How does this setting exemplify some general characteristics of realism?"Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton

The relative presence or absence of literary “realism” in
the setting of Edith Wharton’s short story “Roman Fever” is an intriguing issue. The
Cambridge Companion to Literature in English, edited by Iam Ousby,
lists the following traits as especially typical of nineteenth-century “realistic”
fiction:

• an emphasis on
  “representing the world as it is rather than as it ought to be, with description rather
  than invention”


• an emphasis
  on “authentic details”


• an
  emphasis on “the function of environment in shaping
  character”


• an emphasis on
  “the present or the recent
  past”


• an emphasis on
  presenting “everyday scenes as objectively as possible in loy-key, unrhetorical
  prose”


• an emphasis on
  “drawing its characters from all social
  levels”


• an emphasis on using
  “colloquial speech in its
  dialogue”

Wharton’s story opens
by describing two apparently well-off American “ladies” who dine while overlooking “the
lofty terrace of [a] Roman restaurant.” A headwaiter is mentioned, and, after one of the
ladies tips him, the narrator reports,

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The headwaiter, bowing over her gratuity, assured
her that the ladies were most welcome, and would be still more so if they would
condescend to remain for
dinner.

Later in the story,
past sickness is associated with a visit to the Roman Coliseum, but later still, this
description of the present is offered:

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The clear heaven overhead was emptied of all its
gold. Dusk spread over it, abruptly darkening the Seven Hills. Here and there lights
began to twinkle through the foliage at their
feet.

The setting of the
story might be described as “realistic,” then, in a number of ways: in its emphasis on
the present; in the accuracy of the relatively few descriptions of the landscape; in its
reference to a waiter who welcomes being tipped; and in its emphasis on description
rather invention.  On the other hand, the settings in this story are for the most part
highly attractive; the characters are mainly upper-class; and the two women seem at
least as much in control of their environments as their environments have influenced
them.

Wharton’s realism, then, seems closer to the realism
of Henry James than to the realism of someone like Ambrose Bierce. Little wonder,
therefore, that Martin S. Day, in his two-volume History of American
Literature, calls Wharton a realist influenced by
“classicism.”