The Realist Period

            The Realist period started around 1840 and ended in 1914. With the Civil War and advancements in science, the Realist period started. This era was blunt and factual. Even though life sucked, you had to figure out a way to deal with it. It exposed the truth in society and the hardships. It was aggressive and relatable to the people’s lives who were living at the time. With an abundance of resources and many workers, the United States’ industrial factories expanded and the workers were not treated fairly.  It focused a lot on death, the low or middle class people, and immigrants. Some examples of books written during this period would be Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and O’ Pioneers! By Willa Cather. O’ Pioneers! Is about the pioneer men of the story and their relationship with the land they own. Although the land doesn’t always treat them right, in the sense that there’s droughts and bad weather, they are stuck with it. Poems that made an impact during this time would include Edwin Arlington Robinson’s collection of poems “The Town Down the River” and Matthew Arnold’s “Lines Written by a Death Bed”. A short story written during the Realist period is “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce.