12AP English Lit. & Comp.
Mr. Klein
Southern Gothic
Gothic literature—so called because many examples of the genre were set during the latemedieval, or Gothic, period—proliferated in England, Germany, and the United States
during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Critics date its inception to 1764,
when English statesman and writer Horace Walpoe published The Castle of Otranto: A
Gothic Story. Set against the majestic backgrounds of mysterious castles and aging palaces,
many nineteenth-century English gothic novels used such bleak landscapes to create an
atmosphere of horror and suspense. In particular, gothic literature found a home with
writers of the American South, who used the crumbling landscape of the antebellum era as
the backdrop for their tales of fantasy and the grotesque. Major twentieth-century
American authors often identified with this genre include Flannery O'Connor, Cormac
McCarthy, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and to a lesser extent, Eudora Welty.
Defined by Francis Russell Hart as “fiction evocative of a sublime and picturesque
landscape …depict(ing) a world in ruins,” the gothic novel presents readers with an
opportunity to vicariously experience horrifying realities. By creating worlds where tragedy
and repressed behaviors come to the forefront, gothic writers explore the psychology of
human existence on several unique levels, notes critic Elizabeth M. Kerr. Common
elements of the gothic novel include explorations of the subconscious through dreams, a
good versus evil polarity in the characters, and the use of setting and atmosphere to evoke a
vivid emotional response in the reader. While English Gothicism closely paralleled
Romanticism in literature, frequently focusing on issues of love, sexuality, and the place of
reason in human existence, Southern Gothic fiction focuses largely on themes of terror,
death, and social interaction.
Some commentators have argued that the adaptation of the gothic format was particularly
suited to the American South because the plantation world of the antebellum period
provided writers with an analogy to the medieval settings available to English gothic
writers. The images of the plantation houses—representative of a quasi-feudal order in
times of prosperity—contrasted with their eventual decay were evocative of the ruined
castles of nineteenth-century Gothic romances, with both symbolically signaling the end of
an era. However, Southern Gothic fiction also embodies immediacy and poignancy that
derives from the personal and community experiences of its authors. Kerr explains this
intensity as, “the cult of the past in the South, as symbolized in its ruins, its preserved
glories displayed in spring pilgrimages, its monuments and graveyards, owes less to
cultural climate and imagination than to remembered history.” This emphasis on history is
vital to Southern Gothic fiction, which not only draws on the stylistic characteristics of
nineteenth-century gothic fiction, but also finds inspiration from novels of the American
past. Certain scholars—such as Leslie Fiedler in Love and Death in the American Novel
(1960)—have identified specifically national concerns apparent in Southern Gothic fiction,
particularly the relationships between races and genders. Other academics have been
dismissive towards twentieth-century Southern Gothic novels, referring to the movement
as a sub-genre of serious fiction and criticizing the works for their sometimes formulaic and
sentimental storylines.