Southern Gothic Romanticism

Southern Gothic Romanticism

Southern Gothic Romanticism is a type of Gothic Romanticism that usually occurs in Southern America. This type of Romanticism has horror in it, and at the end of each story usually leaves the reader hanging onto the story, because it never fully ends. In Southern Gothic Romanticism, it sometimes occurs in an old farmhouse, or something bizarre at the farm, just like "The Life You Save May be Your Own." For example in, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own", Mr. Shiflet states, "My mother was an angel of Gawd" and "He took her from Heaven and giver to me and I left her." (O'Connor) Mr. Shiflet stating this in the story leaves the reader hanging by not telling why he left his mother, but it also led the reader to know why he wanted to treat his new wife so well. This is all caused by when he accidentally picked up a hitchhiker and Mr. Shiflet was persuading the hitchhiker not to eave, because he once did and it was a very bad decision on his part. This leads to why Mr. Shiflet does not want Lucynell to leave her mother, because she is very well protected and taken care of. In "A Rose for Emily", it says, "Then we noticed in the second pillow was an indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair." (Faulkner) This left the reader wondering if Emily's spirit was really still alive or if it was dead. Both of these stories have an elderly woman as the main characters and each one has to go through a rough time, before coming out better.

In "A Rose for Emily", she is always teaching people how to paint the china, and people wanted to continue to learn, so they didn't say anything about her crime until after her death. In the story, everyone was always feeling sorry for Miss Emily, it states "That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all." Miss Emily had no one in her life according to that statement. It also says in the beginning of the story, "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity." So, even though people felt sorry for her, she did not want and charity, but yet, she was very important to the town.

In "The Life You Save May be Your Own", when Mr. Shiflet picks up the hitchhiker it makes the story work because it tells why he left his mother and began looking for a new wife. It also makes it work by hinting why he doesn't want Lucynell to leave, because he didn't want to take her away from her mother, because his regret of leaving his mother was terrible. Mr. Shiflet says in the story, "I never rued a day in my life like the day I rued when I left that old mother of mine."