Abandoned houses, eccentric relatives, murderers, rapists and preachers all show up in Southern Gothic Novels. These tales often contain flawed, bigger-than-life characters. Characters who are quirky, intense, and often commit a necessary sin to set them firmly on the path to seeking redemption. Or not.
Southern Gothic Novels are packed with mystery, all the while rooted in the landscape. In southern gothic novels the South is itself a character that is haunted by the past. Ghosts show up to remind us of our need to transform our history.
When asked about the grotesque [or the gothic element] in southern fiction, southern writer Flannery O’Connor had this to say:
“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”
Here are the names of 20 novels and short story collections (in no particular order) of the 94 listed on goodreads as the Best Southern Gothic Literature. Maybe you’ve heard of some of them.
- To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee - The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner - Wise Blood
by Flannery O’Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
by Flannery O’Connor - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (This isn’t a novel. I’m not sure why it’s on this list!)
by John Berendt - Light in August
by William Faulkner - Other Voices, Other Rooms
by Truman Capote - A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers - A Rose for Emily
by William Faulkner - A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole - Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy - Beloved
by Toni Morrison - Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
by Flannery O’Connor - Winter’s Bone
by Daniel Woodrell - A Land More Kind Than Home
by Wiley Cash - The Collected Stories
by Eudora Welty - Swamplandia!
by Karen Russell (Goodreads Author) - The Secret Sense of Wildflower
by Susan Gabriel (Goodreads Author)
I hope you know more about Southern Gothic Novels now than when you first started reading. Are some of your favorite books on this list or are there any you would add? I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Thanks for reading! xo
P.S. I’m an ex-shrink who writes novels. Check out my books here.
What about Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell
Yes, that’s a huge one, Nila. An epic southern novel. Thanks for your input!
Would “The Condor Passes” by Shirley Ann Grau fit that bill?
Hi Beverley. I hate to admit I hadn’t heard of The Condor Passes, so you would be a better judge than me if it is southern gothic. But since another commenter mentioned Gone With the Wind, the least we can do is mention Shirley Ann Grau, a great southern writer. I think when we categorize a work as southern gothic, it simply means the story has an element of darkness or quirkiness to it that nudges it over into that category.
My novel The Secret Sense of Wildflower has the main character hanging out in a cemetery talking to her dead father. It could be considered a family saga, southern fiction, historical fiction and also literary fiction. But when the story takes a dark turn in the middle of the novel, readers tend to put it in the southern gothic category. The rest of the story is spent seeking out the light again. Call it redemption if you’d like, but the light does return.
Thanks for coming by Beverley, and for your welcome reminder of Shirley Ann Grau.