The Departure of Naturalism from Realism – Two sides of the Same Coin
Knowledge has long been divided into the arts or humanities and the natural sciences. In the modern era subjects, such as the social sciences were established and developed, aim to which fuse the strengths of the two branches of knowledge into a new way of thinking and interpreting the relationship between humans and between humans and the nature. In the 19th century, a group of novelists started an experimental literary movement which deviated from the mainstream at the time. Novelists such as Emile Zola started a revolutionary task by applying the methods of scientific hypothesizing and observing to the construction of the novel’s framework and character development, hoping thus to lift the plane of vision for novels up to a truer representation of the society. The naturalists, as Zole and his followers called themselves, distinguished themselves from the realists. Zola, considered father of Naturalism, constructed a theory that revolves around how he interprets his work and thinking based on Claude Bernard’s work “Introduction à La Médecine Expérimentale”. This essay argues that Naturalism should be defined as the result of an evolution from Realism, or a branch, rather than a separate ideological system and will be using Emile Zola’s “The Ladies’ Paradise” as an example to juxtapose the contrasting, but similar ideas and problems Naturalism and Realism are concerned with.
In Emile Zola’s own work, “The Experimental Novel”, he discloses the basic foundation of his thinking about Naturalism through a brief description of Bernard’s words. Whilst developing the methodology for constructing a naturalistic novel, Zola uses Bernard’s concept of experimenting as the basis of his own method. Zola quotes Bernard:
Experiment is but provoked observation. All experimental reasoning is based on doubt, for the experimentalist should have no preconceived idea, in the face of nature, and should always retain his liberty of thought. He simply accepts the phenomena which are produced. (Zola 1)
Zola’s focus is then put on the observation of how the environment acts as an agent and will thus preliminarily lead to the naturalistic way of extensive description of the environment. Of first three pages of the novel, one whole page is dedicated to the description of the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin as “they walked down” the streets (Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 5). The extensive description acts as a means for the audience to witness the effects that the environment has on the characters, where the continuous development of the setting are similar to a development of a character. The extensive description is also structured as sequential as a lab report would be. Zola tends to use listing as a way of describing the environment. For example, whilst describing Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin’s shops he lists out all the objects of the shops in such detail that it would seem as if it was a photograph: “they were attracted by a complicated arrangement: at the top, umbrellas, placed obliquely, seemed to form the roof of some rustic hut, beneath which, suspended from rods and displaying the rounded outline of calves, were silk stockings, some strewn with bunches of roses, others of every hue” (Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 5). Such extensive description of the environment in which the characters are placed, is often apparent in naturalistic novels. The function of this is to link the character development with the development of the environment. The connection between the character and the environment is amplified in naturalistic novels in comparison to realistic novels, because for Zola “literature has a social function” (Bell, 294) and ought to represent “things that concern people on a daily basis in their social and individual lives” (Bell, 294). Naturalists consider the environment in which the characters live a major element in the construction of the mindset of the characters, whereas this element is largely ignored in realistic novels.
Zola, referring to Bernard’s words, mentions the idea of the writer being an observer and an experimentalist. He quotes Bernard, saying that “The observer relates purely and simply the phenomena which he has under his eyes…He listens to nature and writes under its dictation...The phenomenon observed, an idea of hypothesis comes into his mind, reason intervenes, and the experimentalist comes forward to interpret the phenomenon.” (Zola, 2) The consequence of such notion being the foundation of a view, is that the view is basically biased towards the experimentalist’s hypothesis. In other words, the observer observes the phenomena that happens as objective as he could, whilst the experimentalist comes forth with a certain view point and tries to prove with reasoning that his view is a truthful representation. This becomes an important aspect of the Naturalistic novel writing progress as it densely affects the positivity the novelist looks at the story with. Whilst bring the idea of the observer-experimentalist mechanism to the novel, Zola suggests the follow:
Now, to return to the novel, we can easily see that the novelist is equally an observer and an experimentalist. The observer in him gives the facts as he has observed them…displays the solid earth on which his characters are to tread and the phenomena to develop. Then the experimentalist appears and introduces an experiments…sets his characters going in a certain story so as to show that the succession of facts will be such as the requirements of the determinism of the phenomena under examination call for (Zola, 2)
This process of examination of experimental results is repeated multiple times in the story. The most dominant setting, being the Ladies’ Paradise, is described extensively before the description of characters. The description of the environment then subsides until a predominant change in the characters’ internal mind. The description then reappears and describes how the environment changes along with the characters. This process of an observer displaying an environment and context, whilst the experimentalist setting a character in such context repeats throughout the story.
The foundation of Naturalism is also based heavily on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and hence the unsubtle hinge between naturalism and determinism. The external world of the characters determines the internal world of the characters and how the characters develop. In Zola’s own essay he states that “there is an absolute determinism in the existing conditions of natural phenomena” (Zola 1). This factor differs from realism which sought to be an accurate representation of the real world and social problems, whereas Naturalism due to its focus on the lower social classes and the intensive focus on the character’s daily environment creates the mentality that fate has total dominance over freewill. The focus also binds the novels just as the social hierarchy bounds the lower-class citizens. This binding, though more eminent in a naturalist novel, is present in both of the streams and though one focuses on lower social classes while the other focuses on middle class citizens, both show the lack of social mobility in the era’s social hierarchy. Richard Lehan describes naturalistic novels as a move towards a “Dystopia and the animalistic” (Pizer, 48) point of view. Lehan describes the idea of “such movement toward a more primitive self as destructive…Thus, while the naturalistic novel presumes the reality of evolution, it often works in terms of devolution” (Pizer, 48). Often times, luck is not on the protagonist’s side and a series of unfortunate events often the attacks main character relentlessly, in which the protagonist is led to his/her own demise without control.
The strong essence of determinism is then amplified by the motif of the imagery of a cage in which the characters are spiritually, and often also physically, imprisoned and tormented. The torment would often come in the form of mental torture rather than physical pain. In the case of this novel, the environment of the department store, the Ladies’ Paradise, acts as the physical cage. No matter how beautiful and glorious the outer rim looks, the spiritual content of the shop is rotten. The interpersonal relationships are all determined by sales records and jealousy. Denise is unable to cut her relationship with the shop, even though she was laid off for a few months when she stood up for her pride. She is required to return to the shop just so she can make ends meet. Another example would be of the Baudu family, as they are constantly “locked” physically in their “dark and empty” (Zole, The Ladies’ Paradise, 12). When Madame Baudu dies in chapter 13, a great passage was dedicated to describing the environment rather than her death”
On a bright, sunny afternoon in January Madem Baudu died…She was sitting in the middle of her bed, propped up by pillows. In her white face only her eyes were still alive; and, her head erect, she gazed fixedly through the little curtains on the windows at the Ladies’ Paradise opposite. Baudu, made ill himself by this obsession, by the despairing fixity of her gaze, would sometimes try to draw the big curtains. But, with an imploring gesture, she would stop him, determined to see it until her last breath. (Zole, The Ladies’ Paradise, 382-383)
The cage, as mentioned above, doesn’t necessarily have to be physical only and doesn’t necessarily have a physical lock, but a binding force the character is unable to live without, in this case money. This element is present in both streams of thinking yet in Naturalism, the emphasis of the cage is even more pessimistic where there is no breathing space for the characters to recover from the trauma that they receive from the torment.
The naturalistic focus on the environment and determinism also develops into a tendancy of reducing the element of human agency and free will to the minimum, a method named as the Mechanical Effect. For example, in Chapter 5 of The Ladies’ Paradise, Jean the brother of Denise asks for money from Denise for his own affairs, yet Denise is unable to refuse. Throughout the book, obstacles (or in a sense, requests) are thrown at Denise which she is rendered unable to refuse. It is also implied through the characters’ endings that acting up upon their fate would result in their own demise. The death of the Baudu family was touched upon lightly in the novel. There were no process of developing in their deaths. Their deaths are a great example of the Mechanic Effect, where their own wills are unable to prevent their tragic end. Uncle Baudu tried to compete with Mouret, the owner of the capitalist shop The Ladies’ Paradise, financially and failed, in which indirectly lead to his daughter’s death, which then leads to the deterioration of his wife’s mental health and thus her death. The chain reaction all happened due to Baudu’s determination to go against capitalism, a product of the developing environment of their shop. The idea of challenging their ever changing environment rather than going with it lead to their tragic downfall. This however, is not as present in the realistic novel as the interpersonal relationships are the medium for bringing out character development.
The Ladies’ Paradise, written long before the publication of Zola’s essay, can be argued as an evidence of the transition from Realism to Naturalism for Zola as traces such as the romantic ending and the blurring of class lines are evident in the plot of the novel. Naturalistic novels focus mainly on the lower classes as it is a more clear indication of the environment of the specific era. The distribution of lower classes peasants are of a much higher portion than the middle/high social class. The Ladies’ Paradise acts as an agent for the characters to become a relatively more socially mobile character in compared to normal Naturalistic novels. The setting of the story, being put into a large department store bridges the gap between the lower class workers and the higher social class customers. The lower class workers are then able to learn from the constant contact they have with the customers and thus generating a group of social mobile characters. This element is absent in normal naturalistic novels since it is not often for one to be able to climb up the social hierarchy in real life as it would require a sudden burst in property, be it land or money.
As mentioned above, Naturalism and Realism are closely related, not only because of the adjoining time line but also because of the similarities that they share. Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise is a clear example of the transition. Essences from both of the ideological systems are present whilst the naturalistic thinking are blossoming. The realistic essences are amplified and exaggerated in a naturalistic novel due to the experimental scientific methods that novelists such as Emile Zola applies to their novel writing. Zola states that “the moment that the result of the experiment manifests itself, the experimentalist finds himself face to face with a true observation which he has called forth, and which he must ascertain, as all observation, without any preconceived idea.” (Zola 2) The focus on which the naturalists put on the lower social class citizens are undeniably a major reason in which the “true observation” becomes much more pessimistic than realists. The linkage between the two is undeniably present with Naturalists basing their ideology on the environment rather than the interpersonal relationships as the agent of portraying the character development.
Works Cited:
Bell, Michael. The Cambridge Companion to European Novelists. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. Print.
Brians, Paul, Dr. "Realism and Naturalism." Realism and Naturalism. N.p., 13 Mar. 1998. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.
Pizer, Donald. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.
Zola, Émile, and Brian Nelson. The Ladies' Paradise. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Zola, Emile E. Charles. ""The Experimental Novel"" Documents of Modern Literary Realism (1893): 1-3. The Marxists. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. <https://www.marxists.org/archive/zola/1893/experimental-novel.htm>.
