As Elaine Freedgood explains in Nineteenth-century British critics of Realism, the realist art movement sought to represent the modern state of society.  Unlike Romanticism which promotes boundless imagination and embellishment of figures, Realism is “responsible for representing social and individual experience as it really occurs in the world outside the novel” (326 Freedgood).  Since the novel became the vehicle through which reality was portrayed, fiction became integrated with reality.  Fiction was no longer strictly the product of writer’s imaginations, but rather “a portrait of the kinds of man and the kinds of things that the author has encountered and encountered regularly” (327).

In Adam Bete, George Eliot declares her commitment to realism in the following lines “my strongest effort is to…give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind.  The mirror is doubtless defective…but 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” (Eliot, Chapter 17 pg 1)  In these lines, Eliot recognizes the limits of realism by acknowledging how her personal perceptions might distort the way in which she represents reality.  Additionally, as writers select which parts to include or exclude in writing they fall short from representing reality as it actually is.  Nevertheless, Eliot reassures readers that her first and foremost purpose is to be as truthful as if she were testifying under oath.  Ultimately, writers attempt to get as close to representing reality within their own frameworks.

Considering realism should reflect reality as closely as possible, it could be argued that one of its limits lies in mundaneness.  This becomes apparent in when Eliot argues how she delights in Dutch paintings.  Many could dismiss these works as uninteresting and take a similar view as the ‘idealistic friend’ who states “what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? (Page 3).  While these characters could be made a lot more interesting with a simple stroke of a pen, that isn’t the goal.  Eliot argues that those rules should not be imposed on writers.  She proposes that beauty can also be found in the often flawed nature of the everyday man and woman.