![gothic literature and magical realism similarities gothic literature and magical realism similarities](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5947cd283a041105663f21ea/1597918225131-OCF4TSHA3XOCG0PTAHUA/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kNiEM88mrzHRsd1mQ3bxVct7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0s0XaMNjCqAzRibjnE_wBlkZ2axuMlPfqFLWy-3Tjp4nKScCHg1XF4aLsQJlo6oYbA/nightmare.jpg)
Southern Gothic particularly focuses on the South's history of slavery, racism, fear of the outside world, violence, a "fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements". Some of these characteristics include exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities. However, the setting of these works is distinctly Southern. Many characteristics in Southern Gothic Literature relate to its parent genre of American gothic and even to European gothic. Warped rural communities replaced the sinister plantations of an earlier age and in the works of leading figures such as William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor, the representation of the South blossomed into an absurdist critique of modernity as a whole. Thus unlike its parent genre, it uses the Gothic tools not solely for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South – Gothic elements often taking place in a magic realist context rather than a strictly fantastical one. The Southern Gothic style employs macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South. Seward Plantation House, a typical Southern Plantation It was so negatively viewed at first that Eudora Welty said: "They better not call me that!" Characteristics She included the authors in what she called the "Southern Gothic School" in 1935, stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares". Ellen Glasgow used the term in this way when she referred to the writings of Erskine Caldwell and William Faulkner. The term "Southern Gothic" was originally pejorative and dismissive. The resulting poverty and lingering bitterness over the loss of the Civil War in the region during Reconstruction exacerbated the racism, excessive violence, and religious extremism endemic to the region. The thematic material was largely a reflection of the culture existing in the South following the collapse of the Confederacy as a consequence of the Civil War, which left a vacuum in its cultural and religious values. The genre was consolidated, however, only in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged in a new and powerful form of social critique. Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South were first apparent during the ante- and post-bellum 19th century in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and in the de-idealized representations of Mark Twain.