Related to realism is another movement, called naturalism. Essentially more of a philosophical attitude than a literary technique, naturalism derives its name from the idea that human beings are part of nature and subject to its laws. According to naturalists, heredity and environment shape and control people’s lives; their behavior is determined more by instinct than by reason. This deterministic view argues that human beings have no transcendent identity because there is no soul or spiritual world that ultimately distinguishes humanity from any other form of life. Characters in naturalistic plays are generally portrayed as victims overwhelmed by internal and external forces. Thus literary naturalism tends to include not only the commonplace but the sordid, destructive, and chaotic aspects of life. Naturalism, then, is an extreme form of realism that emphasizes fate rather than free will.
The earliest and most articulate voice of naturalism was that of French author Émile Zola (1840–1902), who urged artists to draw their characters from life and present their histories as faithfully as scientists report laboratory findings. Zola’s best-known naturalistic play, Thérèse Raquin (1873), is a dramatization of an earlier novel involving a woman whose passion causes her to take a lover and plot with him to kill her husband. In his preface to the novel, Zola explains that his purpose is to take “a strong man and unsatisfied woman, … throw them into a violent drama and note scrupulously the sensations and acts of these creatures.” The diction of Zola’s statement reveals his nearly clinical approach, which becomes even more explicit when Zola likens his method of revealing character to that of an autopsy: “I have simply done on two living bodies the work which surgeons do on corpses.”
Although some naturalistic plays have been successfully produced and admired, few important dramatists fully subscribed to naturalism’s extreme methods and values. Nevertheless, the movement significantly influenced prominent playwrights, including J. M. Synge (1871–1909) and Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953). Because of its insistence on the necessity of closely observing characters’ environment, playwrights placed a new emphasis on detailed settings and natural acting. This verisimilitude became a significant feature of realistic drama.