“That Zola’s is not purely romantic as was Hugo’s, lies chiefly in the choice of milieu. These great terrible dramas no longer happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility, those who are in the forefront of the marching world, but among the lower – almost the lowest – classes; those who are falling by the roadway. This is not romanticism – this drama of the people working itself out in blood and ordure. …showed first 75 words of 1016 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1016 total…not exist a trace of the Romantic ideal; instead, the reader is presented with the “realistic” and “predetermined” reality of nineteenth-century capitalist America. Naturalism, as a philosophy and its literature, attempts to portray the world as it is, much like the 19th century realists. However, the Naturalist depicts an amoral world in which the chains of determinism bind man; this determinism is dictated by his heredity, his environment, and the natural forces of his society.