Realism is an artistic method in which painters and writers strive to portray reality truthfully, objectively, in its typical manifestations.
The main features that characterize realism are historicism, social analysis, the interaction of typical characters with typical circumstances, self-development of characters and self-movement of action, the desire to recreate the world as a difficult unity and contradictory wholeness. The same principles should be followed by the visual art of realism.
Hero of realism
One of the main features of each artistic method is the type of hero. Realism is a special relationship between a character and the world around him.
On the one hand, the hero of realism is a sovereign unique personality. This manifests the influence of humanism and the legacy of romanticism: attention is not paid to how good a person is, but to the fact that he is unique, this is a deep independent personality. Therefore, this character cannot be identical with the author or the reader. The man, as realism sees him, is not the writer's “second self,” like the romantics have, and not a complex of some traits, but someone fundamentally different. He does not fit into the author's worldview. The writer examines him. Therefore, often the hero in the plot does not behave as the author originally planned.
Living according to the logic of another person, he builds his fate.
On the other hand, this unique hero cannot be separated from multiple connections with other characters. They constitute unity. One hero can no longer be directly opposed to another, as in the literature of romanticism. Reality is portrayed both objectively and as an image of consciousness. Man in realism exists in reality and at the same time - in the field of his understanding of reality. For example, take the landscape outside the window that is given in the work. This is at the same time a picture from nature, and at the same time - a person’s attitude, a field of consciousness, and not pure reality. The same applies to things, space, and so on. The hero is inscribed in the world around him, in his context - cultural, social, political. Realism significantly complicates the image of man.
Author's position in the literature of realism
Artistic activity from the standpoint of realism is an informative activity, but aimed at the world of characters. Therefore, the writer becomes a historian of our time, reconstructing its inner side, as well as the hidden causes of events. In the literature of classicism or romanticism, the drama of the personality could be evaluated from the standpoint of its positivity, to see the confrontation between the “good” hero and the “bad” world around him. It was customary to describe a character who does not understand something in objective reality, but then gets some experience. In realism, the semantic whole of the work unites the world with the hero: the environment becomes the field of a new embodiment of those values that the character initially possesses. These values themselves are adjusted during the ups and downs. The author is outside the work, above him, but his task is to overcome his own subjectivity. The reader is only given a certain experience, which he cannot experience without reading a book.