At the turn of the twentieth century realism meant drunken laborers participating in sordid sex and violent acts. As the century progressed however the workers seized the pen and forcibly changed the genre. When todays critics label realism a reactionary attempt to squelch social change they ignore how workingclass writers transformed it to fit their own interests. In doing so they altered the course of American realism. Workingclass women bent to their own purposes several variants of realism including naturalism proletarian realism and magic realism. From the 1903 bestseller by two socialites who posed as factory girls and wrote about their experiences to the depressionera authors who tried to include women in the proletariat by writing about sex to the later writers who incorporated their cultural heritage to create precursors of magic realism the rise of workingclass fiction has helped realism remain fresh relevant and lucrative