Naturalism

Naturalism - A term generally applied to art which seeks to adhere to nature. More strictly, it refers to the scientifically based extension of realism propounded by Emile Zola in the 1870s and 1880s in essays such as 'Naturalism in the Theatre' and "The Experimental Novel', and exemplified in his hugely popular cycle of Rougon-Macquart novels, which chart the social and genetic development of a single family through several generations of legitimate and illegitimate descendants. In naturalist writing, medical and evolutionary theories of 19th-century science inform readings of human character and social interactions, which are seen as being genetically and historically determined. The struggle of the individual to adapt to environment, the fight for the spouse and the Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest become central concerns of naturalist fiction and drama.

Inspired by Zola's writing, Andre Antoine founded the Theatre Libre in Paris in 1887 and staged plays, including Tolstoy's Powers of Darkness, Strindberg's Miss Julie, Ibsen's Ghosts and Hauptmann's The Weavers, which were informed by naturalist ideas and which subsequently became standard works in the new European independent theatres. Plays in English which invoke naturalist ideas about social and genetic inheritance and the struggle for survival include Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904) and Galsworthy's Strife (1909). Naturalist ideas occur in Hardy's novels and underpin Gissing's New Grub Street (1891) and George Moore's Esther Waters (1894) but are less evident in Britain than in America, where Theodore Dreiser, Jack London and Stephen Crane in Maggie (1893) are the notable naturalist writers.

The major English exponents:

George Gissing

John Galsworthy

Thomas Hardy

A.E. Houseman

George Moore

Arthur Morrison

George Gissing (1857-1903)

“The Unclassed” (1884)

“Demos. A Story of English Socialism” (1886)

“The Nether World” (1889) – depicts the poverty and destitution of the lowest classes of London. People teem and rush about in the purgatory of the modern bourgeois London and find no way to escape. Unemployment, alcoholism, both physical and moral extinction – these represent the true realistic picture of the London’s slums.

“New Grub Street” (1891)

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)

“Justice” (1910)

“The Skin Game”

“The Forsyte Saga”: “The Man of Property” (1906), “In Chancery” (1920), “To Let” (1921) – gives the story of several generations of the Forsyte family who lives between the years 1886-1926. At the same time it is the history of the English bourgeois society. The Forsytes have possessive instincts to such a degree that property becomes the prime object of their worship and respect.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

“Under the Greenwood Tree” (1872)

“Far from the Madding Crowd” (1874)

“The Return of the Native” (1878)

“Tess of the d’Urbervilles” (1891) – (A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented) – a story of a simple peasant woman’s short life; the lovely, charming woman, profaned and ruined. The author traces succession of events and spiritual evolution of Tess, revealing the reasons of her tragedy. In her life she is confronted by the cruelty of the law system, dogmatism, hypocrisy, prejudices.

“Jude the Obscure” (1895)