Realism

The term “Realism” entered literary-critical jargon in the nineteenth century and was from the start associated with the then increasingly prominent genre of the novel. Writing in the realist mode would offer a representative version of a reality that lies outside of the text, characterized by an explicit truth claim. Literary realism never was merely an issue of style. There are political repercussions to any representation of extratextual realities, especially when these pertain to the ordering of society. Views of reality may clash, and the democratic power to offer one’s own representation has ever been at least partially withheld from authors not belonging to culturally dominant groups. Despite the early associations of literary realism with social critique, in the twentieth century, scholars working on women’s literature came to view the realist mode with suspicion because it was thought to be complicit with the political status quo. That dismissive view has in the past few decades been revised by influential feminist commentators, who have noted that Romantic realist writing introduced female readers to empowering views otherwise restricted to genres that they were discouraged from reading, and that it allowed women authors to participate surreptitiously in the major debates of their time.