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Southern Gothic Romanticism questions


 Southern Gothic Romanticism is exactly what it sounds like. It's Gothic Romanticism focused on the southern United States. The main trait of this, along with the normal Gothic Romantic traits and being in the south, is the presentation of Gothic Romantic. These traits are used to explore social problems of the south by using spooky and macabre events to examine southern culture. And of course, as is expected of Southern Gothic Romanticism, these stories present the location trait of Southern Gothic Romanticism. These two stories compare to Dark Romanticism through character presentation.These two stories also present a character that can be seen as grotesque and indecisive in their feelings toward someone ("A Rose for Emily" has Emily while Mr Shiftlet is for "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"). "A Rose for Emily" also brings a lot of disturbing topics with the story, including murder, a decaying mansion, and, most disturbing, necrophilia. With these dark and horrifying topics, these two stories are reeking of Dark Romanticism, but "A Rose for Emily" reeks just a bit more.

  In the short story "A Rose for Emily," Emily is a woman who goes through a rough life, but eventually finds love. However, she kills her spouse with arsenic. Not only that, she was also a thanatophiliac, which is usually illegal. This crime goes undetected until the day after her death. This is because there was "one room in that region abovestairs which no one had seen in forty years." The room had been blocked off from public entrance since Homer Barron and her had wed, so no one had been there in, as the quote states, forty years. Also, for the majority of Emily's life, her front door was "closed." This implies that Emily was not seen at all, save for from a window occasionally, so no one could really ask Emily what was going on or why her house stank. Because it apparently stank really bad. One more reason is just that: her house stank. It was really disgusting, and someone even filed a complaint, and another followed after that.

 In "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," there is a character that goes by the name of Mr Shiftlet. Mr Shiftlet abandons his wife at a diner and soon regrets it. About the time he's regretting it, he finds a hitchhiker. As he's conversing with the hitchhiker, the story takes a new twist. Mr Shiftlet talks about mothers, and this diatribe sets the hitchhiker off. The hitchhiker calls his mother an old flea bag and Mr Shiftlet's a stinking pole cat. This makes the story because as is implied by he felt a responsibility to pick up a hitchhiker since he has a car. This responsibility gives him time to contemplate what he's going to say to the hitchhiker when he picks him/ her up. The back and forth was premeditated. We can see that this premeditation of events is present throughout the story, mainly through the events that took place for him to obtain the car. From this we can establish what type of person Mr Shiftlet is: a person who needs everything to go perfect and will plan out everything to get something to be perfect. And this is perfect for what Mr Shiftlet does in the story. This is how the back and forth with the hitchhiker Mr Shiftlet picks up makes the story.