In the mid-nineteenth century, a new movement in fiction began gathering clout amidst the rarified air of Romanticism. Incited by the biological theories of Darwin and the socio-economic determinism of Marx, Naturalism grafted scientific principles to its form. Naturalist writers insistently... [more]

In the mid-nineteenth century, a new movement in fiction began gathering clout amidst the rarified air of Romanticism. Incited by the biological theories of Darwin and the socio-economic determinism of Marx, Naturalism grafted scientific principles to its form. Naturalist writers insistently probed the increasingly industrial age via objectivity, social research, and an obsession with life lived on the edge. Driven by the dictates of scholarly documentation, these writers saw people as the hapless victims of environmental and biological forces. Gustave Flaubert's classic 'Madame Bovary' (1856) is a striking case in point: this realistic novel unflinchingly records the ambitions and vanities -- and their unsentimental consequences -- of an unhappy, middle-class hausfrau. French novelists like Flaubert, Maurice Stendhal, and Honore Balzac unsparingly recounted the most unsavory details of the social misery that enslaved the lower classes. Sociological portraits of sexual obsession, poverty, and urban blight sprang to life in Emile Zola's zealous fictional arguments for social reform. With its spirit of divine discontent, Naturalism bespoke a fresh awareness of the vice-grip that history and environment had on most human life -- notions of "self" and "other," of "fiction" and "escapism" were forever altered as a result. Other Naturalistic writers include: Guy de Maupaussant in France; Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and Jack London in the United States; and Samuel Butler in England. [show less]