How did naturalist writers use heredity and environment to explain characters?

Naturalist writers, heavily influenced by the positivist philosophy of Hippolyte Taine, viewed characters as products of scientific determinism rather than as individuals with free will. They applied the principles of natural science to literature, treating characters as specimens to be analyzed under a microscope.123

In this framework, writers used heredity and environment to explain character behavior in the following ways:

• Heredity: Characters were seen as helpless products of their physiological nature, driven by strong, instinctual passions and inherited traits. Naturalists often focused on characters dominated by these elemental forces, viewing their actions as inevitable outcomes of their biological makeup.2
• Environment: Writers emphasized the overpowering influence of a character's social, political, and geographical background—their milieu. They frequently selected oppressive environments, such as urban slums or the underworld, to demonstrate how external social and economic pressures dictate a character's fate.132

By documenting these factors in meticulous detail, Naturalists aimed to show that human behavior is as predictable as chemical reactions, effectively rejecting idealism in favor of a mechanistic view of psychology.12