Realists, Naturalists, and Muckrakers:

1. Realists, Naturalists, and Muckrakers: Reality Bites

2. Determinism Determinism is the philosophical belief that events are shaped by forces beyond the control of human beings. Scientific Determinism , important to literature at the end of the nineteenth century, assigns control especially to heredity and environment, without seeking their origins further than science can trace. (The Harper Handbook of Literature)

3. Naturalism Naturalism was a literary movement of the late nineteenth century that yielded influence on the twentieth.  It was an extension of realism, a reaction against the restrictions inherent in the realistic emphasis on the ordinary, as naturalists insisted that the extraordinary is real, too. In place of the middle-class realities, the naturalists wrote about the fringes of society, the criminal, the fallen, the down-and-out, earning as one definition of their work the phrase sordid realism. Naturalism came largely from scientific Determinism.  Darwinism was especially important to the genre, as the naturalists perceived a person's fate as the product of blind external or biological forces (chiefly heredity and environment). But in the typical naturalistic novel, change played a large part as well.  (The Harper Handbook of Literature)

4. Realism At its basic level, realism was grounded in the faithful reporting of all facets of everyday American life. According to William Dean Howells, "Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." The reading public's preference for realism parallels the changes that were occurring at the end of the 19th and into the 20th century. For example, the modern scientific revolution advocated that truth and knowledge be based on empirical data. Reinforcing that notion, the industrial revolution proclaimed that a better civil society could be built upon machinery and factory labor. Given this atmosphere, several developments occurred around the same time: (1)The growth of investigative journalism; (2) the rise of muckrakers; and (3) the establishment of a new-found fascination with the camera as a means of capturing the realities of a single instant, unvarnished by sentimentality. 

5. Realistsvs. Naturalists in Fiction and Non-Fiction Realists • Mark Twain* • Upton Sinclair* • Paul Dunbar • Kate Chopin* • E.A. Robinson* • Edgar Lee Masters* • Henry James • Edith Wharton Naturalists • Jack London* • Frank Norris • Stephen Crane*

6. Social Causes of Change in Attitude • Immigration • Economic downturn • Industrialization • Harsh working conditions • Shift in population and occupation

7. ImmigrationFace of America

8. “Give us your poor” Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe began flooding into various American ports. Specifically, Catholic immigrants from Italy and the rest of the Mediterranean as well as Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland, and the rest of eastern Europe. What made this immigrants different from the northern Europeans who had emigrated to the United States before this?

9. The Irish Influx • Census figures show an Irish population of 8.2 million in 1841, 6.6 million a decade later, and only 4.7 million in 1891. • In 1849, almost 220,000 of the nearly 300,000 emigrants (73%) came to the U.S. • It is estimated that as many as 4.5 million Irish arrived in America between 1820 and 1930.

10. Who are the “muckrakers”and what does the term mean? • President Theodore Roosevelt used the term in a speech in 1906 • Although he disliked the pessimistic nature of the works, he also said…. • “There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful." • The origin of the term links to a character in John Bunyan’s morality tale, Pilgrim’s Progress (1648) • The idea is that this character is so fascinated with gossip and the worst parts of human nature that it is like raking through the “muck”—horse manure.

11. Fiction or Non-Fiction? • The muckrakers were both fiction and non-fiction writers. • In America, the largest number of muckrakers worked as journalists for newspapers or magazines. • However, there were several well-known crusading novelists who could be considered muckrakers.

12. Politics • Muckrakers tended to be progressive politically, wanting laws regulating labor, food supplies, medicine, health care, monopolies, etc. • Many muckrakers were either socialist or members of the early communist party

13. Journalists • Many muckrakers worked as free lance reporters, gathering stories and then selling the finished product to whichever magazine or newspaper wanted it • Others were on the staff of magazines like Harpers or papers like the New York Sun

14. Best-Known Muckraking Novel--The Jungle • Written by Upton Sinclair in 1906 • Lived among the workers and immigrants in Chicago in order to gather information • Was first published as a serial in a magazine, then as a novel

15. Fallout of The Jungle • Foreign sales of American meat fell by one-half. • The major meat packers lobbied the Federal government to pass legislation paying for additional inspection and certification of meat packaged in the United States. • Led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration.

16. Nellie Bly: “Girl Reporter” • Went around the world in fewer than 80 days in response to Jules Verne’s novel • Had herself committed to an insane asylum (with the help of a doctor working there) to expose conditions in the mental health industry • Quickly established herself as the premiere investigative reporter of her day

17. Jacob Riis • Also wrote journalistic pieces • Was a photographer as well • Took pictures of child laborers and people living in tenements

18. Other Muckrakers • Westbrook Pegler • Crime in labor unions • Bob Mahoney • Ten Days in a Madhouse • Samuel Hopkins Adams • Patent medicines • Medical fraud

19. Additional Muckrakers • Lincoln Steffens The Shame of the Cities—poverty and illness in the inner cities • Ida Tarbell The History of the Standard Oil Company