Social Critique in Realism
Realist writers are all about critiquing the social and political conditions of the worlds that they write about. Authors like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Honoré de Balzac, and Fyodor Dostoevsky depicted economic and social inequalities in their novels as a way of raising awareness about the plight of poor people, for example, or about the inequalities that affect women.
In fact, there's a whole subset of Realism called Social Realism, which developed in the early 20th century and was inspired by the work of the big guns of early Realism like Tolstoy and Dickens. Social Realism comments on social and political conditions in a uniquely straightforward and hard-hitting way. John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is a great example of Social Realism as it developed into the 20th century.
Chew on This
Want to see how Realist authors engage in social critique? Look no further than these quotations from Charles Dickens's Bleak House.
Fyodor Dostoevsky was also big on social critique. Check out these quotations on poverty and suffering from his novel Crime and Punishment.