead of two, for both of hers should be his for life.
She did not see, though why she should always be thinking of the arm his father had lost.”

- Willian Dean Howells, Editha.

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CHARACTERISTICS
6) Broader concerns about social transformation take the form of the main character’s roller coaster, the
discovery of a hidden identity or creation of a new one, or the character’s removal to completely different
circumstances.

A character’s sudden rise or fall “often depends on the success or failure of some hoax, fraud, stunt, or
practical joke.” (Crane, p.169)

“Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use
o' your bein' sour? It 'll only make things on-comfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't your
fault you warn't born a king—so what's the use to worry? Make the best o' things the way you find 'em,
says I—that's my motto. This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here—plenty grub and an easy life—
come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends.”

- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn.

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CHARACTERISTICS
7) Addressing of the massive social changes through the figure of memory.

More common in Regionalist fiction, depicting a contrast between a nostalgic “then”, a more genteel
antebellum era, and a modern “now” through portrayals of dying customs, practices, etc.

Paradox: national character defined through what they have lost.

Example: Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of Pointed Firs (1896):

“Sarah Orne Jewett records and mourns the passing of a simpler way of life – its particular accents,
scents, knowledge, social customs, and flavors. Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman use the figure of the
older women and men left behind by the migration of younger folk to the cities in pursuit of economic
opportunity to personify the earlier and, in many ways, better time.” (Crane, p.171)

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CHARACTERISTICS
8) Their central storyline was the rise of consent and decline of status as principles structuring society. Abraham
Lincoln: “No man is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent”.

“You have been a very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr.
Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself
where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you
both.”

― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.”
― Henry James Daisy Miller

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CHARACTERISTICS
9) The search for meaning leads to moments of crisis, which helps the character to discover a moral imperative.

“Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it
through my head that he WAS most free—and who was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn't get that out
of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't stay still in one
place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it
stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn't to blame,
because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every
time, "But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told
somebody." That was so—I couldn't get around that noway. That was where it pinched.” (16)

- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn.

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KATE CHOPIN Ana Rebello

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THE LIFE OF KATE CHOPIN

❑ Born February 8th, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri.

❑ She had 4 siblings, but was the only one who lived
past 25 years old.
❑ Her father died when she was 5.
❑ She was raised by her mother, grandmother and great
grandmother until she was 7 or 8, when she went to a
Catholic boarding school.
❑ She had many strong female, but no male, role
models. “She was rarely witness to the tradition of
female submission and male domination that defined
most late nineteenth-century marriages.” (Sparknotes)

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THE LIFE OF KATE CHOPIN

❑ Married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and settled with

him in New Orleans, his hometown.
❑ She bore 6 children during the first 10 years of
their marriage.
❑ She was known to be a good wife and mother,
but sometimes grew tired of the domestic life and
went on solitary walks through New Orleans.
❑ She was loved by her husband, who admired her
intelligence and independence.

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THE LIFE OF KATE CHOPIN
❑ In 1879, they moved to Cloutierville,
Louisiana, a small town, where her lifestyle
became the subject of gossip.
❑ Oscar falls ill and dies in 1882.
❑ “However, she learned to enjoy the pleasures
of independence and was rumored to have
had an affair with a married neighbor,
Albert Sampite, in the year following her
husband’s death.”
❑ Chopin and her children moved back to her
hometown of St. Louis to live with her mother,
who died the following year.
❑ She struggled with depression after the loss
of both her mother and husband in such a
short period of time.
❑ She began writing fiction in 1889 as a form
of therapy and income.

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LITERARY WORKS
❑Désirée’s Baby - originally published in Vogue in 1893, under the title
of The Father of Désirée’s Baby and later included in her collection
Bayou Folk in 1894.
❑The Story of an Hour - originally published in Vogue in 1894, under
the title of The Dream of an Hour, and later reprinted in St. Louis Life in
1895 under the title we know it as now.
❑Vogue published 18 of her short stories.
❑First published novel: At Fault (1890), Nixon Jones Printing Co, St.
Louis.
❑Second and final written and published novel: The Awakening (1899),
H.S. Stone, Chicago. Although it is now considered a classic, at the time
it basically marked the end of her writing career. She died a few years
after The Awakening was published of a brain hemorrhage, in 1904 at
the age of 54.

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THE AWAKENING: SUMMARY
Edna Pontellier is a mother and wife who lives in New
Orleans. While on vacation in Grand Isle, she forms a
strong connection with a young man called Robert
Lebrun.
The story is about Edna’s unhappiness with the life
expected of her by the 19th century Louisiana society
and her search for freedom, independence and her true
self. It brings up a lot of themes that were considered
extremely taboo at the time, such as female sexuality
and adultery, with a sympathetic point of view.

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THE AWAKENING: REPERCUSSIONS
❑The novel was very controversial. Critics thought it morally
inadequate because of the frank depiction of women’s
sexuality and for portraying a woman who fought against
social norms and established gender roles.
❑Many of Chopin’s earlier works had been praised despite
the controversial subjects, but The Awakening had a more
critical aspect unlike her other works, which could be read
as just a narrative.
❑The novel was never banned, but it was censored and fell
into obscurity for 70 years.

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REALIST ASPECTS OF
THE AWAKENING
❑It focuses on ordinary, every day people with
ordinary, every day problems.
❑Character driven: actions or events are not as
important as what goes on in the characters’ minds.
A study on female psychology?
❑Description: focus on the sea.
❑Social class: Edna battles with the struggle of
being an independent and respectable woman.
Madomoiselle Reisz. The role of women.

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THE AWAKENING: LEGACY
❑The Awakening is now considered one of, if not
the, first American feminist novel.
❑The novel did not conform to the views of the
world at the time of its publishing, but it
foreshadowed a world in which women are no
longer submissive, in which women had the
strength to raise their voices and be who they
want to be.
❑Chopin influenced authors like Sylvia Plath and
Edith Wharton because of the transition she
began regarding modern day womanhood.
In May 2016 Gerri Chopin Wendel, one of Chopin’s great granddaughters, visited
three classes at a high school in California that were reading The Awakening.

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ADAPTATIONS

Grand Isle (1991)

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MARK TWAIN João P. Javaroni

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THE LIFE OF MARK TWAIN – BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD
❑ Born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in November 30th, 1835, Florida
(Village), Missouri.
❑ Adopted some names throughout his life; Mark Twain, Josh and Thomas
Jefferson Snodgrass.
❑ The Clemens family was composed by John Marshall (father), Jane
Lampton (mother), Orion Clemens (brother) and other five siblings.
❑ Twain was descent from English and Irish.
❑ At four years old, the Clemens family moved to Hannibal, still in Missouri.
❑ Hannibal is a port town by the Mississippi River, which was a primary
inspiration to St. Petersburg, the town described in The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Slavery was legal in
Missouri by that time.
❑ John Marshall died in 1847, when Mark Twain was eleven.
❑ Rumor has it that Jane Lampton used to tell stories to her children every
winter's night. She became head of the family and household when her
husband died. Anyway, that lead to economic difficulties.
❑ Although a beautiful city, Twain witnessed a lot of violence in his
boyhood, such as a slave being killed by his/her overseer on the streets.
❑ There is a book called Life on the Mississippi, in which he describes his
boyhood. 30
THE LIFE OF MARK TWAIN –
RIVER AND WRITING
❑At young age, Twain leaves school after his father died and
was took as a cub pilot by the Steamboat pilot Horace
Bixby.
❑Twain was somewhat responsible for his brother Henry’s
death. Mark Twain convinced him to work as a cub pilot as
well, sadly, the steamboat his brother worked exploded,
killing him. He never stopped helding himself responsible,
also because he claimed to had foreseeing Henry’s death a
month earlier in a dream.
❑He kept working in the Mississippi River until the Civil War
in 1861.
❑Samuel and Orion Clemens left Hannibal and went across
the U.S.
❑While his brother became secretary of the Nevada
Territory Governor, Twain failed as a miner, and then tried
career as a writer in Virginia’s City newspaper, Territorial
Enterprise, what succeed and he began writing and adopting
the pseudonym Mark Twain.
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THE LIFE OF MARK TWAIN –
THE ROAD TO 90’S
❑ Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon in 1870 in New York.
Langdon came from a wealthy and “rebel” family, Through them,
Twain met abolicionism, women's rights and the whole idea of
equality, which someway molded Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
❑ They were neighbors to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a famous
abolitionist writer.
❑ They moved to Hartford in Connecticut and had three daughters.
❑ By this time, he wrote seventeen novels, his first classical being
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and including The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
❑ In the 90’s, Twain passed through financial difficulties as well as
his elder daughter, Susy’s death of meningitis.
❑ In 1904, Olivia died of heart failure in Florence, Italy. (talk
about the months without seeing Twain and the travels of the
family.)
❑ In 1909, the younger daughter, Jean, drowned in a bathtub after
a seizure.
❑ Mark Twain died in a deep depression in 1910. 32
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
❑Written in 1883 and published in 1885.
❑Huckleberry Finn is a boy native of St. Petersburg, Missouri who is
particularly “tired” of the life as a boy raised by a widow. He
sees no more good in his best friends Tom Sawyer adventures and
lies, Finn does not care for much unless the sound of woods, owls
and dogs in the streets. His melancholia is the individualistic voice
of the free man.
❑“Pap” Finn, who is a drunken brute, forcibly moves his son to a
house in Illinois (AKA kidnap). Not long passes until Huckleberry
escapes by faking his death.
❑While running, he reunites with Jim, Miss Watson’s (Widow
Douglas sister) slave, who is fleeing to avoid being sold to more
brutal lords. His goal is the free State of Cairo, in Illinois, where
later on, he planned to buy his family’s freedom.
❑At first, Huckleberry struggles with the sin and crime of lending a
hand to a fugitive slave, but with time they form a bond and
became close friends, Jim even act as a protector to Finn,
preventing him to see things like corpses and pass through more
traumatic experiences. After a flood, they find a raft, where they
pass the trip.
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REALIST ASPECTS
❑‘Say - who is you? Whar is you? Dog my
cats ef I didn’ hear smuf’n. Well, I knows
what I’s gwyne to do. I’s gwyne to set down
here and listen tell I hears it again.’. Usage
of written discourse to perform accents was
one of, if not the most, common and well
represented Twain realistic characteristics.
❑The plot.
❑Huckleberry's moral conflicts with society
values.

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ADAPTATIONS
❑There is a total of 17 film, 4
television and 2 musicals
adaptations including Huckleberry
Finn, summing 23 adaptations.
From all nationalities and
premises one can imagine.
Japanese television series,
Deutsch movie, french musical, etc.
❑The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1993: played beforehand
by Marina >:c

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HENRY JAMES AND WILLIAM D.HOWELLS Bruna Aló

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THE LIFE OF HENRY JAMES
❑Born April, 15th, 1843, in New York.
❑The second child of wealthy, aristocratic parents.
❑His father, Henry James, Sr., was a philosopher; his brother William
became prominent philosopher and psychologist.
❑His father disapproved of most schools and consequently sent his sons
to a variety of tutors and European schools in search of the best
education for them.
❑The family’s travels in Europe were another source of education for
Henry.
❑When growing up in New York, Henry was given a great deal of
independence, so much in fact, that he felt isolated from other people.
❑He was quiet among exuberant brothers and cousins. Henry was often
an observer rather than a participant in their activities.
❑When, as a young man, a back injury prevented him fighting the Civil War,
he felt even more excluded from events of this time.
❑Henry devoted much of his life to solitary work on his writing.

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THE LIFE OF HENRY JAMES
❑His principal interest, especially in his many fine novels, is
the confrontation of American and European culture.
❑Concerned with the clash between old and new - the dying
century and the one just beginning.
❑The Europeans in James’ novels are are more cultured, more
concerned with art, and more aware of the subtleties of
social situations than are James’ Americans.
❑The Americans, however, usually have a morality and
innocence which the Europeans lack.
❑Of the prominent New England writers who had dominated
American literature, James preferred Hawthorne, with his
recognition of the evil present in the world, to the
Transcendentalists, whose optimism seemed unrealistic to him.

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DAISY MILLER (1879)
❑A young American named Winterbourne meets a
rich and pretty girl named Daisy Miller, who is
traveling around Europe with her mother and her
brother.
❑Winterbourne, who has lived in Geneva most of his
life, is both charmed and especially mystified by
Daisy.
❑His aunt strongly disapproves of the Millers and
refused to be introduced to Daisy.
❑In Rome, Daisy has taken up with a number of
well-known hunters and become the talk of the town.
❑She has one suitor in particular, an Italian named
Mr. Giovanelli, of uncertain background.
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DAISY MILLER
❑Winterbourne begins to have doubts about Daisy’s
character, since she spends more time with Mr. Giovanelli.
❑At one night at Rome, he decides to brave he bad night air,
known to cause “Roman fever” (malaria).
❑Then, he finds with Mr. Giovanelli there and comes to the
conclusion that Daisy doesn’t bother about him so much.
❑However, Winterbourne still is concerned for Miller’s health,
approaching Giovanelli to get her home.
❑A few days later, Daisy becomes gravely ill and dies soon.
❑She gives her mother a message before dying, indicating
that she cared what he thought of her after all.
❑Winterbourne reténs to Genova and his former wife.
❑Movie: Daisy Miller (1974)
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THE LIFE OF WILLIAM DEAN
HOWELLS
❑Born March, 1st, 1837, in Ohio.
❑The second of eight children, his father was a
newspaper editor and printer, who frequently moved
around Ohio.
❑Howells was encouraged by his parents in his literary
interests.
❑His father arranged to have one of Howells poems
published in the Ohio State Journal without telling him.
❑Known as the “dean” of American Literature.
❑1908: Elected as the first president of American
Academy of Arts and Literature.
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EDITHA (1905)
❑The story written in 1905 concerns the topic and theme of the Spanish-
American war, in a realistic and romantic way.
❑Editha has an unrealistic view of the world. She wants her boyfriend
George to prove her worthiness by going to war.
❑Portrayal of individuals who have been corrupted by their society’s worst
values, such as nationalism and idealism.
❑However, he does not feel good about going up to serve his country.
❑Through her idealistic view of death, she pushes George to an early
death.
❑George and his mother understand the horrors of war because his father
lost an arm during the Civil War. Editha, however, supports George’s
participation blindly, reflecting society’s association of wars with honor
and glory.
❑Reversal of gender roles: Editha takes on a dominant role, while George,
meek and peaceful, is more submissive. However, because women were
not used to a position of power, she hesitates many times.
❑The story as reflection of Howells’s anti-imperialism.

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THANK YOU! Next: References and Appendix.

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REFERENCES
Texts: Paintings:
BARRISH, P. J. The Cambridge Introduction to American Edward Hopper. Soir Bleu, 1914.
Literary Realism. Edinburgh: Cambridge University Press,
2011, p.1-25. Gaspar van Wittel. View of the Colosseum with the
Arch of Constantine, 1716.
BUDD, L.J. The American Background. In: PRIZER, D. The
Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Jim Romeo. The Blue Sea, 2012.
Naturalism, 2011, p.1-36.
Everett Shinn. The Revue, 1908.
CHOPIN, K. The Awakening. London: Everyman’s Library,
1992. Sites Used in Research:
-------------. The Kiss. Penguin Classics, 1995.
Sparknotes
CRANE, G.The Realist Novel. In: The Cambridge Introduction
to the Nineteenth-Century American Novel. Edinburgh: : Cliffnotes
Cambridge University Press, 2007, p.155-177.
Enotes
HOWELLS, W.D. Editha. (Public Domain)
MILLER, H. Daisy Miller. (Public Domain)
TWAIN, M. Huckleberry Finn. England: Collector’s Library,
2004.
44
Appendix 1: List of (some) American Realist Writers
Kate Chopin
Sarah Orne Jewett
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Frances Harper
Rebecca Harding Davis
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mark Twain
Henry James
Hamlin Garland
Frank Norris
Abrahan Cahan
Willian Dean Howells
Edward Eggleston
Thomas Nelson
Stephen Crane
Theodore Dreiser
George Washington Cable
Albion Tourgeé
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ambrose Bierce
Joseph Kirkland
John William De Forest 45
APPENDIX 2: NATURALISM X REALISM SUMMARY

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