Novel and Short Story

The fact of the matter is that most of the famous works of Southern Gothic are novels or short stories, so these are the two genres most closely associated with the movement.

Irony

Irony is when things turn out in a way that's completely the opposite of what characters in a story expect—or the opposite of what we as readers expects. There's a lot of irony in Southern Gothic. Southern Gothic writers love depicting characters who end up in a pickle—an ironic pickle, that is.

Macabre and Grotesque

Gross stuff, like dead bodies, incest, and amputated limbs, is macabre and grotesque, and Southern Gothic is full of this stuff. These writers sure know how to creep us out.

Social Issues

Southern Gothic writers love dissecting and analyzing Southern society. Anything and everything from poverty, to race, to hypocrisy, is open to analysis. Southern Gothic writers like to chart in detail the ills of Southern society.

Violence

We'll find heaps of violence in Southern Gothic. Violence is a part of the history of the region, of course. Remember slavery? Yeah, that was pretty violent, and pretty ugly. Is it any wonder that violence shows up in Southern Gothic literature?

Southern Setting

Southern Gothic writers are totally into evoking the landscape and the settings of the South. Think of old plantation houses, swamps, and little dusty Southern towns—you'll find all of that here.

Decay

Stuff really falls apart in Southern Gothic literature: people, houses, towns, morals. Decay is a favorite theme of Southern Gothic writers; after all, the South did fall into decline after the Civil War, so it's no surprise that decay and disintegration are a big part of the literature.

Outsiders

We'll also find lots of outsider figures in Southern Gothic. We're talking about people who are social outcasts, people who are disabled in some way, or people who are just dirt poor, or who are criminals.

Civil War

This is the one, huge historical event that directly influenced the development of Southern Gothic. Heck, it's the one event that changed the entire identity, and destiny, of the South. The South lost the war to the North. That meant the end of slavery, and it also meant the end of the prosperity and wealth that had been built on the backs of slaves.

Slavery and Race

Once upon a time there were millions of African Americans who had no control over their own lives or bodies. That's because they were owned by white people. It may be shocking to us now, but the racial legacy of slavery continued way beyond the end of the Civil War. Slavery and race are big themes in Southern Gothic literature, since they're a big, troubling part of Southern history.