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HUM 3306
(online): History of Ideas--The Age of Enlightenment to the Age of
Anxiety
Summer A 2007/ Profs. Harvey &
Fantina
REALISM
"Realism"
is not only used to describe a particular approach to artistic representation
regardless of time-period. It is also used to define an aesthetic style
which, rejecting
Romanticism's subjectivity and grandiosity, became the predominant
mode of expression roughly between 1830-1900.
Emphasis is placed on an unvarnished, "photographic" style of
representation, with typical subjects including humble scenes of
rural workers or factory workers or other commonplace scenes.
Sometimes, Realism more luridly focuses on urban scenes of squalor
and deprivation. Charles Dickens, in novels such as his 1838 Oliver Twist,
describes unromantically the plight of those living in
early-industrialized London, with all its pollution and general
seediness. Because it sheds light on what we customarily might not
see--the urban poor, for example--Realism often has an edge of
social critique, and thus is part of the sociological examination of
societal problems in the nineteenth century, which will result in,
for instance, Karl Marx's political writings on behalf of the
working classes, which you will become familiar with when reading
The Communist Manifesto (1848) in the next week or two.
The previous overview
is very general, and there are many subsets of Realism, such as the
psychological realism of the late 19th-Century American author Henry
James who describes psychological perceptions of social interactions
with an almost unbearable finesse. Or, what is known as
"Naturalism," in which humans are reduced to their
biological/animalistic destinies; Naturalist fiction emphasizes raw
greed, lust, and crude survival instincts.
"Realism" is
helpful
to know as an aesthetic term, but use caution beyond its aesthetic
connotations: you cannot really make a straight line of
connection between or make comparable, say, the aesthetic style of a
Dickens' novel and the communistic ideas of Karl Marx. The
evolution and history of progressive political ideas is extremely intricate.
The
egalitarianism that comes out of the Enlightenment's
non-hierarchical view of rights (Locke's notion that we all have
equal rights) is picked up by Romantic enthusiasts who wished to
bring democracy to all (Mary Shelley's husband and William Blake) and
is a view that is continually regenerated throughout the entire 19th
century, during which time supporters of democracy are battling the
still-strong forces of aristocratic privilege as well as the
inequalities of wealth brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
From the Enlightenment on, "Realism" could be said to be developing
both as an aesthetic style and as a sober ideological/sociological
attitude towards the scenes of life--but the latter should not be
emphasized too much in politics, for certainly many radical
egalitarianists, Marx in particular, were driven by very idealistic,
almost prophetic concepts of apocalyptic revolution.
The examples below
emphasize the gritty and socially critical aspects of Realism. But many
Realist painters depicted calm, serene scenes of rural farming life
or simply represented the everyday (bowls of fruit, carriages going
by on the street, and so on)--see #4, French painter Manet's scene
of a bar and bar-maiden.
Some examples of
Realism:
1. Dickens,
Oliver Twist
(1838): from the 1st chapter, in which Oliver is born in a
work-house (Victorian institute for the indigent & impoverished):
Although I am not disposed to
maintain that the being born in a workhouse, is in itself the most
fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a
human being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance, it
was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have
occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in
inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,--a
troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary
to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a
little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world
and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter.
Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by
careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and
doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and
indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by,
however, but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by
an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such
matters by contract; Oliver and Nature fought out the point
between them. The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver
breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of
the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon
the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have
been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of
that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of
time than three minutes and a quarter.
As Oliver gave this first proof of
the free and proper action of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet
which was carelessly flung over the iron bedstead, rustled; the
pale face of a young woman was raised feebly from the pillow; and
a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words, 'Let me see the
child, and die.'
The surgeon had been sitting with his
face turned towards the fire: giving the palms of his hands a warm
and a rub alternately. As the young woman spoke, he rose, and
advancing to the bed's head, said, with more kindness than might
have been expected of him:
'Oh, you must not talk about dying
yet.'
'Lor bless her dear heart, no!'
interposed the nurse, hastily depositing in her pocket a green
glass bottle, the contents of which she had been tasting in a
corner with evident satisfaction. . . .
2. Thomas Eakins (American
painter) "The Gross Clinic" (1875):
"Gross" is the name
of the physician conducting the operation on the reclined patient,
whose buttocks and thigh are visible. Note the other figure--a
relative--shrinking back in trepidation, so unlike the detached,
precise attitude of Dr. Gross. The point of the painting is
less to shock us than to show us a "disturbing" scene in cool, calm
objectivity.
3. Friedrich Engels (pal of
Marx, co-author of 1848
Communist Manifesto)
on working poor of England (from Conditions of the Working Class
in England):
Let us investigate some of the slums in
their order. London comes first, and in London the famous rookery of
St. Giles which is now, at last, about to be penetrated by a couple
of broad streets. St. Giles is in the midst of the most populous
part of the town, surrounded by broad, splendid avenues in which the
gay world of London idles about, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Oxford Street, Regent Street, of Trafalgar Square and the Strand. It
is a disorderly collection of tall, three- or four-storied houses,
with narrow, crooked, filthy streets, in which there is quite as
much life as in the great thoroughfares of the town, except that,
here, people of the working-class only are to be seen. A vegetable
market is held in the street, baskets with vegetables and fruits,
naturally all bad and hardly fit to use obstruct the sidewalk still
further, and from these, as well as from the fish-dealers' stalls,
arises a horrible smell. The houses are occupied from cellar to
garret, filthy within and without, and their appearance is such that
no human being could possibly wish to live in them. But all this is
nothing in comparison with the dwellings in the narrow courts and
alleys between the streets, entered by covered passages between the
houses, in which the filth and tottering ruin surpass all
description. Scarcely a whole window-pane can be found, the walls
are crumbling, door-posts and window-frames loose and broken, doors
of old boards nailed together, or altogether wanting in this
thieves' quarter, where no doors are needed, there being nothing to
steal. Heaps of garbage and ashes lie in all directions, and the
foul liquids emptied before the doors gather in stinking pools. Here
live the poorest of the poor, the worst paid workers with thieves
and the victims of prostitution indiscriminately huddled together,
the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those who have not
yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds them,
sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to
resist the demoralising influence of want, filth, and evil
surroundings.
Nor is St. Giles the only London slum.
In the immense tangle of streets, there are hundreds and thousands
of alleys and courts lined with houses too bad for anyone to live
in, who can still spend anything whatsoever upon a dwelling fit for
human beings. Close to the splendid houses of the rich such a
lurking-place of the bitterest poverty may often be found. So, a
short time ago, on the occasion of a coroner's inquest, a region
close to Portman Square, one of the very respectable squares, was
characterised as an abode "of a multitude of Irish demoralised by
poverty and filth". So, too, may be found in streets, such as Long
Acre and others, which, though not fashionable, are yet
"respectable", a great number of cellar dwellings out of which puny
children and half-starved, ragged women emerge into the light of
day. In the immediate neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, the
second in London, are some of the worst streets of the whole
metropolis, Charles, King, and Park Streets, in which the houses are
inhabited from cellar to garret exclusively by poor families. In the
parishes of St. John and St. Margaret there lived in 1840, according
to the Journal of the Statistical Society, 5,566 working-men's
families in 5,294 "dwellings" (if they deserve the name!), men,
women, and children thrown together without distinction of age or
sex, 26,850 persons all told; and of these families three-fourths
possessed but one room. In the aristocratic parish of St. George,
Hanover Square, there lived, according to the same authority, 1,465
working-men's families, nearly 6,000 persons, under similar
conditions, and here, too, more than two-thirds of the whole number
crowded together at the rate of one family in one room. And how the
poverty of these unfortunates, among whom even thieves find nothing
to steal, is exploited by the property-holding class in lawful ways!
The abominable dwellings in Drury Lane, just mentioned, bring in the
following rents: two cellar dwellings, 3s., one room, ground-floor,
4s.; second-storey, 4s. 6d.; third-floor, 4s.; garret-room, 3s.
weekly, so that the starving occupants of Charles Street alone, pay
the house-owners a yearly tribute of £2,000, and the 5,566 families
above mentioned in Westminster, a yearly rent of £40,000.
4. Edouard Manet, "A Bar at
the Folies-Bergere" (1881-82)
5. Stephen Crane, passage
from The Red Badge
of Courage (1895), from Chapter 7:
This passage comes
from Crane's famous realistic depiction of the American Civil War.
Note how the perspective/mood is conveyed, realistically, through
the eyes of the protagonist-soldier. The encounter with the
corpse is intended to shock us, but ultimately only to inform us that war is
neither noble nor glorious.
A dull, animal-like rebellion
against his fellows, war in the abstract, and fate grew within him.
He shambled along with bowed head, his brain in a tumult of agony
and despair. When he looked loweringly up, quivering at each sound,
his eyes had the expression of those of a great criminal who thinks
his guilt and his punishment great, and knows that he can find no
words.
He went from the fields into a thick woods, as if resolved
to bury himself. He wished to get out of hearing of the crackling
shots which were to him like voices.
The ground was cluttered with vines and bushes, and the
trees grew close and spread out like bouquets. He was obliged to
force his way with much noise. The creepers, catching against his
legs, cried out harshly as their sprays were torn from the barks of
the trees. The swishing saplings tried to make knows his presence to
the world. He could not conciliate the forest. As he made his way,
it was always calling out protestations. When he searated embraces
of trees and vines, the disturbed foliages waved their arms and
turned their faces leaves toward him. He dreaded lest these noisy
motions and cries should bring men to look at him. So he went far,
seeking dark and intricate places.
After a time the sound of musketry grew faint and the cannon
boomed in the distance. The sun, suddenly apparent, blazed among the
trees. The insects were making rhythmical noises. They seemed to be
grinding their teeth in unison. A woodpecker stuck his impudent head
around the side of a tree. A bird flew on lighthearted wing.
Off was the rumble of death. It seemed now that Nature had
no ears.
This landscape gave him assurance . . . Once he found
himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged to walk upon bog tufts
and watch his feet to keep from the oily mire. Pausing at one time
to look about him he saw, out at some black water, a small animal
pounce in and emerge directly with a gleaming fish.
The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed
branches make a noise that drowened th sounds of cannon. He walked
on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater obscurity.
At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs
made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered.
Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half
light.
Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight
of a thing.
He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his
back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform
that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of
green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue
to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red
had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face
ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the
upper lip.
The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was
for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the
liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a
long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and
brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by
step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he
turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.
The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon
it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in the brambles;
and with it all he received a subltle suggestion to touch the
corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.
At last he burst the bonds which had fated him to the spot
and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by the sight of
black ants swarming greedily upon the gray face and venturing
horribly near to the eyes.