"That Zola's is not purely romantic as was Hugo's, lies chiefly in the choice of milieu. These great terrible dramas no longer happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility, those who are in the forefront of the marching world, but among the lower – almost the lowest – classes; those who are falling by the roadway. This is not romanticism – this drama of the people working itself out in blood and ordure. It is not realism. It is a school by itself, unique, somber, powerful beyond words. It is naturalism"
             Frank Norris "Zola as a Romantic Writer"
             Human progression and the coming of the industrial age brought forth great social and economic change in the United States. A series of factors, including rapid industrialization, extensive European immigration, and swift urbanization gave birth to a new social class in America: the proletariat. There emerged a noticeable class distinction between the affluent bourgeois capitalists and the impoverished working masses. In a new world of poverty, suffering, and degradation, the Romantic ideal seemed intangible and implausible. Consequently, a new philosophical and literary movement arose which sought to portray the reality of late nineteenth century capitalist America: Naturalism.
             Naturalist philosophy adopts the "clinical" method of empirical sciences to every aspect of human life. As Canadian scholar Greig Henderson put it, "Zola [and other naturalists] argues for a literature of observation rather than one of fabrication". In other words, to the Naturalists, the Romantic Movement was nothing but a series of "fabrications" manufactured by naive, idealistic thinkers. However, other Naturalists, such as Frank Norris, believed Romanticism dealt with the atypical, or that which was concerned with the "variations from the type of normal life". Conversely, the Naturalist...