CHAPTER III THEORY ON SOCIAL REALISM Literature has thousands of threads which can weave the beautiful piece of art. Each thread has its own importance in the creative work. In the same way, there are different narrative techniques for the narration of literature. Among the narrative techniques, Realism, in literature, is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one century or group of writers, it is most often associated with the literary movement in 19 th century France, especially with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. George Eliot introduced realism into England, and William Dean Howells introduced it into the United States. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factors and environment is the integral element in the dramatic complications in literature, an approach that proceeds from an analysis of reality in terms of natural forces. Realism, a style of writing gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life. Literature emerges out of life and records dreams and ideas, hopes and aspirations, failures and disappointments, motives and passions, and experiences and observations. Over the years, literature has reflected the prevailing social issues in many eminent works of literature under the shadow of realism. In
Realism, social reality is one aspect of the picture but it cannot be isolated as though it were an entity by itself. It cannot be taken out of the context of the general cultural pattern of a period. Even there have been honest attempts to recreate incidents from great literatures of the past ages. They convey truth, the truth of emotion, which is the ultimate of realism. This aspect of realism is lacking in the works of some of the writers. Realism should be truthful and honest picture of society. It should be true attempt to focus on reality with the concern to make it superior world. Realism in literature is the theory or practice of fidelity to nature, or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization of everyday life. The 18 th century works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett are among the earliest examples of realism in English literature. It was consciously adopted as an aesthetic programme in France in the mid 19 th century, when interest arose in recording previously ignored aspects of contemporary life and society. The realist emphasis on detachment and objectivity, along with lucid but restrained social criticism, became integral to the novel in the late 19 th century. The word has also been used critically to denote excessive minuteness of detail or preoccupation with trivial, sordid, or squalid subjects. The 20 eth century, prevailing models of literary criticism drew a line between realist and anti-realist literature, placing realist works on one side of the line and fantastic works on the opposite side. Despite this
inherent questioning of the boundaries and construction of reality, the international literary scene has been largely uniform in its placement of magical realism in the anti-realist category, thereby opposing it to realist fiction. Novel is fiction. Fiction and realism seem like opposites. It is not easy to separate them in a novel. However, novelists mix fiction with realism to provide delight and an insight into the facts at the same time; they tend to be fictionally realistic. New Standard Encyclopedia defines realism as a representation of objects and conditions in the way they appear to the senses as opposed to the ideal and fanciful. 1 The novel is a picture of real life, manners and the time in which it is written. Novel gives a familiar relation of such things as they pass every day before our eyes. The major tradition of European fiction in the 19 th century is a tradition of realism. Most of the novels are realistic. Victorian novel is characterized by realism that the novel by its very definition is a realistic prose fiction, complete in itself and of a certain length wherein the word realistic is meant to indicate relevant to real life as opposed to Romantic. But there was a growing dissatisfaction among the novelists to stick to realism alone. Therefore they have explored new fictional modes which are discussed earlier as different genres. The same thing influenced Indian novels. The novelists like K.S.Venkatramani, Mulk
Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan changed the condition and adopted realism with social insight in their novels. It is the social middle class which provided the most obvious context for the new Indian Writing in English. That is why Ranga Rao s Fowl Filcher (1987) is able to communicate a vivid sense of rural and provincial life. But Ranga Rao still acknowledges that the nation itself has moved from the village centrism of the Gandhian era to the city centrism of the post-nehru period. 2 As it is earlier said, Indian novel is strongly marked by consciousness of the period in which it is set. Indian novel shows a unique time consciousness. The bulk of Indian English fiction since its birth has marked time with the period it chose to depict rather in an ostentatious way. Tagore s Home and the World would not have been possible without an awareness of the terrorist movement in Bengal during the First World War years. There is change in the scenario after independence; the novelists crave to depict the life of people with background. They found that the personal life of a man tends to be formulated by fixed patterns, loosely described as customs which are peculiar to particular castes. The novelists tended to stress the peculiarities of human life to bring home the difference as well as aliveness of life. They treated the themes like poverty, starvation, famine, hunger, caste system, women s position in society and people s economic condition.
Realism in art and literature is an endeavor to portray life as it is. It shows life with reality, omitting nothing that is ugly or painful, and idealizing nothing. To the realists, the writer s most important function is to describe as truthfully as possible what is observed though the senses. Realism began as a recognizable movement in art in the 18 th century. By the mid 19 th century, it was a principal art form. In past, realism has been an upheaval against classicism and romanticism - artistic movements characterized by works that idealize life. Classicism shows life as being more rational and orderly than it really is; while Romanticism shows life as being more emotionally exciting and satisfying that it normally is. While it was an attempt through realism to present life as it is. This life as it is is what realism is. True realism depicts man and society as complete entities instead of showing merely one or the other of their aspects. It is not just an echo but the real sound of an individual or society or joint voice of their being. Thus, it is very much true what Mulk Raj Anand, a great realist in fiction accepts that the novelist must confront the total reality, including its sordidness, if one was to survive in the world of tragic contrasts between the exalted and noble vision of the blind bard Milton to encompass the eyes dimmed with tears of the many mute Miltons. Among the Indian English novelists, Mulk Raj Anand is the best example of writers who dealt with the themes of untouchability, economic inequality and social injustice. Raja Rao, Manohar Malgaonkar, R.K.Narayan, K.Nagaraj and
many other novelists depicted social life in their novels. Their novels present a convincing picture of life and creat an awareness of the basic values of life. There was a strain of social existence in the novels of the earlier novelists. Social Realism is not a new concept in Indian fiction. A realistic novel is more or less not for the sake of art, but for the sake of life of an individual or a mass presented by a common character as one finds in Dickens Hard Times or Mulk Raj Anand s Untouchable, which make reality more real for the sake of life. Quite a few of the Indian English novelists try to give a graphic picture of the contemporary rural or urban scene. They have, to some extent, been instrumental in adding another dimension to the awareness and insight. In a realistic novel one can easily transfer one s own identity to some of the characters and derive vicarious pleasure out of this identification. While continuing to live one s own life one shares to the full the experiences of the characters in the novel - thus enriching one s own personality. With the finding for the realism or realistic aspects of Anand, it is also very important to look into the contemporary social, political, religious, traditional, cultural and economical issues in India. As it is a representation of the real social life of India, it is counted as a social document painted with rustic brush and dipped into the colour of social and religious layers.
Social Realism developed as a reaction against idealism and the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. The consequences of the industrial revolution became an apparatus; urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes with a new sense of social consciousness and the social realists pledged to fight the beautiful art, any style which appeared to the eye or emotions. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. They recorded what they saw, as it is existed, in a dispassionate manner. Social is an omnibus word covering all aspects of human activity that display an awareness of others. Simply speaking Social Realism is an extraordinary reach of understanding of social life. Still better, it is an intellectual power of probing into the nature and function of society, its various institutions and traditions, and their functioning. It is an intellectual penetration of social process. Social Realism involves individual, social and cultural changes in all the spheres of life with their intricacies, and nuances: facts relating to family, the class, the marriage, the school, the politics, the inter-relation, economy, morality, religion, and educational standards. It relates more to social readjustments and social maladjustments such as unemployment, youth unrest, industrial indiscipline, crime, war and their causes and consequences.
Social Realism is a keen depiction of social condition. It implies a moral awareness also. Social insight is a heightened consciousness or comprehensive understanding of the social and cultural milieu - a sense of social fact. Socially conscious refers to an awareness inspired by a social ideology. It implies extreme social involvement and commitment to the socialist programme. Social Realism includes social consciousness, social sense and experience and social insight. It is an all embracing term, indicating sound and systematic grasp of the socio-political web, all rolled into one. Social Realism unravels the layer within layers of the social fabric through fictional medium. By choosing an appropriate story, characters, language and fictional technique, the novelist aims to present the multifarious aspects of society and its complex functioning. Social Realism is not just realism represented in novels. It is, on the other hand, the novelist s way of dealing with realism or sometimes dealing with social facts and events of society for his novel s sake. In the novelists hands it remains a technique by which truth is represented in an artistic way. There is difference between social realism and socialist realism. The word realist characterizes that artist whose temperamental preoccupation is with revelation of the actual spirit of life, character and thought with a view to enlighten him and others. The main difference between social realism and socialist realism is between is and should be. Social Realism means the depiction in literature of
social reality as it is; there should be a point one to one correspondence between the society depicted in literature and the real actual society. Socialist Realism means the depiction of the social reality not as it is but as it should be, idealized. Socialist Realism demanded that all art must depict some aspect of man s struggle toward socialist progress for a better life. It stressed the need for the creative artist to serve the proletariat by being realistic, optimistic and heroic. The doctrine considered all forms of experimentalism as degenerate and pessimistic. Socialist Realism had its roots in neoclassicism and the traditions of realism in Russian literature of the 19 th century that described the life of simple people. The term Social Realism describes both a specific stylistic approach and an overall attitude towards subject matter. Its primary goal is not to amuse but to convince the observer of the evils. It aims at the unadorned depiction of the contemporary social life in its various aspects. Society is a fluid entity. Its truthful, historically concrete representation with revolutionary development becomes the real depiction of social panorama. The novels selected for the study aim at probing the social milieu systematically through the fictional medium, using appropriate story, characters and fictional technique. These novels reveal that the writers of each novel evince social involvement in a measure proportionate to the degree of their artistic and emotional involvement with society.
Notes 1 2 New Standard Encyclopedia (Chicago: 1980) 89. H.Trivedi, The St. Stephen s Factor, Indian Literature Sept. - Oct. 1991: 108.