I. Brief Explanation of Naturalism.

As a literary movement, naturalism grew out of 19th century realism，and it is an extreme form of realism. It wanted to tell the whole truth about life and to show the reality of that time faithfully. The naturalist writers used scientific method to test the mental and social world of man. They saw the everyday life of the common people against the background of constant historical movement. This greatly affected the traditions of novel, drama, and to some degree, lyric poetry.    

Naturalism developed best in America. At first it was a response to a darkening social situation. Jack London (1876-1916) wrote on the bitter futility of life in nature as in The Call of the Wild; Hamilin Garland (1860-1900) told about the hard life on the farm; Stephan Crane (1871-1900) write about the useless struggle of life in the city. In the second period, naturalists put a sociological emphasis on heredity and environment. Dreiser’s Sister Carrie(1901) set the interrelationship of sexual and economic desires as controlling factors in the lives of human beings in his fictions.

The American naturalists also recognized the political implications of economic forces. Frank Norris(1870-1902) wrote the two volumes of his projected trilogy The Epic of Wheat (1901, 1903), and Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle(1906), King Coal (1917), and Oil (1927). Their works influenced the works of the next generation--- Dos Passos wrote a trilogy: U.S.A.(1930-1936), and Erskine Caldwell wrote Tobacco Road (1932).

II. Historical, Social and Theoretical Background.

The term of naturalism was introduced to the United States by Frank Norris at the end of the 1880s. The United States were changing into “Modern America” in the economic, social and cultural aspects at that time. Industrialism, science and the new philosophy of life based upon science influenced the change of the country. Industrialism made some people rich, but at the same time created an industrial working class. These workers' life was decided by the external forces beyond their control. There appeared a lot of slums. The  conditions in the slums became worse and worse. The city poor lived a life of insecurity, suffering and violence. Westward expansion continued to push the frontier nearer the Pacific coast. But the settlers found themselves controlled by the cruel forces as railroad companies. These forces charged heavy rates and drove farmers to bankruptcy.
  

The deterministic philosophical theories of the 19th century dominated both natural and social sciences. Charles Darwin (1890-1882), T.H. Huxley (1825-1895), and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) made a revolution in the field of science through their writings. In The Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man(1871) , Darwin wrote that man had evolved from lower forms of life over a long period of time. Humans were special, not because God had created them in His image. It was because humans had successfully fitted to the changing environmental conditions and had passed on their survival-making characteristics by gene to their next generations. The American naturalists accepted the more negative meaning of this theory. They used it to explain the acts of those characters in literary works. The characters were described as more or less complex combinations of inherited features. Their habits were decided by social and economic forces.

The American naturalists followed the French novelist and theorist Emile Zola’s call. Zola held that the literary artist “must operate with characters, passions, human and social data as the chemist and the physicist work on inert bodies, as the physiologist works on living bodies.” The American naturalists chose their subjects from the lower ranks of society, and wrote about hard and poor life of the victims of society and nature. One of the most familiar themes in American naturalism is the theme of human “bestiality,” especially as an explanation of sexual desire.

III. Major features of naturalism.

Naturalism has the following major features in thought and technique:
1. Human is controlled by laws of heredity and environment. And since they are controlled, they lack freedom of their own will. The force of nature is greater than that of man. Any human desire to create greatness will be crushed. Therefore, naturalistic fiction has no evidence of effective choice, or free will, or autonomous action.

2. The universe is indifferent and hostile to human desires. Life is meaningless and is only a struggle for survival. Therefore, naturalistic novels reflect the struggle of man to adapt to environment. The Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest becomes the natural concerns of naturalistic fiction and drama.

3. The naturalists are different from the realists. Though the naturalists write about real life, they do not look at the average.  They look at the violent, unpleasant and ugly sides of life. Instead of reflecting the middle-class life, they write about the life of failure, poverty and even crime. They think that the true reality is not found in the smiling aspects of middle-class life. The reality is found when the forces of Nature are most powerful in checking human desires, in keeping humans from realizing their dreams.

4.There are less happy ending in the naturalistic fictions than in the realistic ones. Unlike the realist writers, the naturalist writers try to avoid creating the typical character in the typical circumstances. The tone of Naturalistic writings is more ironic and pessimistic and less sympathetic and  serious  than realistic writings.

5.The naturalist writers report the life of the helpless people truthfully and objectively. They write their novels with a passion for scientific accuracy. There are a lot of factual details in their works. They paint life as it is lived in the slums, and are blamed of telling just the ugly side of it.

VI. Contributions and limits of naturalism.

Naturalism helps modern literature come to maturity. Naturalists made a lot of new themes and materials easy to get. They encouraged writers to choose and treat subjects in a wider field. They made a continual favor toward biological evolution. Naturalism has bravely battled romance by writing about the daily life actually and by replacing facile idealizing with “a slice of life".Their works are unsophisticated in language.

But naturalism has defects. Naturalist writers rely too often on literal fact and precisely documented circumstance. Their material is often so flat and external as to hold back the search for value and meaning. This greatly limits the variety of creative means at the disposal of the artist.

Now the concept of reality with which 19th century science operated is no longer in use. Human personality and experience which was seen in terms of the broadly typical can not answer the perplexity of postmodern man. Like many other styles before and after it, naturalism can only be viewed as one of several powerful conventions which have left their mark on contemporary literature.