The Quotidian in Realism
You wake up. You pour your Cheerios into a bowl. You add milk. You eat and think about all the stuff you have to do today: walk the dog, finish your English essay, grab a coffee with your friend. Yeah, not that exciting right?
Guess again. The daily stuff that we all live through is the meat of Realist literature.
One reason Realism was so revolutionary when it emerged in the mid-19th century was that it rejected the idea that literature had to be about larger-than-life heroes doing heroic deeds. Realist writers wanted literature to reflect the true, daily reality of our lives—stuff that smarty-pants scholars like to call the quotidian. One of the biggest preoccupations of Realism is the depiction of daily life, the dramas and routines of regular people.
Chew on This
Here is Gustave Flaubert's heroine Emma Bovary reflecting on how dull daily life is in this quote (Quote #2) from Madame Bovary.
Marriage is a pretty ordinary thing in George Eliot's Middlemarch.