From the mid-nineteenth century on, we can often apply these terms with some intelligence to individual works, rather than to authors. Nonetheless, the classifications sometimes break down even here, when we are forced to recognize opposing tendencies in a given work. Realism is essentially born of an impatience with Romanticism. The Romantic sees his material through the lenses of his imagination, and thus presents us a world that may be better or worse than the world we all know, but is never the world as it is actually lived. Rather, we should say, he finds beauty resides only in the depiction of truth.
Realism looks at life with objectivity.
The Realistic author refrains from taking sides with his characters. The author seeks to see life according to the facts, and hence presents his interpretation of it by documenting character, story, or picture with facts. The Realist is interested more in character than in story, more in people than in external nature. A newer tendency of Realism, which flourished in the works of such authors as Emile Zola and Guy de Maupassant, has been recognized as constituting in effect a new school, the school of Naturalism. Naturalism has had a powerful effect upon late-nineteenth century and twentieth century literature, particularly in the United States.