Southern Gothic Literature

Ms. Crandell

English 9

Southern Gothic is the name given to a literary movement with its roots in the Romantic and Gothic traditions of British literature. Authors who write in the Southern Gothic style borrow the hyper-aware, emotionally rich style of the Romantics and the Gothic interest in isolation and decay and apply these ideas to their region of the United States to develop a unique literary style. Southern Gothic Literature is a sub-genre of gothic literature (think Poe!) focusing on character, social, and moral shortcomings in the American south; it reached its height in the 1940-1960s.

Southern Gothic literature often comments on society’s negatives or weaknesses; it is often disturbing but realistic (however, it can contain elements of the supernatural). The plot relies on unusual, disturbing, or ironic events.

It contains grotesque characters or situations–deeply flawed characters, decayed (often rural) settings, and evil or disturbing events (often linked to racism, poverty, violence, and moral corruption). Example: a character’s negatives/undesirable characteristics allow the author to comment on unpleasant aspects of the culture.

Look for racial bigotry, crushing poverty, violence, and moral corruption or ambiguity. Something physical in the setting is unusual and often broken, symbolizing the problems in society.

Look for paradox, broken bodies or souls, haunted houses, the element of otherness (outsider), loneliness, off-kilter characters, role of the innocent figure who is a “redeemer,” strangers in strange places, small town life with a strong sense of place or setting, imprisonment (physical or mental), violence, decay, irony, and neutral gender roles.

Diction: Notice phrases with opposites partnered side by side that create oxymorons or paradoxes. For example: “Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square” (Lee 6).

One of my literature professors who specializes in Southern lit, Kieran Quinlan, writes about importance of sense of place, saying, “Origins are never simple.”

About the racial component of Southern Gothic lit, he writes, “It is not easy to write with empathy about views on race and ethnicity that are offensive not only to contemporary sensibilities but also to the humanity of those who were their original subject.”

Quinlan, Kieran. Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

Significant Southern Gothic authors include Flannery O’Connor, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Carson McCullers, but their cues are taken from predecessors like Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allen Poe. We see the Southern Gothic style of writing in contemporary authors like Phillip Roth, Donna Tartt, and Cormac McCarthy.

Additionally these thematic concerns have made their way into music, TV, and film (some of which are adaptations of these authors’ work). These include movies like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, TV shows like True Blood,American Horror Story, and The Vampire Diaries.

One of the most outstanding and noticeable characteristics of Southern Gothic literature is its fascination with outsiders and characters that somehow veer from the social norm. These stories brim with the socially deviant and the disempowered. In Southern Gothic stories we see characters like the simple, agoraphobic Boo Radley and black Jim who is accused of a horrible crime. In O’Connor’s “Good Country People” we see the backwoods girl Hulga in possession of both a PhD and a prosthetic leg. By assembling a collection of oddball characters, Southern Gothic authors often explore how marginalized people can be misunderstood and taken advantage of.

Sources:

K. Kooistra

Kieran Quinlan