Naturalism in Literature

Naturalism and realism was a literary movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s which focused on trying to recreate the real world in works of fiction. Many works from the period tried to reflect the attitudes and the psychology of their society through fictional characters. During this period, women were treated very poorly by male domination and were not allowed to have power outside of their homes. The cult of domesticity was the predominant idea of the day, forcing women to stay in the home and out of the public sphere. They were not allowed to hold positions of power or to attend higher education and if they chose to do so were considered unladylike and avoided by higher society. In both Ernest Hemingway's "Hills like White Elephants" and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" show how repressed women of the Victorian period were by...
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