Southern Gothic
Stephen Witt Tarantino
Vines on a Dusty Rocking Chair A preface to Southern Gothic “My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, ‘All southern literature can be summed up in these words: On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.” - Pat Conroy
Picture a white plantation. On its side there is a winding trellis of vines that have overcome the frame of the home. The navy shutters are peeling, displaying a grey skeleton beneath. The home itself slumps over from exhaustion. It teeters, like an old man. Its chimney is rigid, and black from moss. The windows have been shattered, leaving the plantation agape to the elements. The porch is warped, and the rocking chairs sit in grooves created by their own back and forth motion. They are moving now, being swayed by the wind. They shutter and creak as they go, like sickly dogs. The boards beneath your feet call back to heaving breathe from the chairs. The sun has wrinkled the columns around the estate, and they look like towels being wrung. You go in, past the storm door that’s missing its screen. The ground is covered with dirt. There is dust, mold, and spores in the air. Your throat collapses on itself as your lungs vehemently push out the toxins. You hear the scuttle of mice, and you see the cobwebs stretching from corner to corner. The mirror above the mantel is covered with a natural tented cloth. The grandfather clock is still ticking, but off tempo like a broken metronome. You walk up to the mirror. You walk to the beat of the clock, the creaks of the boards enhance your apprehension as you approach the tattered canvas cloth, and you pull it away. There you are, looking back at yourself. You see something out of the corner of your eye. A black heap is sitting in the chez behind you. Your heart clambers against your rib cage as it makes a desperate leap out of your chest. The heap is your mother. At this point you don’t know what’s more terrifying; that your deceased mother is sitting in the chair behind you, or that someone put her there. I am enthralled with psychological thriller. When this project was proposed I immediately went to Gothic literature. However, I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I wanted something dark and exciting, but I didn’t know where to
turn. I remembered the first play I saw, The Glass Menagerie, a dark comedy written by Tennessee Williams. I wanted to incorporate his works into my project somehow. I went through my books at home, and discovered a tattered copy of Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. My mother is a true southerner and that was her first show. I remembered hearing stories about it, so I knew I wanted to put that into my project. I thought about what these two works had in common, and that was Southern Gothic. They were both written by prominent Southern Gothic writers. With my connection to the south through my lineage and my desire to explore more of the macabre, I finally chose Southern Gothic. For my project I chose; 27 Wagons full of Cotton a short story by Tennessee Williams. This short story plays to its reader’s realistic fears. It deals with issues such as rape and adultery, and bundles them into five well-written pages. I also chose two poems, Southern Gothic and Counting the Mad, by Donald Justice. The first defines the genre as a whole, and the second has an eerie setting at an asylum, where each character is an “other” in his own way. Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley was the play I chose. It is a black comedy that centers around three odd sisters and a murder that has overcome them all. Finally I chose Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote for my novel. It is about the struggles of living a life that differs from the “norm” of one’s gender. Each work presents relevant points that enhance my exploration of the genre, and each has been a pleasure to explore.
White Columns, Black Shudders An exploration of the Southern Gothic genre and the aspects that differentiate it from other genres of literature “Have you never heard what the wise man say: all of the future exists in the past.� -Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms The gothic genre emerged in the 1800’s with supernatural tales that would, eventually, lay the groundwork for a new thriller of the antebellum persuasion. Southern Gothic deals with many of the themes presented in Gothic texts, but with a modern, southern twist on horror. This genre takes ideals of regular Gothic literature, like the works of Emily Bronte and Mary Shelley, and makes them more realistic. Instead of having an ominous creature created in the lab as an antagonist, a southern gothic text might have a rapist as the bad guy. This variety of literature plays on everyday fears, instead of introducing monsters or unimaginable plots. Southern Gothics literature began around 1920, and continues to be a dominating genre in modern culture. It is filled with many elements similar to its predecessor, but it stands out as its own dominating category. Southern Gothic is a perfect blend between the old and the new. It deals with old issues and beliefs, and modernizes them to be relevant to a current audience. It introduces quirky characters, antebellum architecture in a state of decay and grace, and the common lore of the southern community as themes never before seen in contemporary writing. Characterization is an enticing way to captivate a crowd. Southern gothic is distinguished by its use of colorful, idiosyncratic characters, and their contrast to characters in the parent genre. Instead of a monster, like Dracula, an antagonist may be portrayed as an old, spiteful, reclusive spinster, or an uneducated drunk. This genre takes the every day, and transmits impulsive fears into our psyche. Often a protagonist is a young, innocent soul who must be broken. The stories are often set amongst architecture that once stood as the pinnacle of the southern idea, and has decayed into a worn, undesirable state. The Gothics usually include an outsider, someone longing to get in, but is constantly pushed away due to the occasionally hypocritical southern gentiles.
The characters are imprisoned, either within themselves, their communities, or in a physical enclosure. A good example of all these themes molded into one is To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. This book, known well by the youth of our middle schools, encompasses all these ideals. With Arthur Radley, an overbearing father, and Bob Ewel, a low class farmer as the Monsters, Scout is the innocent protagonist in the worn out southern town, Tom Robinson, a black man, is the outsider, and Boo, a shut-in, and Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, are the trapped characters. Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, a close friend to Harper Lee, is another piece of Southern Gothic literature that deals with the “other” character. This novel deals with the affects of being homosexual in a conservative world. Counting the Mad by Donald Justice tackles the trapped characters. It is a poem about an asylum where everyone is forced to stay in, like a prison. Although characters are key in the forefront of the southern gothic scene, architecture supplies a paramount backdrop to the genre. As the south flourished before the Civil War, its architecture was becoming more ornate. Antebellum structures were often Greek revivals, incorporating massive columns, white clapboards and it’s own farmhouse details. As the war encroached over the Mason-Dixon line, these towering mansions were abandoned, or converted into makeshift hospitals. After the war, they never really returned to their grand state. They were impractical, and began to waste away. They weren’t cared for, and no one had the economic resources to continue with the upkeep. In the ages of Southern Gothic, these houses remained obsolete. They represented a culture that had been forgotten, but was still somehow relevant in society. They acted as a status symbol. They provided families with a legacy, and a reputation. A good example of this is the ramshackled farm in Twenty Seven Wagons Full of Cotton. The home represents the lower status of it’s inhabitants. On the other side of things, The mystery of these estates allows them to become the perfect scenery for the mysterious, psychological twister that is Southern Gothic. Even with a big antebellum house and kooky characters it’s just not southern without a little bit of local legend.
Hoodoo is a form of black magic, often associated with the Louisiana bayou communities. The common thought is that it only works on you if you believe. This concept of belief is reoccurring in Southern gothic, and often plays into the lore of a town. These myths build into a dark story as they provide an eerie tone to any common situation but shrouding it in terrifying folklore. A good example of this is the rumors surrounding Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Some of the rumors include him killing stabbing his father, and running around at night eating squirrels and possums. This amplifies the fear of Boo in the town, and unjustly portrays him in a bad light. These common folklores are a large part of the set up to most dark Dixieland tales. Gossip spreads quickly in the south, and there is no text that better demonstrates this than Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart. This play deals with a group of sisters that have all become pariahs within the town. One can’t get married, one wants to be famous but fails, and the third tried to kill her husband. The word of these occurrences spreads like wild fire, and it becomes a piece of the common lore within the town. These principles of Southern Gothic writing are illustrated in aforementioned works such as Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley, Counting the Mad and Southern Gothic by Donald Justice, and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton by Tennessee Williams. Each text provides a much-needed insight into the mind-boggling world of psychological thriller that is Southern Gothic, and a key into the minds of some of the South’s most famous authors.
The Man, The Myth, and the House
An examination of Other Voices, Other Rooms in relation to Southern Gothic If you look inside Other Voices, Other Rooms and read a bit, you may be able to spot the similarities between that and To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s characters and it’s storyline. The sense of innocence accompanied by the corruption of said innocence. The Southern town, with its roots in antebellum origins, and its gossip spilling from the local women. The socioeconomic divide between the races, and the households. The idea of family reputation, the longer a family has lived there, the better their image. All of these elements are painted into the bindings of both To Kill a Mockingbird and Other Voices, Other Rooms. The authors, Harper Lee of the former and Truman Capote of the later, were childhood friends. In fact, each plays a role in the other’s novels. In To Kill a Mockingbird Capote makes a cameo appearance as Dill, the quirky neighbor to Scout who is based off of Harper Lee herself. In Other Voices, Other Rooms Lee appears as the rugged tomboy neighbor, Idabel, who befriends Joel Knox. Despite the similarities in the novels, Other Voices, Other Rooms is more evocative to what Southern Gothic truly embodies. Capote’s novel explores all aspects of the genre, including the other, the decay of antebellum architecture, and lore of the rural bayou town. The main character, a caricature of Capote himself, embellishes each part as he embarks on a journey of mind and spirit. The “Other” is a character that is often over looked by society. Their status has been debilitated by the rumors spreading through the town. They are shutins, and hermits. They are categorized by their skin color, age, handicaps, origins, backgrounds or sexualities. Capote himself felt the chills of the other status. His 17-year-old mother left him and his father when Capote was only 4. He went to live with his extended family in Alabama, until age 11 when he rejoined his mother and step-father in New York. He never truly had a home, and therefore didn’t have a preexisting status to fall on. He was an unknown entity to a closed off small southern town, and therefore, started off his life with an “other” status. Joel Harrison Knox, Capote’s caricature, is presented with a similar predicament.
His mother dies at a young age and he is sent to live with his Aunt Ellen. She then sends him to live with his father and stepmother in a small Mississippi town. When he arrives he instantly meets many “other” characters. The first is Idabel, a tomboy that befriends Joel. He meets his Stepmother, a quiet, sniveling woman with a lame hand and his uncle, a cross dressing gay man. All three are looked on with a bit of distaste by the rest of the town. They don’t fit the normal gender molds, or the expectations of their society. As Capote grew up he learned to accept his own homosexuality, and he personifies his own experiences of living in a non-accepting deep south town through the other characters in the novel. Not only do the characters distance themselves from the norm through their own personalities, but by being reclusive. Idabel lives out of town, as well as the uncle, the stepmother and Joel, who all live together in a dilapidated antebellum plantation home a long ride out of town. A house can say a lot about a person. Homes reflect the personalities of the people in them. In a novel they can foreshadow plot points, or just set the mood of a scene. The grand estate that Joel and his extended family live in say a lot about the characters. It is set back away from the town. It is magnificent, but in a state of decay. It is falling into the ground. Much like Joel’s father, who Joel discovers in his room one day. He was once a large, stately man, but had been stricken with illness and decrepitude, much like the house. The ancient architecture represents the stand still of time in this Deep South town. One house undergoes drastic changes in no time at all. There is a Hermit in the novel. He lives out in an old Casino that used to be a roaring establishment. That is, until two horrific deaths occurred. After that, it became an empty vessel. Only the Hermit, and some wildlife inhabited it. Not only does the architecture waste away, but also this blow stunted the economy. The progress that the Casino supplied could not continue, and so everything paused. It just goes to show what a little bit of local legend can do in a small town. The south is rampant with funny sayings, myths and stories. Sometimes these are a result of a child’s fairy tale. Sometimes they stem from an actual event that has been stretched and manipulated into something more supernatural. Word spreads quickly in a small town. In Other Voices, Other Rooms there is a
lot of stigma surrounding Joel’s shut in Uncle. Idabel is also a common topic of conversation. Because of her refusal to conform to the stereotype of a girl people in the town almost fear her. They think she is odd, and unnatural. Some of the legends are even more eerie. Zoo is the housekeeper for the estate. She is an African-American woman with a long scar running horizontal over her neck. Her husband gave it to her one night, after leaving her life forever. However, she believes that he has been brought back as a dog, and will kill her when he gets the chance. Another character that believes whole-heartedly in the mystical side is the hermit that lives in the Casino. He is a sort of witch-doctor type that makes potions and talismans of magic. He truly believes in these, and it is that same passion for belief that drives the folklore in the town, and continues the rumors. Other Voices, Other Rooms is a quintessential southern gothic novel. It evokes all the characteristics of a true southern gothic work. It is not a “spooky� or paranormal tale. It is truer than that. It deals with the human psyche and human emotion, and is able to create an element of fear without producing a ghost story. It tells the tale of uncommon people, living in odd houses, being kept there by vicious rumors.
A Cool Pitcher of Lemonade Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley and it’s relation to Southern Gothic as a genre
“There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.” -Albert Camus
In the face of adversity, three sisters triumph with laughter. Crime’s of the Heart, written by Beth Henley, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize was published in 1981. It is a witty black comedy, with the undertones of a brilliant Southern Gothic. Henley has written works such as Am I Blue and The Miss Firecracker Contest. Henley is a master in utilizing the elements of Southern Gothic, and is able to breath a new life into the genre. Crimes of the Heart illustrates her abilities and talents while highlighting many of the elements of the Sothern Gothic The Magrath sisters are quite the dysfunctional family members. The oldest is Lenora Magrath, or Lenny to her sisters. She is a single woman that just turned thirty; in fact it is her birthday. When the curtain rises, Lenny is the only one on stage. Henley uses descriptive stage directions to guide any director through her script. The best representation of this is in the beginning. Lights up on the empty kitchen. It is late afternoon. Lenny Magrath, a thirtyyear old woman with a round figure and face, enters from the back door carrying a white suitcase, and a brown paper sack. She sets the suitcase and the sax case down and takes the brown sack to the kitchen table. After glancing quickly at the door, she gets the cookie jar from the kitchen counter, a box of matches from the stove and then brings both objects back down to the kitchen table. Excitedly, she reaches into the brown sack and pulls out a package of birthday candles. She tries to stick the candle into a cookie—it falls off. She sticks the candle in again but the cookie is too hard and crumbles. Frantically, she gets a second cookie from the jar. She strikes the match, lights the candle and begins dripping wax onto the cookie. Just as she is beginning to smile we hear Chick’s voice offstage. (Henley, 5)
Following Henley’s graphic stage direction, the audience is introduced to Chick. Chick is a slightly older cousin to the Magrath sisters. She lives next door to Lenny. Lenny lives in what used to be her grandfathers home. Throughout the entire first scene, the audience is captivated by one simple task. As the two
women discuss minute things Chick is trying to put on size extra petit pantyhose. When Chick exits, Doc enters. He has come to tell Lenny that her horse, Billy Boy, was struck by lighting and has passed. Doc is one of two male characters seen in the play. He was once in love with the middle Magrath sister, Meg. However, after a tragic incident involving a tornado that left Doc crippled, the two split up. The twist is they both still have feelings for one another, but Doc is now married with kids. When Doc leaves, Lenny continues her experience with the cookie. She finally is able to place the candle in the cookie. She lights the candle, and sings Happy Birthday to herself. She blows out the candle, and repeats this ritual until Meg bursts into the home. Meg is younger than Lenny by three years. She has left the small Mississippi town to pursue a career as a singer. They begin to talk about Lenny’s birthday, and getting older. The conversation turns to their youngest sister, Babe. The audience learns that Babe has shot her husband, Zachary, in the stomach and is about to enter a sticky court situation. She has put up bail, and will be coming home very shortly. Babe enters the house, and the story quickly picks up. We discover that the Magrath sister’s grandfather is deathly ill, that Meg has given up her dreams, Babe shot her husband because “she just didn’t like his looks” but, in fact, she had been sleeping with the help and feared her husband’s wrath. Babe has a young lawyer by the name of Barnette. He has his own vendetta against Zachary, Babe’s husband, and vows to take him down and reveal him for the crook he is. To the hopeful audiences out there, keep in mind that this play must be taken with a grain of salt. It deals with many touchy subjects, and is not to be taken lightly. It is dark, and embodies all the elements of Southern Gothic, such as the other, which is represented by the sex scandal with the help, the architecture, which includes the slanting house Lenny lives in, and the lore of the town which surrounds the Magrath sisters and their own mother’s suicide. It also discusses familial issues, like fidelity and sibling rivalries that are often taboo in common society. Henley pushes the envelope, and walks a thin line between comedy and discomfort with ease. I can say, after appearing in almost 50 plays, and reading many more, that this script is one of the best I have ever read, and I hope to work on it in the future.
With an attempted homicide on their hands, a conservative, overbearing cousin next door, and their failing grandfather’s health, the Magrath sisters have a lot to deal with. Crimes of the Heart navigates these intense motifs by injecting a certain element of comedy that is necessary in such a heavy plot. In every dark situation, no matter how long, there must always be just one minute where everyone is laughing, and that is the message Henley has conveyed.
Mint Juleps In a Haunted House
An Analysis of “Counting the Mad” and “Southern Gothic” by Donald Justice
Donald JusticDonald Justice was born on August 12, 1925 in Miami, Florida. Justice continued to live in Florida, and got his bachelor’s degree after graduating from the University of Miami. He continued his education at the University of North Carolina, where he received an M.A. He then studied a brief time at Stanford University, and then earned his doctorate at the University of Iowa. He completed his educational career in 1954 when he became an educator himself. He taught for the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. This workshop was the first place to offer a graduate program for creative writing. He continued his educational career at Syracuse University, then the University of California, then Princeton, University of Virginia, and finally he came back to his home turf at University of Florida. During his poetic career, Donald Justice published 13 collections of poetry. His first collection, entitled The Summer Anniversaries, won the Lamont Poetry Prize. Another collection, called Selected Poems, won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He was also awarded the Bollingen Prize, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Justice wrote from the late 40’s through the early 2000s. Justice’s poetry was influenced by his surroundings, and his location. Florida is well below the Mason-Dixon line, and although it isn’t always thought of as being very “southern”, it has many of the same influences as the other southern states. The first poem is Southern Gothic. It eloquently describes the ways of Southern Gothic literature. It brings its audience through all the stages of the genre, paying close attention to the architectural aspects. The second piece is entitled Counting the Mad. This poem deals more with the psychological thrill of the genre. The two, together, describe the genre very thoroughly.
SOUTHERN GOTHIC By Donald Justice Something of how the homing bee at dusk Seems to inquire, perplexed, how there can be No flowers here, not even withered stalks of flowers Conjures a garden where no garden is And trellises too frail almost to bear The memory of a rose, much less a rose. Great oaks, more monumentally great oaks now Than ever when the living rose was new, Cast shade that is the more completely shade Upon a house of broken windows merely And empty nests up under broken eaves. No damask any more prevented the moon, But it unravels, peeling from a wall, Red roses within roses within roses. This piece uses many southern motifs that are placed into a dark light. The beginning discuses a bee, a small insect with a vicious sting. This creature is a brilliant metaphor for the Southern Gothic genre. Much like the bee, it is very gentil, and careful. It flits about among the flowers, and the sunlight. Behind all the light though, there is a dark side. The flowers have wilted away, and the bee seems much less innocent. When one reads the passages regarding the garden, one has the sense of wilting. Southern Gothic is all about the decay of beauty. This garden is destroyed, much like a regal antebellum estate. The genre discusses the issues of the decay, and paints a ghostly image. The lines “And trellises too frail almost to bear the memory of a rose, much less a rose.� Suggest the run down architecture that once stood beautifully amongst the fertile plantation fields. The next lines about the great oaks convey an image of a long dirt road leading up to this estate. However, even they are decrepit, and
overgrown. It casts this ethereal shadow over the entire plantation. The house in the poem is just as rundown as everything else, with vacant birds nests in the eaves. The moon shines down into the house, and a gleam against the wallpaper with it’s faded red roses. The language in this piece is very formal, almost like a Shakespearean sonnet. However, it has no rhyme scheme or form. It is free, and broken in its lines. In a way, the structure of this poem parallels the southern structures it discusses. It has many elements that are formal, and old, but it is also missing many parts that would make it formal. This poem deals with the spine-chilling horror of the decrepit architecture left over from the devastation of the Civil War. COUNTING THE MAD By Donald Justice This one was put in a jacket, This one was sent home, This one was given bread and meat But would eat none, And this one cried No No No No All day long. This one looked at the window As though it were a wall, This one saw things that were not there, And this one cried No No No No All day long. This one thought himself a bird, This one a dog, And this one thought himself a man, An ordinary man, And cried and cried No No No No All day long. Everyone knows the old nursery rhyme “this little piggy”. This poem is reminiscent of that, but it has very dark undertones. This poem appears to be set in a mental institution, and much like “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”, it
compares the innocence of a child to the dilapidated state of the mentally insane psyche. The first line refers to a mentally insane person being put in a straight jacket, the second is one being discharged from the facilities, and the third to someone who refuses to eat. The last one talks about someone crying “no” repeatedly. It effectively portrays a dark scene of a backwards sanatorium. One can almost see the white walls, and the bad lighting. The second stanza discuses someone looking at a wall, and imagining a window, the third line talks about schizophrenia, and the last part is the same person repeating “no”. The next stanza discusses people that believe they are animals. The third and fourth lines of this stanza depict a man that is wrongly in this place, he isn’t insane, and he is the person that cries no. Because of everything he has seen, he is truly the insane one. The repetition in this poem creates a greater feeling of urgency. “No No No No” and “All day long” are repeated in each stanza, which plays to the psychiatric aspects of this piece. The poem really illustrates the psychological motifs of the Southern Gothic genre.
27 Wagons Full of Lust We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal. -Tennessee Williams
The story begins at a Cotton Gin, the quintessential representation of southern life, post war in the early part of the 20th century, when agrarian industry was still relevant and vital to society at a local level. Jake Meighan owns a gin, and the night before this story takes place he sees the local Syndicate Plantation go up in flames. He reckons that the cotton from that plantation will need somewhere to be ginned, and his gin is the closest. The next day the superintendent of the Syndicate Gin arrives, and has tasked Jake with ginning 27 wagons of cotton. When the story begins, Jake is only on his 15 th wagon full. His wife is sitting on the porch with the superintendent, entertaining him, and flirting with him. Before too long Mrs. Meighan begins to feel threatened, and fears that the whole act of flirting has gone too far. Several aspects make up this story that could categorize it as a Southern Gothic piece. The three most important ones are the location, the “other� characters within the piece, and the elements of horror, especially of evoking a satanic demon. In order to understand the work, one must understand Tennessee Williams. He was born Thomas Lanier Williams III to an alcoholic shoe salesman, and a stereotypical southern belle. He attended college at University of Missouri, but after failing a Military exam he was pulled out by his father. He went to work in the shoe company, but was very unhappy. He applied to schools, and attended University of Iowa, graduated with a bachelor in English and then studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School. William’s first success was entitled The Glass Menagerie. It is based upon his own early life growing up. The main character, Amanda Wingfield, is just as snobbish and stereotypical of a southern woman as his own mother was. He references his own high school within the play, and deals with the moody sister that he had. This sister, in real life, would later be diagnoses with schizophrenia. This resulted in her
lobotimization in 1943, which did not end well. Williams had his sister moved to a care facility in New York where he would often visit. The stress of this ultimately fueled his alcoholism, which spiraled into drug use, and ultimately his death. Williams’s own tragic life inspired many works of his. Each deals with a different sinister aspect of our contemporary society. Twenty Seven Wagons full of Cotton is no different 27 Wagons full of Cotton is a short story set in a rural Mississippi town. The setting acts as a backdrop to the story. The piece begins, and immediately the reader is transported to a humid rolling cotton field, mid day, on the porch of a tattered old farmhouse stuck in the period it was constructed. The cotton pollen swarms in the air, and one can almost feel it collecting on ones skin. A reader can feel the exhaustion and tension radiating off Jake as he works through the piles of cotton waiting for the Gin. Even the speech of the characters helps set the scene. Everyone talks with a deep droll, “Quit that switching me!” and “Leave ‘em be. They don’t hurt nothin’”. The backdrop is there, like the set of a play, waiting for its players to enter. The characters in this plot are dysfunctional. Jake, the head of this household and the main worker at the gin, is the neutral character. He doesn’t play into the plot, except to set the scene. The other two are Mrs. Meighan and the superintendent of the Syndicate Plantation. Mrs. Meighan is a very big woman. She describes herself as “the biggest woman in this part of the state.” She isolates herself from the wrest of her southern community because of her size. She is vulnerable, and just what the superintendent is looking for. The superintendent is a short man. He isn’t what one would think of when they picture southern gentleman. He has power. His plantation supports the entire town, and sustains its economy. He likes his power; he even walks around with a switch that he uses to playfully flirt with Mrs. Meighan. Their flirting continues, and continues to an uncomfortable level. The characters are out of the norm, and their uncharacteristic body types and personalities put them both in a situation that clearly defines this piece as Southern Gothic. As Jake works feverishly away, filling the wagons full of cotton, his wife finds herself in horrifying situation. The superintendent has thrust his authority
on her, using her insecurities to achieve is goal. He reels her in with his charm, and reveals himself. In the beginning, he is described as a powerless flirty man, but by the end he metamophisizes into a tremendous beast. One sees him as a demon, or even Satan. The piece turns from a story about adultery quickly into a piece about the trauma of rape. The story isn’t supernatural; it isn’t about specters, black magic, or a haunted house. It’s about man’s atrocity. This piece is gothic not because it instills fear through the occult, but because it discusses a fear that is very real, and very alive.
Bibliography Capote, Truman. Other Voices, Other Rooms. New York: Random House, 1948. Print. Williams, Tennessee. Collected Stories. New York: New Directions Pub., 1985. Print. Henley, Beth. Crimes of the Heart: A Play. New York: Viking, 1982. Print. Justice, Donald. Collected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Print. "Tennessee Williams." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 30 May 2014. Web. 02 June 2014. Abandoned Plantation. N.d. Laneward.com. Web. 2 June 2014. "Beth Henley." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 06 Jan. 2014. Web. 02 June 2014. "Donald Justice." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 02 June 2014. “Truman Capote.” PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 02 June 2014.