CHAPTER - I
INTRODUCTION:
The term ‘Naturalism’ has wide range and complex undertones in
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regard to its area of reference. With its twin qualifiers ‘naturalist’ and
‘naturalistic’, naturalism evokes associations with ‘nature’ and
‘naturalness.’ Originally, ‘Naturalism was used in ancient philosophy to
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denote materialism Epicureanism or any secularism. This remained the
primary meaning of the word for long. Philosophical naturalism was the
doctrine that held that everything that exists is a part of nature. ‘Nature’
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commonly meant the sum-total of events in space-time, or what could in
principle become known by scientific method. Though the naturalist is
committed to the denial of a supernatural deity, a supernatural element
in man, and a supernormal basis of aesthetic and ethical value, he is not
necessarily a materialist, who holds that economic motives are the only,
or the most important, factors in human behavior, in his metaphysics or
an egoist in his ethics. However, some forms of evolutionary naturalism
are associated with ethical systems that reduce all motives to self-
preservation or will to power. And, moreover, materialism as a
reductionist form of naturalism asserts that reality consists, in the last
analysis, of physical events.
As elaborated by the thinker Holbach, Eighteenth-century
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Naturalism was a philosophical system that saw man living solely in a
world of perceived phenomena in a universe devoid of transcendental,
metaphysical or divine forces.1 This remained the chief meaning of
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‘Naturalism’ in the nineteenth-century is shown by the dictionary
definitions of the time. But, even before that, Ambroise pare, a famous
sixteenth-century surgeon, regarded it as the doctrine of epicurean
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atheists and Denis Diderot, the famous French Philosopher and a leading
member of the ‘ Enlightenment’ in Eighteenth Century, wrote of the
Naturalists as those who do not admit God but who believe instead in
material substance. Sainte-Beuve in 1839 bracketed Naturalism with
materialism or pantheism and the philosopher Caro, some half a century
later
in
1882,
contrasted
Naturalism
with
spiritualism.
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predominance of this philosophical sense of the term is corroborated by
the definition in Littre’s Dictionaire deal langue francaise (1875): ‘the
system of those who find all primary causes in nature’. Current English
dictionaries still place the philosophical and theological meaning before
the artistic. The Naturalist, thus in all the older usages, was portrayed as
a man with an overriding interest in the material substance of this world
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in its natural manifestations and physical laws. A naturalist was thus
held to be a man who studied external nature.
A powerful new impetus was given to the study of nature by the
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Romantics’ Cult of naturalness and spontaneity and the poets’
overwhelming delight in nature in the early nineteenth century. The
world was conceived as a unified living organism of creatures, plants,
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stars and stones, all participating in the life of the universe. In the fine
arts from which the term ‘Naturalism’ was imported in literary
Criticism, the word ‘naturalist’ had another usage. A naturalist painter,
accordingly, was one who depicted not historico-mythological or
allegorical subjects, but sought to give on canvas as exact an imitation as
possible of the actual forms of nature. The word ‘naturalist’ occurred
frequently in nineteenth century art criticism in France in the writings of
Baudelaire and Castagnary who maintained in his Salon de (1863) that
the ‘naturalist school asserts that art is the expression of life in all its
forms and degrees and that its sole aim is to reproduce nature at the
height of its force and intensity.’2 Based on mimetic realism, this ideal
definition by Castagnary is important for and characteristic of,
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Naturalism in the arts. It was from the fine arts that the word was
imported into literary criticism by Emile Zola in the preface to the
second edition of Therese Raquin (1867). Zola used the words
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‘impressionist’, ‘realist’, ‘factualist’ and ‘naturalist’ freely and
synonymously.
It is not that the term ‘naturalism’ occurring chiefly in literary
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Criticism, did not exit before Zola. Naturalism has very long history,
albeit it was not introduced into the literary world until relatively late.
The term ‘naturalism’ in this sense may be taken to be similar to the
term ‘romanticism’ as the former like the latter denoted an attitude
before it described an artistic tendency. ‘Naturalism’ is to be found well
before and after the late nineteenth and early twentieth century literary
movement of that name. Between the end of the Middle Ages and the
end of eighteenth century, there were many naturalists, Velasquez,
Caravaggio, Raphael and Shakespeare included.3 And, according to
another historian C. Beuchat,4 the early naturalist were Socrates,
Euripides, Virgil, Rutebeuf, Villon, Marot, La Rouchefoucauld, La
Bruyere, L Fontaine, Charles Sorel, Montaigne, Bayle, Marivaux,
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Lesage, Prevost, Laclos, Rousseau, Diderot, Ret if de la Bretonne, etc.
And, add to this, a rather longish list of naturalists, Rabelais was ‘ a
realist’ who preached naturalist ethic,5 or that ‘Diderot pushed
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naturalism as literal deception to astonishing extremes.’6 Brandes
volume on Naturalism in England is about Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron
and Scott, while in Germany Goethe’s lyric poems have been acclaimed
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as ‘naturalistisch.’ It needs to be said here that as a term ‘Naturalism’ is
not readily comprehensible, and further that as a phenomenon it is not
confined to the late nineteenth century. Used in these different ways in
literary criticism ‘naturalism’ refers to works that exhibit a marked
interest in and love of natural beauty for which ‘naturism’ would be the
preferable term. Secondly, ‘naturalism’ has often been used as
synonymous with realism and thirdly, it refers to the works of literature,
especially since Emile Zola, that utilize realistic methods and materials
to embody a certain form of philosophical naturalism. ‘Naturalism’ thus
came on to the literary scene already loaded with meanings derived from
philosophy, the sciences, and the fine arts.
Zola’s tacit assumption in his art Criticism was that the two terms
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‘Realism’ and ‘Naturalism’ were virturally identical overlapping one
another. Beuchat Categorically expressed his conviction that ‘Realism
and Naturalism are merely one and the same thing.’7 To Brunetiere, the
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two terms appear to have been synonymous. In his Le Roman
naturaliste, he held Madame Bovary as ‘perhaps the masterpiece of
realistic novel.’
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Considering its author Flaubert as ‘the true harbinger
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of Naturalism just as Madame Bovary will probably remain its
masterpiece’ (p.302). The exponents of Naturalism were themselves
guilty of a good deal of muddled thinking reflected in their word-usage.
The acknowledged high-priest of Naturalism, Zola made no clear
distinction between the two terms, nor did his immediate disciple
Huysmans. It has been surmised that there might have been a deliberate
attempt to make Naturalism acceptable under the guise of Realism.
Becker in his introduction to documents of modern Literary Realism has
summarized the muddle situation of Realism and Naturalism:
‘Though the words realism and naturalism are freely,
even rashly, used, there is no agreement as to what they
mean. For many they have come to be merely convenient,
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pejoratives, especially when qualified as stark, raw,
unimaginative, superficial, atheistic, and more recently
socialist.’ 8
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Naturalism does differ from Realism but is not independent of it. What
is in common to the Realists and Naturalists is the fundamental fact that
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art is in essence a mimetic, objective representation of outer reality.
Harry Levin has pointed out in The Gates of Horn that Realism is ‘a
general tendency’ in so far as every work of art ‘is realistic in some
respects and universalistic in others.’
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It was out of this general
tendency to mimetic Realism that Naturalism grew. The Naturalists not
only elaborated on and intensified the basic tendencies of Realism but
rather they also added important new elements which turned Naturalism
into a recognizable doctrine such as Realism had never been. Naturalism
is therefore more concrete and at the same time, more limited than
Realism. It is a literary movement with distinct theories, groups and
practices. Being a school and a method, Naturalism is in fact what
Realism is not. The new elements that were added to mimetic realism in
order to produce Naturalism were derived largely from the natural
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sciences. One of the briefest, though incomplete, definitions of
Naturalism is an attempt to apply to literature the discoveries and
methods of nineteenth century science. This affinity to science was
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explicitly emphasized by the Naturalists. Paul Alexis, Zola’s closest ally,
summed up Naturalism as:
‘A way of thinking, of seeing, of reflecting, of studying,
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of making experiments, a need to analyze in order to
know, rather than a particular style of writing.’11
Naturalists took a definite concept of man which they aimed to express
in their writings. Their biological and philosophical assumptions
distinguished them from the Realists with their unbiased objectivity, for
in observing life the Naturalists already expect a certain pattern. In order
to understand their views and methods, it becomes almost a binding for
us to look at the scientific and philosophic trends of the mid-nineteenth
Century which were so decisive in shaping the Naturalistic movement.
SHAPING FACTOR:
The role of some revolutionary and evolutionary developments that
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occurred in the nineteenth century was crucial in shaping the Naturalistic
movement. Industrial revolution, scientific discoveries that forced man
to reassess his view of himself both as a physical and as a moral being,
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political convulsions, revolutions of 1830 and 1848, unification of
Germany and Italy, the Franco-Prussian war, and the American civil war
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brought forth rapid and radical change in the conceptual assumptions of
man vis-à-vis his world as a whole. The social, political, scientific,
philosophical and ethical trends of the nineteenth century are not just the
background to Naturalism but rather the decisive shaping factors that
gave the movement its content, its method, its direction and even its
content and its mood. The growth of towns, the establishment of
factories, the opening of new sources of power in gas and electricity, the
harnessing of steam and the first locomotive railway lines between
Stockton and Darlington in 1825 paved the way for expansion and
excitement as well as for gloomy slums and shocking exploitation of
human and natural resources.
Advancement made during the heyday years of Industrial
Revolution in prosperity and happiness had its reverse side in the misery
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of the masses and social unrest. These two counter-sides of the
Revolution feature in the works of the Naturalists. Zola’s L’ Argent,
Dreiser’s The Financier, and Norris’ The Octopus present the explicit
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theme of struggle for gaining possession of money and power through
commercial expansion, Zola’s Germinal and Hauptmann’s Die Weber
present the miserable plight of the workers driven to strike and revolt.
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Increasing prosperity of the owning group exists alongside the desperate
struggle of the have-nots in Zola’s Au Bonheur des dames and Bennett’s
Clayhanger. These were new kinds of themes and subjects that found
expression in the works of the Naturalists who thereby expanded the
thematic and socialistic range of the arts. Greater variety if people and
problems drawn from the newly emergent urban working classes were
dealt with by the Naturalists. The Naturalists in this respect may be said
to be directly linked to the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath. Men
with their growing awareness of the physical world came to prize more
and more its material fabric and concentrate on external goods, things.
Mill’s Utilitarianism was the sure sign of the spirit of the age.
Naturalism has always been equivalent to materialism which, as a
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reductionistic form of Naturalism, asserts that reality consists, in the last
analysis, of physical events and, more so, economic motives are the
only, or the most important, factors in human behavior. Obsessive
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interest in and desire for money, possessions, etc., rather than in spiritual
or ethical values happens to be the hallmark of Naturalism. It holds
matter to be the only reality, mind and emotions beings its mere
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functions. Ethically, it rejects any religious or supernatural account of
things. Thus, the Naturalists of the nineteenth century were, in all
essentiality, realists and materialists. They were in clear consonance
with the mood of the age with its marked emphasis on facts. They
believed that their aimed for or sought-after truthfulness could be gained
only from their painstaking observation of reality and careful notation of
facts. Invention of the new art of photography by Saint-Victor in 1824
provided them with an additional impetus for inspiration. For Goncourt
and Demailly, only the visible world’ existed, and as Wilhelm Bolsche
proclaimed ‘The metaphysical must be kept away.’
12
The Naturalists
fastened on to the object which they sought to describe with the
precision of delineated detail and subjected the facts they had gathered
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to microscopic analysis.
Progress made in the sciences---physics chemistry, biology, and
medicine---during the nineteenth century was manifold. These advances
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were fundamental in character and inestimably far-reaching in their
implications. For the startling nature of the discoveries and for their
direct relevance to thought and literature, it is a must here to single out
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the biological sciences. Lamarck’s theory of evolution quite early in the
century posited that plants and animal develop by gradual modification
from previously existing forms of life Darwin’s Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection (1859)maintained that man is descended
from the lower animal and that there is a continuous struggle for
existence in animal life that leads to the survival of the fittest by a
process of natural selection. The Descent of Man (1871) further
elaborated that man was closely related to apes. The belief engendered
by the notion of natural selection entailed that the strong survived while
the weak went under. This belief ran counter to all religious teaching and
was inevitably anathema to genteel morality. Men willy-nilly were
forced into the most radical self- reassessment. They had to accept that
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instead of being creations of the divine will they were only slightly
above the animal level, and life itself was a continuous struggle.
Darwin’s theory is undoubtedly the most important single shaping
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factor in the development of Naturalism. The naturalists’ view of man is
directly dependent on the Darwinian picture of his descent from the
lower animal. Naturalists’ deliberate reduction of man to animal level
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stripping him of higher aspirations was in stark contrast to Romantics’
idealization of him. Zola’s Une campagne (1880-81) replaced the
metaphysical man by physiological man and his La Bete humaine (The
Human Animal) served as a descriptive tag to many naturalistic figures.
The Naturalists, especially Zola, Norris, and Hauptmann, reversed the
process of evolution by showing the degeneration of man into a subhuman state. Norris’ Vandover and the Brute, Zola’s L’ Assommoir and
Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang showed how in a crisis, under some
stress or the impetus of sexual urge or the influence of alcohol, man
reverts to the primitive brutalism latent within himself. The recurrent
imagery of naturalist writing is drawn from the animal world and its
vocabulary abounds in the ‘law of claw and fang’ ‘primordial’ ‘struggle
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for existence’ ‘savage’ ‘driving’ ‘conquering’ ‘cyclopean’, ‘abyss’ etc.
The Naturalists’ Darwinian view of man was supported by factors
from various other sources. The theory of heredity as a variant on
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evolution within the human realm played cardinal role and was common
to nearly all the Naturalists. Zola’s conception of the Rougon-Macquart
series as the ‘natural and social history of a family’ was inspired without
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any shred of doubt by the doctrine of heredity. In the guise of innate
urges and instincts, heredity functioned as an intermediary between
science and literature. In the preface to the second edition of his Essais
de critique et d’ histoire (1866), Hippolyte Taine furthered Darwin’s
ideas that the human animal is a continuation of the primitive animal;
‘the primary molecule is inherited, and it’s acquired shape is passed on
partially and gradually by heredity; and the ‘molecule as it is develops
only under the influence of its environment.’ To the naturalists, thus,
man is an animal whose course is determined by his heredity, by the
effect of his environment, and by the pressures of the moment. Man
came to be robbed of all free will, all responsibility for his actions,
which are merely the inescapable result of physical forces and
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conditions totally beyond his control. The assumption of the naturalistic
doctrine that fate is sometimes imposed on the individual from the
outside and it is, therefore, for thin reason that the protagonist of a
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naturalistic novel is at the mercy of circumstances rather than of
himself.13 Indeed, he often seems to have no self. Consequently,
Naturalism tends to present ‘case histories rather than tragedies in the
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This points to one of the chief weaknesses of
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classical sense.’
naturalism as a literary movement because its conception of man is too
narrow and too tendentious. The writer, in fact, has no more liberty than
his characters.
Adoption and Application of Methods of Science:
The subjects to which the scientific method of a rational analysis
of observed data was applied were philosophy, theology, psychology
and literature. this was very much in consonance with the matter-of fact
mentality of the age- the 19th century. the method of science applied to
philosophy by august comte (1798-1857) resulted in the commentcement of his philosophico- scientific positivisms as the sote means of
attaining valid knowledge, what was of utmost significance was his idea
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of evolution applied to human thought in its progress to wards maturity.
having passed already the first two stages of theological (mythical )and
abstract (metaphysical), comte envisaged it to have entered into the third
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stage of the positive (scientific) era when one could observations certain
conclusions in the determined world. This comtian conception of
positivism subjected philosophy to the scientific method so as to under
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stand the universe in scientific terms his course de philosophies positive
(2ed edition,paris,1864-I,p.16) defined the basis of his positive
philosophy as seeing ‘all phenomena as subject to constant natural laws
and its aim the exact discovery and schematization of these laws; it
offered a prototypal approach and accounted greatly for its role in the
study of religion and its posterior development of sociology an another
figure mentionable here in this context is that of her best spencer (18201903) who a lacomet based his philosophy on the scientific theory of
evohition applying it to psychology, sociology, ethics as well as to
biology. he regarded all developments as a process of change from
homogeneity to heterogeneity.
As applied to the study of man, the scientific method made him
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become an object to be observed, described, and analysed in total
neutrality and his behavior understood like the workings of a machine.
He was viewed as determined by his histoire de la literature anglaise,
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hippolyte trine (1828-93) called man ‘a machine with an interacting
mechanism of wheels; Notorious amorality of the naturalists was the
outcome of the conception mooted by tire that the evil man was on the
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same plane. As good and that neither was responsible for what he was
since both of them had been conditioned by the forces that were beyond
his control. renan’s the future of science (1849)put the traditional
religion under even severer stress than Darwin had done. Renan claimed
that the true world was for superior to fantasies of the creation; he also
denied later in his rationalist biography of Jesus (18630, the mystery or
miracle of any kind. Along with all these,the creative writers like
Stendhal and Balzac were analogically referred to by taine as anatomists
and physicians dissecting the human mind and body. 3ola’s reading of
Claude Bernard’s introduction to the scientific study of medicine (1865)
provided the final fillip to the naturalistic movement. Basing his le
roman experimental on it, he said that the method outlined for medicine
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by Bernard was ideal for literature, too. He had only the word ‘novelist’
to be substituted for ‘doctor’ like a scientist, as per 3ola, an artist too had
to experiment with his material. Though the naturalists manner of
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physical sciences came to be condemned later as the ‘naturalistic
fallacy’ by McDowell (realism, London,1918,pp.152-53),the truth that
the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century and introduction, of
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the scientific methods in arts were the decisive factors in shaping the
movement of naturalism is irrefutable. Like the sociopolitical system of
Nietzsche, naturalism, too, in literature and especially in fiction, was the
expression of its age. Like the former two the latter too was an attempt
to make a reckoning with a drastically changed leniverse.
Bounds of Naturalism:-Theoretical, Terrestrial, and Temporal.
The publication of manifestos and proclamation of artistic teories
by the adherents of naturalism made its presence through strongly felt all
over, as a movement in lacked a clear-cut outline and desired cohesion.
Individual writers of this mode played their part in the movement and,
subsequently, parted their way with it. To be instanced among them are
Huysman, Maupassant, George moore, and some other minor writers.
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They all took Naturalism as just a phase of their personal development.
There is haidly to be found a major figure whom we may call a wholehearted naturalist. And, more so, Naturalism is not, neither literarily nor
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philosophically, limitable to any Circumscribed time. In France, it was
in full swing in the 1870s and early 1880s while in Italy and Germony it
Vaught momentum a decade later. It lingered on in England from the
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1890s into the opening years of the twentieth Century, but in America, it
remained in its most vigorons form especially between the two world
wars. As a movement, we fond Naturalism to have been bound up
temporally with emile Zola’s Therese Rawuin (1867) at one end
Steinbeck’s Grapes of warth (1939), at the other. It is found glimpsing
and glancing in different countries at different times on account of their
respective, differing native conditions and traditions. The movement
assumed different guises in different lands and emphasized differing
aims. However, the objective portrayal of closely observed reality, the
adoption of the scientific method, and the belief in determinism
remained the fundamental factors common to them all.
We find Naturalism in France to have been the continuation of the
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tradition of Realism that was so predominant in the nineteenth century.
As admitted by the French Naturalists themselves, they were the second
generation Realists. They acknowledged Balzac, Flaubert and Stendhal
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as their forerunners and acclaimed them as their models. While Balzac
was highly appraised in the eponymous essay by hippolyte Taine,
Stendhal was proclaimed to be a ‘naturalist’ and ‘physician’ (Histoire de
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la literature analyze, Paris. 1877.i.p.XLVI). Huysman too attributed
Balzac with ‘the real leaders of our school’ and to Flaubert with ‘Zolo’s
brother in Naturalism’ in Emile Zola etl’ Assommoir (ii,pp. 159& 178).
And as of Zola himself, he elaborated in his perceptive essays on Balzac,
Stendhal, and Flaubert in Les Romanciers Naturalistes (1881) those
aspects of the Realists’ writing that conformed to the Naturalist pattern.
And besides the three great French Realists mentioned here Edmond and
Jules Goncourt, too have been cited to be, on the basis of their proximity
to the Naturalists, their predilection for commnblace subject- matter and
stress on heredity and mililu, and studying people’ like a doctor scholar,
a historian; the remediate precursors of Naturalism.
The decisive mind within the French Naturalism was, without any
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shed of doubt, Zola’s. He overdominated the movement and had the
courage to speak his mind though in rather unpopular and
unconventional ways. He preached the gespel of Naturalism with
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missionalry Zeal. The Naturalist grope de medan, named afta Zola’s
house in medan had paul Alexis, hevry ceaved, heon hennique,
Huysmand, and Maupassant as its core members they each contributed a
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story to Les Soirees de Medan publiched in 1880. The sories contributed
by these members medan of the school were harshly realistic and had
essentially nothing to do with the theory of naturalism proper.
Maupassnt’s preface ‘Le Roman’ to Pierreet Jean (1887) expounded
realistic rather than Naturalistic conception of the novel and Huysmans
Emile Zola et ; ‘Assommoir (1876) was merily and echo of Zolo’s ideas.
It is therefore genuine to say that the entire bedy of Naturalistic literary
theory come from Zola.
Zola claimed that his novel was a scientific study and, therefore, he
countered the charge of immorality the formed against him as irrelevant
and substance less. The motto of the counter-attack by Zola become the
stock-in-trade of the naturalists who, like scientists, were neutral
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observers of feats and therefore, beyond the criteria of morality in
manner. Zola’s aim was above all a scientific one with ‘a purely
scholarly interest’. So was his approach to Naturalism, too. He had
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engaged himself ‘in the study of a stronger physiological case’ to
produce ‘bene, live anatomical specimens’ this surgical approach
adopted by him went hand in had with a certain vier of his characters
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who were deemed to be ‘human animals’ and, in whom, thesoul was
totally absent. Devoied of free ill, his characters were dominated by their
‘narves and blood’ Citing claude Bernd’s Introduction to a letiude de la
medicine experimental as his model, Zola harped time and again on the ‘
Concelt of a literature shaped by science’;
“ The experimental novel arises out of the
Scientific advance of out century;
It is a continuation and a completion
of physiology …; the study of abstract,
metaphysical man is replaced by the
study of natural man subject to physicochemical laws and determined by
the effect of his environment (milieu)’’
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The scientific analogy given is the key idea because from in followed
the need for absolute objectivity on the writer’s part and hewce the
overriding importance of his method.
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In Euglad, were there was never a Naturalist movement as such,
naturalism marks a complete contrast to that in France, There were o
groups of Naturalist weiters, nor were any manifesto published except or
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some scattered second-rate works by Gissing, George Moore, and
Morrisn. English writers- Asten, Drikens, Thackeray, the Brones,
Trollope, Gaskell, and george eliot Tremained true to their own tradition
of a realism peppered with human and keenly aware of human oddities.
There were only some occasional and passing glimpses of Naturalism in
England but in America its life-span was longer. It remained closely
linked to social and economic changes there more than in Europe.
Traiumph of industrial capitalism over traditional agrarian economy,
labour disputes, economic depression, striked erupting in violence,
political corruption, and exploitation of the labour were some of the
under laying factors responsible for the growth and sustenance of
Naturalism there. And, moreover, it owed more to local, indigenous,
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factors than to outside influences. Darwing, Marx, Comte, and spencer
of course left their impact on it but not with the same immediacy as in
Europe. Naturalism, therefore, presents a different aspect in America
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from the European Naturalist movement. With no clear groups united by
common aims and manifestos, it was much less of a movement there.
Naturalism in America was matter of successive waves of writers
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of which the first wave, spanning from the mid-1880s to 1900, included
Hamlin Garland, Stephen crave, and Frank Norris, and the second wave
after 1900, Thedore Dreiser, Hack London, Hohn Steinbeck, Sinclair
Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, and James T. Farrell. And whenever these
writhers had to comment on their art, it was rather in letters,
autobiographies, and casual marginalia than in common mavifestos. A
less organized or well-defined movement was it in America than in
France and Germony owing to the relative freedom of American
Naturalists from theory. Often Called a ‘new realism’ in the early
twentieth Century, it had not been developed primarily as a literary
concept either. It writing in unison with the age and that is the reason as
to why it appeared in somany diverse writers for such a long period of
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time-from the mid-1880s to the publications of steinbeck’s Grapes of
Warth in 1939. An associated fact woth the Naturalism in America is
that it was both less and more than Naturalism in Europe.
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Naturalism, as a movement, was most complex aud videly spread
in Germany especially during the later 1880s and the 1890s----------a
time intense activity in both theory and creative writing. It perhaps
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paralleled the Country’s upsurge after its unification in 1871. A number
of important volumes of literary theory were published by leivrreu,
Bolsche, and Arno Holz. Top-eavy with theorizing, German Naturalism
at the outset witnessed umpteen of manifestos and proclamations.
Haumpmann’s play Vor Sonnenaufgang came up as the dirst major
work of nature alism but not before 1889. The saller Naturalist group
that existed in munich centred on Michael Georg Conrad and wrote of
Zola, where as the Berliners’ group that included Holz, Hauptmann, and
Hermann Sundermann Concentrated on drama. But in so far as the
Naturalistic impulse is concerred, ot come from abroad. Its foreign
connexion has been testified by the frequent citations of Tolstoy and
Ibsen who served them as their influential models. Dostoevesky and
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strindberg too were equally influential in shaping the spirit of
Naturalism in Germany But, on account of being intense, violent and
extreme, Naturalism in Germany proved to be a short-lived
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phenomenon. Most of the leading German Naturalists including Holz
and Hauptann broke away from the movement none the less, Naturalism
remained vitally influential in the making and shaping of German
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literature.
Naturalism: Creative Works
Emile Zola has defined the Naturalist novel as one that ‘analyses
with minutes of detail in which nothing is lost’ (Le Naturalism au
theatre,p.149). And as per the Naturalist theory, the author of a
Naturalist novel would be bound to present with maximum objectivity of
the scientist the new view of man as creature determined by his heredity,
milieu and the pressure of the moment. And being interdependent, its
matter and manner are both to be drawn from the sciences. Slum life,
alcoholism and sexual depravity are some of the subjects that find
depiction in a Naturalist novel. The tag of Naturalism is to be togged to
the novel only when its author has given treatment to his subject with the
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objectivity of the analytical scientist. It may be said that Zola’s
conception of the naturalist novel’s ‘analysis with munuteness of detail’
and ‘in which nothing is lost’ is of the utmost importance. A Naturalist
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novel may also be defined as one which compines the realism of the
great European writers-------- Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balazac, Stendhal,
Flaubrent, Dickens, George Eliot, Mres Gaskell----and the scientific
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innovations of Darwin and Naturalistic philosophy if Taine.
Fictional works in Naturalistic mode have ranged from those of
enduring literary merit to the ones of cheap sensationalism. Zola’s
Therese Raquin (1867) stands its ground as the prototype of the
Naturalist novel. It narrates the tale of adultery between Therese and
Laurent, their well planned murder of Camille, Therse’s husband, and
their ensuing remorse that leads to their eventual suicide. Zola has
presented the duo- Therese and Laurent-not as thoughtful and
constitution determines their behavior, their action and reactions. Add to
that is the use of medical phraseology that supports the scientific
observation of the glaciological and emotional changes Therese and
Laurent undergo on the manner of a ‘Chemical reaction in a test-tube
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without either moral judgement or emotional sensitivity’:
“ the changes sometimes in certain organisms
As the result of specific circumstances ….
Start from the body, soon extend to the mind,
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to the entive individual”.
(Livre de Poche edition, Paris, 1968,p.159)
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And, moreover, the stifling environment of the’ dark, musty shop’ where
Therese is cooped up with her domineering mother-in-low is yet another
factor concomitant with the Naturalistic design of the novel.
Zola’s has Rougon-Macquart series of twenty novels, connected to
each other and written between 1871-93, trace the natural and social
history of the two branches of a large family of Rougons and Macquasts
throujg five generations. In the caurse of tracing the heredity factor of
the family, these novel recount a series of mental and physical diseases
of its members as well as their professional and occupational
engagements—agriculture, low, mining, medicine banking, prostitution,
the army, retail trade, markets, art, etc. What we are acutely conscious of
in Les Rougon-Macquant series of novels is both the effect of the milieu
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on the individual and the contemporary social climate of France. As a
human document, these novels have documented professional or
occupational field with astonishing ingenuity. They may be said to be
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the outstanding achievement of Naturalism from both-physicological
and objective-viewpoints. They reveal certain common features of the
Naturalist novel regarding its form, subject matter, and method.
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In so far as the form of a Naturalist novel is concerned, it is not
experimental in the sense of Zola’s misleading phrase- ‘reman
experimental’. However dull in its narrative technique, a Naturalistic
novel is staraight forward, departing rarely from the nineteenth centuary
convention of realistic description and centering, in its experiment in the
scientific laboratory. There is nothing unusual about a Naturalist novel’s
concentration in content to the reglect of form and style. Aiming for
truth, not artistry, it offers a ‘slive-of-life’ (accurate transcription of a
segment of real life’, not a structured artifice. And it is for this very
reason that a true Naturalist novel prefers the amorphons form and is the
most flexible of literary genres.
In order to maintain the highest degree of objectivity, the German
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Naturalists, i.e. Holz and Schlaf in Papa Hamlet (1889), entailed
Naturalistic narrative’s affinity with the dialogne. As one of the most
remarkable products of the Naturalistic movement, Papa Hamlet is more
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close than Therese Raquin to satisfying the theoretical demands of
Naturalism.
Acutely conscious of the misery in the slums around the factories
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and inspired by the socialist element of moral indignation, the
Naturalists endevomed to protary the working classes in their works.
They chose povierty, squalor, and deprivation for their subject matter.
Zola’s L’Assommoir, Germinal and La Terre, Crane’s Maggie and girt
of the Streets (1893), Gissing’s The Nether Workd (1889), Maugham’s
Liza of Lambeth (1897), Steinbeck’s Grapes of Warth and Tortilla Flat
(1936), Holz abd schlaf’s Papa Hamlet, Morrison’s Achild of the Jago
(1896), and Verga’s Vita dei Campi (1881) have outstanding Naturalistic
narratives.
The Naturalists are heedless of class and, therefore, all men are
fundamentally alike for them. Their whole philosophy of physiological,
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scientific and mechanistic view of human life dictated them to portray
the ordinary man ruled by his heredity, milieu and the pressures of the
moment. There is for his man no freedom of choice and responsibility
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for his actions. He is determined by forces that are beyond his control.
The Naturalists stripped off man’s heroic qualities and portrayed him
pessimistically in all his irrationality.
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The Naturalists relied on the total objectivity of an anatomist and
chose their subjects from contemporary scenic reserves. They collected
‘documentation’ with utmost care and depicted milieu in scrupulous
detail overloading, at times, their novels with technical matterknowledge of Mining, Farming, stock-exchange, printing, pottery
manufacturing, wet-nursing, pick-pocketing, cotton, picking, etc. They
suffered, however, from the discrepancy between their theory and
practice and almost all the in novels cited above contain the
characteristics that reach beyond the confines of Naturalism. A good
Naturalist novel, none the less, weds science and art and offers a
rewarding, though at times tense, reading.
Naturalism And JP Donleavy:
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A putative off shoot of Naturalism James Patrick Donleavy was a
second generation American born of Iris immigrant parents in Brooklyn
and brought up in Bronx, New York City On 23 April, 1926. He
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received his early education at various schools in the USA and was
enrolled in the service of the US Navy during the World War II.
Immediately after the War, he quit his Navy job and migrated in 1946 to
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the Eurerald Island (Ireland) and studied at Trinity College, Dublin,
during the years 1946-49. His Irish Citizenship, under process since
1967, was finally granted to him of the age of forty-there in 1969. Jaking
advantage of Ireland’s tax exemption for artists and writers, he began his
writing career with the publication The Ginger Man (1955), one of the
modern library hundred best novels His excellence as a writers of prose
fiction was readily acknowledged by the time Magazine’s fallowing
Critical acclaim:
“In the person of The Ginger Man, Sebastian
Dangerfield, Donleavy Created one of the most
Outrageous scoundrels in contemporary fiction of
Whoring, boozing young wastrel who sponges
Off his friends and beats his wife and girl
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friends. Donleavy then turns the moral universe
on its head by making the reader love Dangerfield
for his killer instinct, flamboyant charm, wit,
flashing generosity-and above all for his
wild, pierce, two-hundred grab for every precious second of
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life.
No one who encountered Sebastian Dangerfield would ever forget
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him. Influenced by Joyce, Donleavy presented in The Ginger man a
bawdy- obscene, erotic and humorous- account of its protagonist
Sebastian Dangerfield’s adventures as Law student in Dublin. Six years
later in 1961, Donleavy experimented with its dramatic adaptations—
What They Did in Dublin with The Gingerman and The Gingerman. And
after that, there was no stoping the pen for this creative writer of prose
fiction. One after another he produced a spate of works—A Singular
Man (1963), Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule (Stories and Sketches)
in 1964, A Singular Man (play) in 1965, The Saddest Summer of
Samuels (Novella) in 1966, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthzar B (1968),
The Onion Eaters (1971), A Fairy Tale of New York (1973), The
Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman (1977), Shultz (1979),
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Leila(1983), Del Alfonce Tennis (1984), Are You Listening Rabbi Low
(1987), The Lady who liked clean Rest Room (1995), and Wrong
Information is Being Given out at Princeton (1988).He married valerie
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Heron n 1969. His second marriage to Wilson Price in 1970 also ended
up in divirce in 1989. Presently, he lives at Lovington Park near the
town of Mullingar in the Irish Midlands.
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Though appraised variously by critics and reviewers as a lack
Humorist, an Absurdist Angry Young Man, or as a Beatnik, and
associated at times with kitchen ink Artists, who depicted in their
writings the sordid reality of the world around them, and slice of life
novelists who transcribed a segment of real life into their works,
Donleavy stands his creative ground fast as a protégé of Euro-American
movement of Naturalism branched off and spread to different lands of
Europe as well as across the Atlantic to America where it was a matter
of successive wave of writers. The case of Donleavy offers a reverse
analogy. Though he was born and groomed in the USA, his genetic root
lay deep in the Ireland of Europe to which he finally got back. He was
born at a time when the second generation of American naturalists—
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Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Upton
Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, and James T.Farrell was making rapid
strides in Creative productions. Through the best works of the American
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Naturalist of the first generation, especially of Frank Norris (18701902), are informed by the influence of Zola’s Naturalism, American
naturalism owed more to local and native factors than to outside
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influences. It also entailed the view of man in society and a style of
writing which was in consonance with the age. It appeared in diverse
writers and over a ling period of time in the USA. It needs to be stated
here that among the American Naturalists of the second generation,
Sherwood Anderson had mad his name as a leading Naturalistic writer
with his third book Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Steinbeck with the
Grapes of Wrath (1939).
Fictional works of Donleavy are practically, if not theoretically, in
continuation with the Euro-American tradition of Naturalism. His
novels, essentially self-contained, explore the lower nature of his male
and female characters:
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“Gils amidst this forest of definitive
degeneracy let us fan the appetites and
incite the mind with Black under things.”
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (p.424)
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And, Sobered by sadness:
“All Beef’s beatitudes. Blessed are they
who were God’s garters and sip champagne
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from the cupped hands of naked women for
they will keep their pricks and palates young.”
(Ibid., p, 426)
Almost all of his protagonists Sebastian, Dangerfield Geirge Smith
Bathazax B debauched. They indulge unrestrainedly in sensual and
sexual pleasures of life. And this trait of theirs is in keeping with the
Naturalistic Characters.
Though Donleavy, like Zola, has had no scientific or experimental
programs for his novels, he has portrayed, of course like him, the folly
and degradation of man with loathing and bitterness. As is to be found in
the case of Naturalistic works, human element is predominant in the
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works of Donleavy and freedom of the human sprit duly recognized. His
fictional tales are the tales of the futility of life and folly of human
characters.
True
to
the
Naturalistic
portrayal
characters,
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protagonists—Dangerfield, George Smith, Balthazar B—too are unable
to control their fate. They appear to have no choice and freedom of will.
And if we admit Walcutt’s dictum that American Naturalistic novel is
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‘stretched in a perilous tension between man’s freedom and his fated
impotence’ (p.10), then Donleavy’s novels are admittedly Naturalistic.
And, moreover, the Naturalistic impulse of ‘acquisitiveness’ in also
present in some of his characters Naturalism survives, like
expressionism, as an exciting and illuminating element, rather than as a
method employed, in the works of Donleavy. However his works are
objective, pessimistic, sensational, and mindless. These are some of the
qualifiers that have usually been tagged to the Naturalistic productions.
And besides these, the major themes of determinism, survival, violence,
and taboo also feature in the formal framework of slice-of-life, stream of
consciousness, and chronicle of despair novels of Donleavy. They
conform to the documentary, satiric, impressionistic, and sensational
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styles of Naturalistic writings as well. They expose, in an unscrupulous
manner, the defects of the contemporary society of Europe and America
and present a degenerate value of social history. Influence of the
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material and economic forces and of the social environment on the
behavior of Donleavy’s characters is quite aciculate as is the
determining effects of physical and hereditary factors in informing their
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individual temperament.
Naturalistic works possess or ought to possess the following
characteristics as classified by V.L. Parrington in his book The
Beginnings of Critical Realism in America (1865-1920):
1- An objective and unbiased presentation of the subjected and the
material related therewith.
2- Frankness of description which, rejecting the reticence of the
preceding (Victorian) age, makes for the writers insight into the
depiction of the basic instincts and impulses like fear, hunger, sex
that have their ineluctable bearing on human characters.
3- An amoral attitude towards material: The writer must avoid being
Judgmental. He ought not to pass moral comments or take partisan
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stand or view on ethical counts. It is only then that he would be
able to determine actions and reactions of his characters under the
given situations and circumstances as well as the influences of
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heredity and environment.
4- The forms of life presented in Naturalistic works are of two kinds
Accordingly, life is either a trap or it is mean. Of necessity the
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pressure to this effects is innate. It must come out either from
within the character himself-that is from his heredity-or from his
circumstances he is compelled to live in-that his from his milieu.
The end-result of the either from of life is excruciatingly
pessimistic, or rather tragic.
5- A bias in the selection of characters: The Naturalistic characters
are of a marked physique and of low intellectual quality. They
usually are persons of strong droves, or are morons like Zola’s
Nana. They are also neurotic, governed by moods and
temperament and driven by the forces that beyond their
comprehension and control. Animalistic impulses of human
characters are likely to be emphasized as they are the very index to
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how home sapiens turns into homo Zoon.
There is hardly to be found a single Naturalistic novel that claims
to have displayed of displaying all the characteristics catalogued by
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Parrington. But considered together, they define and decide the drift and
direction of Naturalism.
The purport of the present study is to trace the naturalistic
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characteristics under the major presuppositions cited above in five of the
select, fictional works of J.P. Donleavy:
1: The Ginger Man (1955)
2: A Singular Man (1961)
3: A Saddest Summer of Samuel S (1966)
4: The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1968)
5: A Fairy Tale of New York (1973)
Works Cited:
1. Holbach, P.H.d’, in 1971. editors. Lilian R. Furst and Peter N.
Skrine. Naturalism. London: Methuen & Co Ltd
2. Furst, Lilian R. and Skrine Peter N. 1971. Naturalism. London:
Methuen & Co Ltd . p.4.
p.95.
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3. Sauvgeot, David A. 1889. Le realisme et le natrualisme. Paris.
4. Beuchat, C. 1949. Histoire du naturalism francaise. Paris. i,
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pp.21-32.
5. Levin, H. 1966. The Gates of Horn. Oxford. P.68.
6. Wellek, R. 1963. Concepts of Criticism. New Haven & London.
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P.224.
7. Beuchat, C. op.Cit., i, p.11.
8. Brunetiere, F. Le Roman naturaliste quoted in Lilian R. Furst and
Peter N. Skrine. Naturalism. London: Methuen & Co Ltd. p.6.
9. Becker, George J. 1963. editor. Documents of Modern Literary
Realism. Princeton University Press. p.3.
10. Levin, H. op.cit., pp.64-65.
11.Hurret, J. 1891. Enquete sur l’evolution litteraire. Paris. p.189.
12. Bolsche, W. reprinted in Ruprecht, Eerich. 1880-1892. editor.
Literarische Manifeste des deutschen Naturalismus. 1962.
Stuttgart: Metzler.
13. Chase, R. 1957. The American Novel and its Tradition. London.
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p.199.
14.Cowley, M. ‘A Natural History in American Naturalism’ in
Becker, George J. 1963. editor. Documents of Modern Literary
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Realism. Princeton University Press. p.499.
15.Comte, Auguste. 1864. Course de Philosophie positive. 2nd
edition. Paris. i, p.16.
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16. Taine, Hippolyte . 1863. Histoire de la literature anglaise. Paris:
Hachette. Vol. I, p. iii-xlix.
17.McDowall, A. 1918. Realism. London. pp. 152-3.
18. Histoire de la literature anglaise. Paris. i, p. xlvi.
19.Zola, Emile. 1881. Le Naturalisme au theatre. Paris: Charpentier.
p. 149.
20. Zola, Emile. 1867. Therese Raquin. 1968. Livre de Poche edition.
Paris. p. 159.
21.Zola, Emile. 1880. Le Roman experimental. Paris: Charpentier.
22. Walcutt, Charles C. 1974. editor. Seven Novelists in the American
Naturalist Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
p. 10.
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23. Parrington, V.L. 1958. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in
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America (1860-1920). New York: Harcourt Brace World Inc.