Crane -- Jewett -- Chopin

Jacqueline Procter
Journal 30
March 28, 2008
Crane – Jewett -- Chopin

Quote - Crane: "Crane developed his powers as an observer of psychological and social reality." (954)

" Jewett: "In these works the careful documentary record of landscape, people, and dialect is described with understanding and sympathy." (520)

Chopin: What she said of Maupassant she might have said of herself: "Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes; and who in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw.” (529)

Summary: Their common core vision is their ability to speak the truth about the circumstances, of the people, of the times in which they lived.

Response: All three authors came from middle class backgrounds or at least they enjoy the privileges that the common woman/man doesn't have access to. In Crane's, Maggie Girl of the Street, he writes about the disenfranchised during industrialization and the poverty which ensues in urban cities -- He specifically sheds light on the unfortunate circumstances of a girl without the means to support herself and the fact that she is forced into prostitution as there is no other option for her. Jewett's, The White Heron, is also about industrialization and the consequences of a mass exodus from the family farms to urban areas. In this story, Sylvia and her grandmother are barely making ends meet and Sylvia is tempted to reveal the location of the heron, in order to make ten dollars, which would help buy food. In the end she doesn't profit at the Heron's expense and chooses nature instead of her own monetary gain. Sylvia had options, Maggie didn’t -- It appears there are actually more options/freedom in the country as opposed to life in an urban ghetto. If you have a cow, a few chickens and can plant a garden you don’t really need much money in order to survive, but in the city, daily survival is a struggle.
Chopin writes about the limitations of women, specifically women from middle class backgrounds, and technically her writing is classified as “Realism” because it focuses on the middle class and the realities of being a woman in that period, as opposed to Crane’s, Maggie A girl of the Streets, which is technically “Naturalism” because he is exposing the “extreme poverty,” which is actually a “reality” for those who live in the ghetto.
I like Howell’s definition best: “Realism is nothing
more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”