Realism is a word that can be used in many different ways. It is used mainly in the arts to describe the way that writers, musicians, painters etc. thought in the late 19th century. These artists were trying to show the world as it really is, instead of trying to escape to a world of fantasy, which is what the Romantics had been doing. The Realists wanted to give an accurate description of Nature and of the way people lived in society.