We've experienced local color in Chesnutt and Chopin.... However, Stephen Crane's Maggie is a classic example of "Naturalism"....
Some characteristics of Naturalism from wsu.edu
[a great resource to explore: http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/natural.htm ]
Characters. Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or lower-class characters whose lives are governed by the forces of heredity, instinct, and passion. Their attempts at exercising free will or choice are hamstrung by forces beyond their control; social Darwinism and other theories help to explain their fates to the reader. See June Howard's Form and History for information on the spectator in naturalism.
Setting. Frequently an urban setting, as in Norris's McTeague. See Lee Clark Mitchell's Determined Fictions, Philip Fisher's Hard Facts, and James R. Giles's The Naturalistic Inner-City Novel in America.
Techniques and plots. Walcutt says that the naturalistic novel offers "clinical, panoramic, slice-of-life" drama that is often a "chronicle of despair" (21). The novel of degeneration--Zola's L'Assommoir and Norris's Vandover and the Brute, for example--is also a common type.
Naturalism is inherently about science, or the method to which we apply science in observation. Unlike realism, which focuses on imagery, technique or prose, Naturalism is a scientific method, which studies humans, and their relationships to their surroundings, objectively. This is precisely why nearly all characters in Yekl are described as being in a condition state that stems from hereditary instinct. Naturalism studies the force behind our motives, the dimensions of those decisions and most importantly, the unordinary in the seemingly everyday events of human life. The reason why many naturalism novels explore the destitute or impoverished is because only in the seemingly dull and facile lives of the struggling are the human qualities of violence, sex and indifference so bold and shocking. This style reveals the gorging nature of all men, and seeks to expose men for what they really are; beasts that are controlled by sensory desire, not rational thought. Yekl/Jake is the perfect example of this "beats" with man concept. Through a twisted sense of selfishness and some may say, social darwinism, Jake is revealed to be a beast, not only controlled by his past, but shackled by his unquenchable thirst for the "new." He struggles against himself to resist this beast, but the overwhelming desire and determination overpowers him at the end. Amidst all this struggle, one recognizes the universes indifference to him and his decisions. Life will go on, the struggle is truly "individual" to him and in the end, civilization will not mourn his struggle or stop to watch.
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