Social-Psychological Novel

The social-psychological novel is a variety of the novel that combines a broad depiction of social life, social relations, and conflicts with a deep psychological analysis of the heroes' inner world, showing how social circumstances form and deform the human personality. This genre investigates the human being in an inseparable connection with the milieu, revealing the social conditioning of characters and at the same time the complex dialectic of the soul. The social-psychological novel became the leading genre of mature Realism. In Ukrainian literature its classic model is the novel by Panas Myrny and Ivan Bilyk, Do the Oxen Low When Mangers Are Full? — a deep investigation of the causes that turned the peasant Chipka into a 'wasted force', a criminal, and a rebel, in which the social injustice of the serf order is combined with a subtle psychological analysis. To the genre also belong the novels of Ivan Franko (Crossing Paths) and the prose of Valerian Pidmohylny. The social-psychological novel is a summit achievement of Ukrainian realist prose.