American Gothic fiction

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

American gothic fiction is a subgenre of

monsters
.

Analysis of major themes

The inability of many Gothic characters to overcome perversity by rational thought is quintessential American Gothic.

Common Sense and The Age of Reason
. Also, one cannot ignore the contemporary Gothic themes of mechanism and automation that rationalism and logic lead to.

Puritan imagery, particularly that of Hell, acted as potent brain candy for 19th-century authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.[2] The dark and nightmarish visions the Puritan culture of condemnation, reinforced by shame and guilt, created a lasting impact on the collective consciousness. Notions of predestination and original sin added to the doom and gloom of traditional Puritan values. This perspective and its underlying hold on American society ripened the blossoming of stories like Rachel Dyer (the first novel about the Salem witch trials),[3] "The Pit and the Pendulum", "Young Goodman Brown", and The Scarlet Letter
.

The dungeons and endless corridors that are a hallmark of European Gothic are far removed from American Gothic, in which castles are replaced with caves. Lloyd-Smith reinterprets

Moby-Dick to make this point convincingly.[4] Early settlers were prone to fear linked to the unexplored territory which surrounded, and in some cases, engulfed them. Fear of the unknown stemming from environmental factors like darkness and vastness is notable in Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly
.

The emergence of the "ab-human" in American gothic fiction was closely coupled with the emergence of

H.P. Lovecraft’s "The Outsider" and Nicholson Baker's "Subsoil". Ghosts and monsters are closely related to this theme; they function as the spiritual equivalent of the abhuman and may be evocative of unseen realities, as in The Bostonians
.

Julia Kristeva's concepts of jouissance and abjection are employed by American Gothic authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman.[6] Kristeva theorizes that the expulsion of all things defiling, much like a corpse, is a common coping mechanism for humanity.[6] Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" exploits this concept. Furthermore, "The Yellow Wallpaper" can be read as a social commentary on the oppressive conditions women suffered in their home lives at the turn of the 20th century.

Early American Gothic

The first publication of "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe in The Pioneer edited by James Russell Lowell, 1843.

Early American Gothic writers were particularly concerned with frontier wilderness anxiety and the lasting effects of a Puritanical society. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving is perhaps the most famous example of American Colonial-era Gothic fiction. Charles Brockden Brown was deeply affected by these circumstances, as can be seen in Wieland. That novel inspired Logan by John Neal,[7] which is notable for rejecting British Gothic conventions in favor of distinctly American materials.[8]

Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving are often grouped together.

Salem Witch Trials
which he addresses in "The Custom House."

Southern American Gothic

Main article: Southern Gothic

The Southern Gothic includes stories set in the Southern United States, particularly following the Civil War and set in the economic and cultural decline that engulfed the region. Southern Gothic stories tend to focus on the decaying economic, educational and living standards of the post-Civil War South. There is often a heavy emphasis on race and class relations, while the rural environment provides an effective substitute for traditional Old World Gothic settings; for example, plantation estates fill the role of European castles. Some writers of Southern Gothic include William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty.

New American Gothic

Authors who fall under the category of "New American Gothic" include:

A Good Man is Hard to Find", "The Laughing Man", Wise Blood, The Lime Twig, The Haunting of Hill House
, and The Beetle Leg.

Note: Flannery O'Connor is cross-referenced as a Southern Gothic author.

Prominent examples

Notes

  1. ^ Allan Lloyd Smith, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction pp. 65–69 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003)
  2. ^ a b George Parsons Lathop, A Study of Hawthorne pp 300-309 (Scholarly Press, 1970)
  3. ISBN 978-0-8057-7230-2
    .
  4. ^ Allan Lloyd Smith, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction pp. 79–87 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)
  5. ^ Allan Lloyd Smith, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction page 114 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)
  6. ^ a b Allan Lloyd Smith, American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction pp. 94–108 (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)
  7. ISBN 9780226469690
    .
  8. S2CID 243142175
    .
  9. ^ Malin, Irving. "New American Gothic" pp.5-12 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1962)

External links

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