#Gothic literature elements full#

Horror stories rely on the trope of a creepy atmosphere, and while Southern Gothic is plenty creepy, it is specifically an atmosphere of decay. Decay occurs when buildings and fields are not maintained, giving into rot and infestation. Such abject poverty is the spark that drives the desperation and darkness of Southern Gothic stories. Yet everyone in the South was poor, and the once grand buildings of the Antebellum area started to crumble and become abandoned. Those who stayed by choice did so because of a sense of pride and legacy, which made them distrustful of outsiders and change. With the population either dying off or leaving for work in the North, towns were small and isolated. Gothic literature is all about broken, perverse places, and by the time of the Great Depression, the American South was the perfect setting for a Gothic revival. The South, though it rejoined the Union in practice, is still spiritually divided-Northerners see the South as traitors, and the South sees the North as occupiers. The Southern faith in G-d's providence and protection was shattered as they were painted the villain in America's bloodiest conflict. The social hierarchy of slaves and masters was completely upended, which also plunged the South into poverty from which they have never escaped. The North burned their ancient cities, leaving them in ruin. The American Civil War changed everything for the South. They had faith in G-d and the dominance of the white race over all others. Southerners believed in military strength, good manners, and strict social hierarchies. The history of these states is that they were founded by European aristocrats: in Antebellum America, the South was the wealthiest area of the country. The land of these areas is characterized by low hills, humidity, heat, mud, and swampland. Southern Gothic is also set in East Texas (West Texas is the setting of Westerns) and North Florida (South Florida is too urban and tropical). Southern Gothic stories take place in the states settled by plantation owners and that formerly belonged to the Confederacy: Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Southern Gothic stories are all in the HORROR genre, yet put a twist on the common horror tropes, as seen below. These Southern writers took the verisimilitude of Realism and mixed it with the fantastic and emotional elements of Romanticism to create Southern Gothic literature, a literary movement that began in the early 1930s and ended by 1970. After all, who cares about the meaning of life when you are too poor to eat? Northern writers broke with Realism after World War I and started to question the meaning of existence and reality ( Modernism), but this change didn't suit the South. The Confederate loss of the Civil War plunged the once prosperous South into poverty, which was compounded half a century later with the Great Depression. One of these realities was the brutality of the Southern slave trade and the rigid caste system in Southern society.

All literature suddenly lacked emotional drives, but painted the world in stark realities. The carnage and violence of the Civil War broke Americans out of their Romantic ideals and plunged them straight into Realism. Then came the American Civil War, Reconstruction, and a Great Depression. It seemed, to American writers during the Antebellum period, that stories of horror and hopelessness were best left to Europe. Yet the Americas at the time were frontier lands, places of hope and unwritten history compared to Europe, with its catacombs of skeletons and century-long wars.

#Gothic literature elements full#

Old World Europe, in the eyes of Gothic writers, held secret histories of macabre witchcraft, legacies of tortured men and cities burning, and dark woods full of monstrous creatures. The setting of Gothic tales, including those of American authors like Edgar Allen Poe, was always Europe, as Gothic literature depends on place with an awful history for its setting. The nineteenth century saw the rise of Gothic literature, a movement that embraced the deep emotions and beautiful imagery of Romanticism, yet had plots driven by madness, death, and destruction.