Key Features and Stages of Spanish Literary Realism

Characteristics of Realism

Realism is distinguished by the following features, except that it cared more for the inner world:

• Interest in reality: The author cannot be oblivious to the social changes that occur and attempts to portray the society of that time, their contradictions, and conflicts.
• Tendency to objectivity and verisimilitude: The picture of reality must be made by introducing environments, behaviors, and real dialogue, or at least credible ones. The author often makes use of observation as a creative procedure. In correspondence with that attitude, they use abundant descriptions and take care of dialogues, ensuring that each character is expressed according to their education and way of being.
• Omniscient Narrator: The presentation of objectivity does not prevent the author's voice from having a considerable weight in the story. The narrator has a global vision of the facts, knows the thoughts and behavior of all the characters, and intervenes with his own observations about the development of events.

Spanish Stages of Realism

• Prerealism: This stage begins in 1849 with "La Gaviota" by Fernán Caballero. It consists of a novel type of "costumbrismo" (manners), which provides an idealized vision of reality. Leading representatives of this current are Fernán Caballero (the pseudonym with which Cecilia Böhl de Faber signed her works) and Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, author of one of the best short novels of the 19th century, "The Three-Cornered Hat".
• Realism Proper: This begins with the publication in 1868 of "La Fontana de Oro" by Benito Pérez Galdós. The psychological portrait becomes the central subject of Realism. The most prominent authors are Juan Valera and Benito Pérez Galdós.
• Naturalism: This movement comes from the Realism that emerged in Spain in 1880, with "La Desheredada" by Benito Pérez Galdós, who understands that human beings are determined by the laws of inheritance. Naturalistic writers go beyond mere objective description of society and make a crude attempt to explain the causes of the degrading behavior of human beings. The principal writers include Benito Pérez Galdós, Leopoldo Alas "Clarín", and Emilia Pardo Bazán.