Southern Gothic Characteristics

Southern Gothic genre has emphasized the culture of American Literature. It exposes the ideal beliefs and thought of readers and writers in this era. The traits of Southern Gothic are moral blindness, disturbed personalities, and macabre situations. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor, “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner all exhibit this. The traits of Southern Gothic are portrayed through the disturbed personalities and macabre situations of the characters. In Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, a grandmother and her family are going on a vacation to Florida, closer to the misfit that escaped. Before the family even gets in the car, the grandmother exhibits

“My family has lived here for better than a hundred years. My grandmother planted these roses, and my mother tended to them, just as I do. I’ve watched my town grow” (Jackson 188). She thinks she has an advantage and that it is her town because of her pedigree; however, just because a past family member had a “head” in the town doesn’t mean that the youngest one, in this case Miss Strangeworth, have the right to write mean letters to townspeople. Miss Strangeworth demonstrates the traits of being an outsider by making herself different than others in the town. This is shown through her letters and the way of acting to others; she does this on an elevated level that is outside of the norm. “The third caught on the edge and fell outside onto the ground at Miss Strangeworth’s feet. She did not notice it because she was wondering whether a letter to the Harris boys father might not be of some service in wiping out this potential badness” (Jackson 198). Miss Strangeworth thinks she can hide what she is doing but she can’t. She shows her moral blindness here because she doesn’t think that anybody is ever going to find out; however, she doesn’t realize what she did because of her interest in making others aware of the badness going on in her town. Shirley Jackson wanted to exhibit the blindness of his characters to fully express what Southern Gothic Literature was supposed to bring