After reading the article, Nineteenth-century British critics of Realism by Elaine Freedgood, and a chapter of the novel, Adam Bede by the George Eliot, the difference between Realism and Fictionalism are expressed when it comes to each author’s personal preference in their own writing. For instance, in the article, Elaine Freedgood explains that “realism is responsible for representing social and individual experience as it really occurs in the world outside the novel.” (Freedgood, 326) Therefore, she claims that this is her preference when it comes to her own writing. To summarize what she believes in, ultimately that extending the truth or writing fictional things just feeds the reader false information which defeats the purpose of her writing. When I first encountered this I found it incorrect because there is always a purpose for writing because even in a made up story you can still spread a subliminal message to your audience, but at the same time agreed with the fact that reading fictional stories kind of does defeat the purpose of writing because you’re just writing lies in a way. In the modern era, I have noticed that most of our society is interested in knowing the truth and not really interested in made up stories or in this case fictional stories. For example, when you take a look at novels and even movies that are airing, the ones that are revolved around being based on a true story have been proven to have more hits. Why is that? I think that society has realized that in order to I guess get further in life you must learn from the stories of others. This is shown when she states “I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box narrating my experience on oath.” (Freedgood, 326) Stating that she is narrating her experiences just reflects a quote that says “you learn from your mistakes,” which in this case her audience learns throughout her mistakes and other words don’t commit the same ones in their life.

George Eliot on the other isn’t really a fan of realism, he prefers using fictionalism in his own writing. He even states that “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.” (Eliot, 2) In my opinion, he’s also right because when you focus your writing around fictionalism you can manipulate the story and basically drag it on to make it turn out however you want it to be, just for it to be a good story. Which in cases like if you were to base your writing around realism you can’t really do that because you would have to end the story explaining the truth. Let’s face it expressing everything that is real, isn’t always the best option being that real stories don’t have happy endings all the time. For example, when it comes to stories in general, most readers nowadays are big fans of a happy ending. Although this can be a possibility in real life, in some cases it isn’t and an audience encountering an ending like that for instance can end up being upset with the way the story ended.