Savannah Defines the Gothic City Part Two

The People:
 Another thing to consider before we look further at Savannah as Southern Gothic is its particular history. Maybe because Savannah unlike its neighbor to the North was not the elites from the Caribbean plantations but the poor and middle class settlers who were to act as a military buffer for the Carolinas from the Spanish in Florida. These were people that tragedy and the injustice of society would be self evident. They are those waiting for wealth or at least a better life. They are the protagonists of Dicken’s gothic infused novels of Bleak House and Great Expectations. Yet they have great expectations that the new world offers them new chances to a better life. Their struggles are the stuff of gothic legend. Trying to succeed in a land full of the mysterious Indians and unknown land and to work essentially for the wealthy northern colonies as security guards. Later they too will create generations of wealth only to be decimated by the Civil War, boll weevil, disease, fires, and the Great Depression. This would leave a city where once was wealth sometimes faced with decay and a lost cause.
Not only would they be poorer financially they would have less education and thus be more inclined and more willing to try everything to see beyond the veil of this reality and see mysterious reasons behind unexplained events. It wouldn’t be until 1754 21 years later when Savannah becomes a royal colony that the entrepreneurs and slaves would come. And you have what might be called the first struggles between new money and old money and class becomes even more important. And the slaves would bring their own mysteries of language and culture to this already strange land. Psychologically when you feel or do not have direct control of your lives you build myths to explain the world and you create ceremonies and rituals to keep the evils and unknown form your door. You want to have ways to erect justice in a society that the systems in place does not always treat your quote kind fairly. So the beginnings of our colony offer fertile ground for stories of the Gothic nature.
But it is not only the people but the land itself. We have parks downtown which are filled with moss covered gigantic monuments of nature: oak trees. You have places where we gather to people watch and share. You have a side of town for the free blacks and Irish. You have a city surrounded by marshes that change with the tides and seasons, winding rivers, creeks with these ancient creatures of another time: alligators. The atmosphere of coastal south as do the bayous lend themselves very well to the gothic mentality.
And then all the wealth comes crashing down and those who once had great wealth are left as beggars or pretenders as fate would allot to them. This story of economic cycles fortunes and misfortunes is more pronounced in the more undeveloped South. And then the Civil War the South’s economy is decimated.
 
The advent of Flannery:
Flannery comes into this world where the demise of the South is here and the wealthy’s pretensions of wealth has been destroyed. And a community where ever block she travels has the Gothic churches reaching to the skies in the hopes and aspirations of their people who at the same time are experiencing the reverse of their fortunes once again after their rise. Flannery was born in the middle of the roaring twenties but would spend her growing up years here in Savannah and elsewhere in the depression. Old fortunes are seen in lost buildings that are abandoned and survival is hard. Her short stories and novels become some of America’s greatest literature and leads the way in the new literary genre southern Gothic. In a sense Flannery had no choice in the shadow of St. John’s Cathedral on the Irish side of town but to write in this new Southern Gothic style. The environs of Savannah did not promote romantic novels or historical fiction it was fertile ground for a young mind to write Southern Gothic tales.

Gothic literature of which Southern gothic is a subset is found in such books in Europe as Wuthering Heights, Dracula and Frankenstein. The movement crosses the Atlantic Ocean to America and is found in the House of Seven Gables and Edgar Allan Poes’ writings to name two.
Poe and Hawthorne were New Englanders so the South will share themes they explore but in the context of the South. Thus you have the exploring of madness, decay and despair, cause by the pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and how they are challenged by the new realities of race. The Gothic castles and cathedrals are replaced in Southern Gothic by the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South. Or they are told of in old slave quarters or broken downtowns. Southern elements including dialect, habits and personalities are used. The history of the South is the backdrop of the stories.
The characters are usually complex, and many of them are mentally unstable. Many of the characters are broken in spirit and struggling to find a place in society once again. The morality of characters is often questioned. There are also many characters that are seen as innocent, such as the mentally handicapped, and there is a struggle for their place in the world. Whether mentally unstable, dark or innocent, the characters try to make sense of the world around them and the New South in which they live.
The plots of Southern Gothic stories can be disturbing and some do include supernatural elements. Irony is used to throw the reader off balance. In a broken society naturally the events in the stories contain racism, violence and poverty.
Not only will we see evidence of this new Southern Gothic in other writers and artists in Savannah  in the past but in the present it is still evident. So stay tuned for the next blog entry where we will see these themes continued.

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