Southern Gothic Fiction Lesson Plan

According to the Oxford Dictionary online, “characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.”

That’s an academic way of saying Southern Gothic characters and events are extremely weird. That’s the Gothic part, at least. The Southern part, needless to say, refers to the setting.

Here’s more academic words from out good friends at the Oxford Dictionary:

“While related to both the English and American Gothic tradition, the Southern Gothic is uniquely rooted in the region’s tensions and aberrations. The United States may not have had old castles in which writers could place their Gothic romances, but after the Civil War, the many often ruined or decaying plantations and mansions in the South became uncanny locations for Gothic stories about sins, secrets, and the “haunting history” of the South.”

1. RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. 2. RL.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. 3. RL.9-10.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone). 4. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. 5. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. 6. W.9-10.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Procedures

1. Hand out notes or take notes on Southern Gothic Fiction. You may want students to annotate or you can just discuss. The Southern Gothic Fiction notes page can be printed and copied as is. I’ve also attached a Cornell notes page, because we all can agree that students love taking notes. 2. Read “A Rose for Emily” (or any other work of Southern Gothic fiction). 3. Write a paragraph or essay demonstrating that the work is an example of Southern Gothic fiction.

Evaluation (For those requiring remediation/redoing, simply repeat the assignment with another story)

• Formative Assessment: The chart should be thoroughly completed with insights that go beyond the obvious. • Summative Assignment: The aforementioned optional essay should be a summative assignment. • Summative Assignment: There will be questions regarding Gothic fiction on the quiz (included).

Elements of Gothic Horror and Gothic Fiction

Southern Gothic literature was inspired by early Gothic writing, a genre that was popular in 18th-century England. In Gothic literature, the authors wanted to expose problems they saw in society. The authors wrote fiction and included supernatural and romantic elements. There were often stories of hauntings, death, darkness and madness.

Southern Gothic literature is a genre of Southern writing. The stories often focus on grotesque themes. While it may include supernatural elements, it mainly focuses on alienated, damaged, even delusional, characters.

Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic writers leverage details from the American South—lonely plantations, aging Southern belles, dusty downtowns, dilapidated slave quarters, Spanish moss, and Southern charm—to bring the South’s dark history to light. 19th-century short story writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Nathaniel Hawthorne popularized the genre with stories steeped in folklore, oral history, suspense and local color. In the 1920s and 30s, William Faulkner’s heart-breaking tales of life in fictional Yoknapatawpha County made Southern Gothic popular again.

Other popular writers of Southern Gothic stories include Tenessee Williams, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers.

Common Subject Matter

• One of the defining features of Southern Gothic is the cast of off-kilter characters, many of whom are "not right in the head." The genre is riddled with many broken bodies, and even more broken souls. When Southern Gothic authors examine the human condition, they see the potential to do harm. The main characters of Southern Gothic are often strangers in strange places, small towns in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana or Georgia • In most Southern Gothic stories, there is a pivotal character or someone close to them who is set apart from the world by a disability or odd way of seeing the world. This fascination with the outsider is in many ways used to show readers not only the individuality of the southern culture, but also to connect each reader to their own unique "freakish" nature. • A common theme in Southern Gothic is imprisonment. This is often both literal and figurative. While many Southern Gothic tales include an incident where a character is sent to jail or locked up, there are also several gothic characters that live in fate's prison without hope of parole. • Southern gothic writers covered a period in the South's history when violence was particularly prevalent. After the bloodshed of the Civil War, and the period of reconstruction that followed, racial tension and fear ran high in many small southern towns. This plays its part in many of the stories of this genre. • It wouldn't be Southern Gothic if you didn't feel like you'd been thrust in the center of a dusty, peach- scented, lonely downtown where porch-bound widows rock gently on creaky rockers, rusty pick-up trucks drive by filled with grimy farmhands, the general store is run by the town drunk, and flies and mosquitoes circle glasses of ice-filled lemonade.

*Bjerre, Thomas Ærvold. “Southern Gothic Literature.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 20 June 2017.

*“GENRE: Southern Gothic.” Oprah.com, www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/southern-gothic-distinguising-features/all.

Surber, Katie. “Southern Gothic Literature: Definition, Characteristics & Authors.” Study.com, Study.com, study.com/academy/lesson/southern-gothic-literature- definition-characteristics-authors.html.

Southern Gothic

Directions: As you read “A Rose for Emily,” identify elements of Southern Gothic Fiction. In the left column, write the specific passage that exemplifies Southern Gothic Fiction. In the middle column, write which aspect of Southern Gothic it exemplifies. In the right column, write how the specific passage adds to the overall meaning of the work. Use your notes for help.

Specific Passage from the Selection Aspect of Gothic Fiction Analysis of Passage

“…the inside of her house, which no one Theme of Imprisonment The story’s setting immediately conjures up the theme of imprisonment, that this woman, for whatever reason, has imprisoned herself in her house, where save an old man-servant--a combined Hiding of a Dark Secret it’s likely she is hiding a dark secret. gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.”

“But garages and cotton gins had encroached The house—once great—has become an eyesore. The house and obliterated even the august names of that reflects its inhabitant(s). The story’s protagonist fulfills the Decay neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, Southern belle requirement of leveraging the American South. lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above Leveraging the American South the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores.”

Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the Setting/Leveraging the American The mayor is a colonel—an indirect reference to the Civil War, edict that no Negro woman should appear on the South perhaps. In addition, racist laws, such as the one passed by the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes mayor hearken back to a darker time in the South’s history.

“So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we Strange characters—characters There are hints that Emily suffers from insanity, hints that her were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with set apart from the world by a behavior confirms. Emily becomes the ultimate outsider—despite insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down freakish nature. being indoors all the time. all of her chances if they had really materialized.”

“She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut Decay and fascination with the Yellow pillows, moldy with age can be categorized as part of a bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow outsider decaying house. The town sure seems to take quite an interest in yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.” Emily, don’t you think?

Southern Gothic Fiction

Directions: As you read “A Rose for Emily,” identify elements of Southern Gothic fiction. In the left column, write the specific passage that exemplifies Southern Gothic fiction. In the middle column, write which aspect of Southern Gothic it exemplifies. In the right column, write how the specific passage adds to the overall meaning of the work. Use your notes for help.

Specific Passage from the Selection Aspect of Gothic Fiction Analysis of Passage

CORNELL NOTES Name: ______Class: ______Topic: ______Date: ______/ _____/ ______Period ______

QUESTIONS NOTES

SUMMARY: Write 2-3 sentences describing specific learning from these notes.

For a complete list of lesson plans, check out the ELA Common Core Lesson Plans catalogue.

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