The Real Thing By William Dean Howells

Part 1: Realism and Naturalism
1A: Realism
Realism was a separation from idealism. It was focused on typical events in life that people view as uninteresting. It portrayed things about characters that also apply to regular people. William Dean Howells said this about fiction: “Let fiction cease to lie about life; let it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know,” (pg. 1134).
A main trait of realism is how it portrays common situations and aspects of regular people. It specifically fit this time period because America was going through reform. Some of the stories from this time were about the war or its effects. Its purpose was to break away from idealism and regionalism. It connected
“They had accepted their failure, but they couldn’t accept their fate. They had bowed their heads, in bewilderment, to the perverse and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal; but they didn’t want to starve,” (pg. 1228). The artist knew that people had this preference, and he also had it himself. “Combined with this was another perversity – an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one. The defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure,” (pg. 1215).
Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace” is an example of this trait because it portrayed how some people who only lived in one place would want to go somewhere else until they get to that place and then end up wanting to return home. When she was asked about her possible engagement, Sally Carrol told her friends, “I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale,” (pg. 1824). After her time in the North and the Ice Palace, she “gave a long low cry. ‘Oh, I want to get out of here! I’m going back home. Take me home,’” (pg.