The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea

by Michael Davitt Bell

Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of realism and naturalism as the signal development in post-Civil War American fiction. Questioning this generalization, Michael Davitt Bell investigates the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. He argues that "realism" and "naturalism" were ideological categories used to promote a version of "reality" based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions.

In chapters on William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett, Bell examines the effects that ideas about realism and naturalism had on writers. He demonstrates that, for many of them, claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was a way to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 1993

Reviews

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish more academic criticism were written like this -- it's very accessible and readable, written by someone who cares about being clear and making his points understood. I do have some quibbles with his arguments, however. He makes a case that American realism was at least partially rooted in male authors' desire to be seen as stereotypically masculine. But he barely mentions the plethora of female novelists writing in this period. I would have loved to see an analysis of Willa Cather or Edith Wharton or, if he felt they were writing too late to be included, perhaps one of the "agonists" such as Elizabeth Stoddard.