Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction in American literature that takes place in the American South.

Common themes in Southern Gothic literature include deeply flawed, disturbing or eccentric characters who may or may not dabble in hoodoo,^[1] ambivalent gender roles, decayed or derelict settings,^[2] grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or stemming from poverty, alienation, crime, or violence.

Origins

Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South were apparent in the 19th century, ante- and post-bellum, in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and the de-idealized visions of Mark Twain.^[3] The genre came together, however, only in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged into a new and powerful form of social critique.^[3]

The term "Southern Gothic" was originally used as pejorative and dismissive. Ellen Glasgow used the term in this way when she referred to the writings of Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner. She included the authors in what she called the "Southern Gothic School" in 1935, stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares." It was so negatively viewed at first that Eudora Welty said, "They better not call me that!"^[4]

Characteristics

The Southern Gothic style is one that employs the use of macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South.^[5] Thus unlike its parent genre, it uses the Gothic tools not solely for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South – Gothic elements often taking place in a magic realist context rather than a strictly fantastical one.

Warped rural communities replaced the sinister plantations of an earlier age; and in the works of leading figures such as William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor, the representation of the South blossomed into an absurdist critique of modernity as a whole.^[3]

There are many characteristics in Southern Gothic Literature that relate back to its parent genre of American Gothic and even to European Gothic. However, the setting of these works are distinctly Southern. Some of these characteristics are exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities.^[4]

Southern Gothic particularly focuses on the South's history of slavery, a "fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements".^[4]

Similar to the elements of the Gothic castle, Southern Gothic gives us the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South.^[4]

Villains who disguise themselves as innocents or victims are often found in Southern Gothic Literature, especially stories by Flannery O'Connor, such as Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own, giving us a blurred line between victim and villain.^[4]

Southern Gothic literature set out to expose the myth of old antebellum South, and its narrative of an idyllic past hidden by social, familial, and racial denials and suppressions.^[6]

Authors

• Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
• Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
• Erskine Caldwell (1903–1987)
• Truman Capote (1924–1984, early works)
• Brainard Cheney (1900–1990)
• Harry Crews (1935–2012), who has been called "the Hieronymus Bosch of Southern Gothic"
• James Dickey (1923-1997)
• William Faulkner (1897–1962)
• Tom Franklin (b. 1962)
• Frank Stanford (1948-1978), specifically The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You
• William Goyen (1915–1983)
• Davis Grubb (1919–1980)
• Harper Lee (1926–2016)
• Cormac McCarthy (b. 1933)
• Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
• Michael McDowell (1950–1999)
• Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964)
• Walker Percy (1916–1990)
• Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
• Anne Rice (b. 1941), particularly The Feast of All Saints and The Witching Hour
• Eudora Welty (1909–2001)
• Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)^[7]

Some have included Eudora Welty in the category, but apparently she disagreed: "They better not call me that!", she abruptly told Alice Walker in an interview.^[8]

A resurgence of Southern Gothic themes in contemporary fiction has been identified in the work of figures like Barry Hannah (1942–2010),^[9] Joe R. Lansdale (b. 1951)^[10] and Cherie Priest (b. 1975).^[10]

Film and television

A number of films and television programs are also described as being part of the Southern Gothic genre. Some prominent examples are:

Films

• Swamp Water (1941)^[11]
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)^[11]
• The Night of the Hunter (1955)^[11]
• The Young One (1960)^[11]
• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)^[11]
• Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
• The Beguiled (1971)^[11]
• Deliverance (1972)
• The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
• Wise Blood (1979)^[11]
• The Beyond (1981)^[12][13]
• Southern Comfort (1981)^[14]
• Angel Heart (1987)^[11]
• Cape Fear (1991)^[11]
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)^[11]
• Frailty (2001)^[15]
• Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003)
• The Skeleton Key (2005)^[11]
• Winter's Bone (2010)^[11]
• Beautiful Creatures (2013)
• Jessabelle (2014)
• The Beguiled (2017)

Television series

• American Gothic (1995–96)
• True Blood (2008–14)
• Justified (2010-15)
• The Walking Dead (2010-present)
• The Heart, She Holler (2011)
• Rectify (2013–16)^[16]
• American Horror Story: Coven (2013)
• The Originals (TV Series) (2013-present)
• True Detective, season 1 (2014)
• Bloodline, seasons 1 (2015) and 2 (2016)
• Preacher (2016-present)^[17]
• Outcast (2016-present)^[18]
• Outsiders (TV Series) (2016-2017)

Music

Southern Gothic (also known as Gothic Americana, or Dark Country) is a genre of music characterized by a fusion of alternative rock and classic country/folk. The genre shares thematic connections with the Southern Gothic genre of literature, and indeed the parameters of what makes something Gothic Americana appears to have more in common with literary genres than traditional musical ones. Songs often examine poverty, criminal behavior, religious imagery, death, ghosts, family, lost love, alcohol, murder, the devil and betrayal.^[19]

Artists

Photographic representation

The images of Great Depression photographer Walker Evans are frequently seen to evoke the visual depiction of the Southern Gothic; Evans claimed: "I can understand why Southerners are haunted by their own landscape".^[29]

Another noted Southern Gothic photographer was surrealist, Clarence John Laughlin, who photographed cemeteries, plantations, and other abandoned places throughout the American South (primarily Louisiana) for nearly 40 years.

Postmodern pastiche

William Gibson took an ironical look at the cult of "Southernness" in his novel Virtual Light. Rydell, the stolid, southern antihero, is looking for a job at an LA shop called Nightmare Folk Art—Southern Gothic. The (northern) owner says he finds Rydell unsuitable: "What we offer people here is a certain vision, Mr. Rydell. A certain darkness as well. A Gothic quality....The Mind of the South. A fever dream of sensuality".^[30]

Put out by finding himself not southern enough for this New Englander, "'Lady,' Rydell said carefully, 'I think you're crazier than a sack full of assholes.' Her eyebrows shot up. 'There,' she said. 'There what?' 'Color, Mr. Rydell. Fire. The brooding verbal polychromes of an almost unthinkably advanced decay.'"^[30]

See also

References

External links

• The Southern Literary Trail website features the major fiction writers from the South during the 20th Century