Realism and Naturalism: The Novel as Social Document

Realism: The Truth of Life

Nineteenth-century realism was a reaction to romantic idealism. The task of literature: to depict life as it is, without embellishments and romantic exaggerations. This was the democratization of literature: not aristocratic heroes and great passions, but ordinary people in ordinary circumstances.

Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" (1857) is a programmatic realist novel. Emma Bovary is a provincial doctor's wife, raised on romantic novels, experiencing a rift between dreams and reality. Flaubert depicts her life with cold clinical precision, without judgment and without sentimentality. "Madame Bovary is me" — about the fact that the author identifies with the hero, rather than distancing himself.

Tolstoy — Russian realism on the epic scale. "War and Peace" (1869): a social novel encompassing several generations of Russian society through the prism of the Napoleonic wars. "Anna Karenina" (1878): psychological realism — a detailed depiction of the inner world of the characters.

Naturalism: Science and Determinism

Émile Zola created "naturalism" — an extreme form of realism, applying scientific methods to literature. The series "Rougon-Macquart" (20 novels) — "the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire." Zola studied "heredity" and "environment" as biological and social determinants of behavior.

"Germinal" (1885) — a novel about a miners' strike. Zola spent several months in mining settlements, studying living conditions. This is the "journalistic" method in literature — what today is called "immersive journalism."

Naturalism raised the social question radically: if human behavior is determined by genetics and environment — what is "free will" and "moral responsibility"?

Question for reflection: Zola conducted field research before writing his novels. How is the "naturalistic" method — deep immersion in the environment — applied in your profession?