The (Dysfunctional) Family Unit

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The (Dysfunctional) Family Unit

• Realism and Naturalism in the wake of Darwin,
  Freud, and Marx

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Realism 1865-1900

• Develops as a reaction to Romanticism
• Truthful treatment of material
• Twain, Howells (smiling realism)
• Growing skepticism after Civil War,
  industrialization, manifest destiny, science,
  photography, journalism
• Truth verifiable by experience

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Realism cont.

• Material commonplace, average, everyday, local
  color, dialect, specific actions and
  consequences, ordinary people, believable
  situations
• Concern with effect on reader and development of
  character over plot
• Central issues of life/conduct
• Complex ethical choices (Huck)

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Naturalism 1890s-WWI

• Extreme realism
• Application of scientific determinism to fiction
• Philosophical rather than literary
• Characters studied through their relationship to
  environment
• ManHelpless victim in uncaring universe

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Influences on American Naturalism

• French writer and founder of Naturalist movement
  Emile Zola 1880s and his idea of human beasts
• French psychologist Claude Bernards medical
  model
• Joseph LeContes influence of sociology on
  perception (birth order, prejudice)
• Sir Isaac Newtons observable laws of
  motion/physics

Émile Zola by Cézanne
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Influences on American Naturalism cont.

• Karl Marxs economic theory of the effects of
  materialism on man
• Sigmund Freuds theory of subconscious behavior,
  causes actions beyond our control
• Charles Darwins theory of natural selection,
  genetics

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Definition of Naturalism

• Human beings as products studied impartially
  without moralizing
• Laws behind forces governing human lives can be
  studied and understood using scientific method
• Conditioned/controlled responses instinct,
  passion, heredity, chance, environment
• Pessimistic, materialistic determinism

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Components of Naturalism

• Survivalapplying determinism to biological
  competition, supreme motive in animal life,
  fastens man to physical roots
• Determinismnatural law and socio-economic
  influences more powerful than will
• Violencesurvival depends on force against force
• Tabooimproper topics such as sex, disease,
  bodily functions, obscenity, depravity, graphic
  situations

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Forms of Naturalism

• Chronicle of Despairtired protagonist trudging
  through life
• Clinicalstep-by-step tracing of disease as it
  destroys the individual
• Panoramicforces operate through whole body of
  society
• Slice of Lifeminute, faithful reproductions of
  bits of reality
• Stream of Consciousness smallest detail of
  thought

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Character Traits

• Ill-educated, lower class
• Lives governed by heredity, instinct, passion
• Attempts to exercise free will hampered by forces
  beyond their control
• Social Darwinism
• Urban setting

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Themes

• Brute within warring emotions, passion, lust
  greed, dominance, pleasure
• Fight for survival in amoral, indifferent
  universe
• Man v. Nature or Man v. Self
• Natureindifferent force acting on their lives
  (Calvinistic, Predestination without religion)
• Forces of heredity and environment affect and
  afflict
• Indifferent, deterministic universe