Intro to Southern Gothic

Since the Gothic first arose as a handful of tales about virginal young women being chased through European castles by usurping noblemen, the genre has splintered off into many different forms, some of which bear very little resemblance to the earliest Gothic stories. One of the best-known off-shoots of this mode of writing is the Southern Gothic. I touched on this topic briefly in my post on the American Gothic Tradition, but now I want to cover it in more depth. Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic literature that is defined both geographically and thematically. Generally set within the southern United States, works of Southern Gothic employ the macabre and the grotesque to expose the myth of the idyllic antebellum South. Common themes include the decay and corruption that exist behind beautiful facades (both physically and metaphorically), the decline of a dispossessed aristocracy, and the scars left by slavery and a long history of racial tensions. If you’ve ever taken an American literature class, it’s likely that you’ve already encountered some Southern Gothic. Below are a few authors best known for writing in this genre:

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)

Ambrose Bierce was one of the earliest writers of Southern Gothic literature. Born in Ohio, he served on the Union side of the Civil War before going on to become a writer and journalist. He is notable for both his classic ghost stories and his fictionalized accounts of the Civil War. One of his best-known stories is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890), which centers on Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer who is about to be hanged for attempting to interfere with Union supply lines. Another of his stories is “Chickamauga” (1889), about a deaf-mute child who unexpectedly finds himself in the middle of a battlefield. His eagerness to play soldier slowly transforms into horror and despair when confronted with the genuine brutality of war. Both stories exhibit a disillusionment with any romantic notions of the Civil War, or war in general, by portraying protagonists whose naïveté contrasts sharply with the reality of violence and bloodshed.

William Faulkner (1897–1962)

William Faulkner is perhaps the biggest name associated with the Southern Gothic, and you’re sure to find him on nearly every American literature curriculum. Faulkner was born in Mississippi, and almost all of his stories take place within his invented Mississippi county of Yoknapatawpha. Of his novels, perhaps the darkest is As I Lay Dying (1930), which presents a stream of consciousness story narrated by various members of the dysfunctional Bundren family as they transport their dead matriarch across Mississippi. Addie’s purifying corpse even gets to present a chapter from her own posthumous point of view. Strong elements of the Southern Gothic can also be seen in Faulkner’s short fiction, particularly in his story “A Rose for Emily.” In this macabre tale, Emily Grierson is the daughter of a declining aristocratic family who becomes something of the town eccentric after her father dies. When she is seen buying poison shortly before her lover disappears, no one intervenes or investigates too hard. But after Emily’s death, it is revealed that she murdered her lover and had been sleeping beside his corpse for many years. Both of these stories use grotesque depictions of literal decay to suggest the more metaphorical ways in which the values of a Southern family are corrupted and to show the horrors that lurk beneath a veneer of respectability and tradition.

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1963)

Flannery O’Connor is one of my personal favorite authors of the Southern Gothic. She was born and raised in Georgia, and most of her stories take place in that region or the surrounding states. She wrote two novels, but is best known for her many short stories. “Good Country People” is one of the stories included in her first collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955). In this story, Mrs. Hopewell runs a farm in rural Georgia with her disabled adult daughter Joy, who has changed her name to the intentionally unflattering “Hulga.” Both women are taken in when a charismatic Bible salesman named Manley Pointer arrives at the farm. Mrs. Hopewell declares him to be “good country people” and Hulga entertains the idea of seducing an innocent man of God. But it turns out that Mr. Pointer is no innocent; he’s actually a nihilistic atheist with a thing for stealing disabled people’s prosthetics. His hollowed-out Bible filled with liquor and condoms parallels the way that Manley Pointer’s respectable Southern gentleman exterior conceals his deeply immoral nature. Religion also plays a significant part in O’Connor’s second novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960). This story’s protagonist is Francis Tarwater, a young man who has been raised by his fanatically religious great-uncle Mason, who believes himself to be a prophet and wants Francis to follow in his footsteps. After being torn between his evangelist upbringing and his secular uncle who wants him to reject it, Francis eventually commits an act of violence that fulfills his religious destiny and accepts his role as prophet. Both the religious and the secular characters in this story are shown to be deeply flawed.

Who are your favorite authors of Southern Gothic literature?  Have you read any of the works mentioned above? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!