By the end of the 19th century, the modernist movement had established itself as one that sought out constantly new, inventive ways to capture the world as it was changing. This experimental attitude toward all forms of expression reflected the newly discovered displacement and dissonance felt as a result of a shifting social environment. Modernist authors started to rebel against the organized, formulaic structure of the previous century.
Overcrowding in cities and the development of communication are just two examples of how shifting socioeconomic situations have altered people’s social and personal circumstances and blurred the lines between the private and public spheres. It became difficult to make sense of people’s subconscious and outer environments using previous standard moral authority. In his book A History of Modern Drama, David Krasner attributes this shift in ideology to the democratic egalitarianism made popular by the French Revolution of 1789 as well as the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. In the end, they “signified a turn from deities and moral certainty and towards self-conscious individualism and ambiguity in judgment, values, and interpersonal relations,” departing from both the Rationalism of the Enlightenment and the Classical Formalism.
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