Frank Norris’s Definition of Naturalism

“Frank Norris’s Definition of Naturalism” by Donald Pizer, from Realism and Naturalism, 33-36.

Pizer’s brief piece could not be more illuminating for me. He provides a definition of naturalism which differs greatly from both Zola’s and Garland’s, both of which have provided me most of my thoughts so far. Zola’s definition is primarily philosophical: naturalism is the study of human temperaments in certain environments, foreclosing any intervention of will or free choice but allowing for the intervention of circumstances. Garland’s definition of naturalism (which he calls Veritism) is progressive and drawn from Veron’s impressionism: first literature attempts to meet a literary ideal, then it attempts to represent real life (realism), and finally it attempts to represent real life, not as it is, but as it is perceived by the author (impressionism/veritism/naturalism).

Startlingly, Norris, Zola’s chief student in the American context, has much more in common with Garland. Norris has a “dialectic” theory of naturalism (33). First, literature was realistic, representing the small things as they happen in life, and bound by normativity. Howells is the chief figure here.. Romanticism, as a response, was both interested in pushing beneath the surface of things, and interested in excessive or abnormal states. Norris chooses Hugo as the representative figure here (34).

According to Pizer, the synthesis is naturalism. Norris describes realism as having “accuracy” while romanticism has the much more valuable philosophical depth of “truth” (34-35). It is the milieu of romanticism that is not “accurate” – Hugo’s figures are larger than life, on a larger than life, stage. But there is a corrective: “[Zola’s] great, terrible dramas no longer happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility […] but among the lower – almost lowest – classes; those who have been thrust or wrenched from the ranks” (Norris quoted in Pizer, 35). Here is naturalism: a romantic understanding of truth, set in the realistic milieu of realismt or, in fact, possibly a sub-realistic milieu. This makes Norris a clear student of Zola, but not of his deterministic philosophy – just of his willingness to mix a philosophy with a lower-class milieu. Hugo, in fact, had just as much philosophical truth as Zola (35)

Strangely, Pizer closes by mentioning that this is what makes Norris declare that The Octopus is straight naturalism in the “style” of McTeague: “Although the first novel is consciously deterministic […] and the the second dramatizes a complex intermingling of free will and determinism, this contradiction is nonexistent with the philosophical vacuum of Norris’s definition” (36). This, however, ignores my concern about The Octopus: the milieu here is upper-class, and the central figures are quite wealthy and powerful men. How does Pizer render this compatible with Norris’s statement that naturalism is the concern with the lower or lowest classes?