Nineteenth-Century Southern Gothic Short Fiction

Description

Twelve uncanny tales of the race-haunted nineteenth-century South by authors both celebrated and obscure

The gothic is a dark mirror of the fears and taboos of a culture. This collection brings together a dozen chilling tales of the nineteenth-century American South with non-fiction texts that illuminate them and ground them in their historical context. The tales are from writers with enduring, world-wide reputations (Edgar Allan Poe), and others whose work will be unknown to most readers. Indeed, one of the stories has not been reprinted for nearly a hundred years, and little is known about its author, E. Levi Brown.

Similarly, the historical selections are from a range of authors, some canonical, others not, ranging from Thomas Jefferson and the great historian and sociologist W. E. B. DuBois to the relatively obscure Leona Sansay.  Some of these readings are themselves as disturbingly gothic as any of the tales. Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are tenuous in the gothic South. It is our contention that southern gothic fiction is in many ways realistic fiction, and, even at its most grotesque and haunting, is closely linked to the realities of southern life.

In America, and in the American South especially, the great fears, taboos, and boundaries often concern race. Even in stories where black people are not present, as in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The System of Professor Tarr and Dr. Fether,” slavery hangs in the background as a ghostly metaphor. Our background readings place the fiction in the context of the South and the Caribbean: the revolution in Haiti, Nat Turner’s rebellion, the realities of slavery and the myths spun by its apologists, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the brutalities of Jim Crow laws.

Acknowledgments; Introduction; I The Tales; Chapter One Victor Séjour, “The Mulatto” (1837, new English translation by Susan Castillo Street); Chapter Two Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839); Chapter Three Edgar Allan Poe, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” (1844); Chapter Four Henry Clay Lewis, “A Struggle for Life” (1850); Chapter Five George Washington Cable, “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” (1879); Chapter Six Lafcadio Hearn, “The Ghostly Kiss” (1880); Chapter Seven Thomas Nelson Page, “No Haid Pawn” (1887); Chapter Eight Charles Chesnutt, “Po’ Sandy” (1888); Chapter Nine Grace King, “The Little Convent Girl” (1893); Chapter Ten E. Levi Brown, “At the Hermitage” (1893); Chapter Eleven Kate Chopin, “Désirée’s Baby’’ (1893); Chapter Twelve M. E. M. Davis, “At La Glorieuse” (1897); II Background; Chapter Thirteen J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer: Letter IX (1782); Chapter Fourteen Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia: Query XVIII (1785); Chapter Fifteen Jean- Jacques Dessalines, “Liberty or Death: Proclamation, 28 April 1804”; Chapter Sixteen Charles Brockden Brown, “On the Consequences of Abolishing the Slave Trade to the West Indian Colonies” (1805); Chapter Seventeen Leonora Sansay, from Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo: Letter II, Letter XXI (1808); Chapter Eighteen Thomas Ruffi n Gray, from “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1831); Chapter Nineteen Lafcadio Hearn, “St. Johns Eve— Voudouism” (1875); Chapter Twenty George Washington Cable, from “Salome Müller: The White Slave” (from Strange True Stories of Louisiana , 1890); Chapter Twenty-One George Washington Cable, from “The Haunted House in Royal Street” (from Strange True Stories of Louisiana, 1890); Chapter Twenty-Two Charles W. Chesnutt, “Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the South” (1901); Chapter Twenty- Three W. E. B. Du Bois, selection from “Of the Black Belt” (from The Souls of Black Folk , 1903); Index.

Sujets

• América
• African American
• American

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 17 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781785273896
• Langue: English

Extrait

Nineteenth-Century Southern Gothic Short Fiction
Anthem Studies in Gothic Literature incorporates a broad range of titles that undertake rigorous, multi-disciplinary and original scholarship in the domain of Gothic Studies and respond, where possible, to existing classroom/module needs. The series aims to foster innovative international scholarship that interrogates established ideas in this rapidly growing field, to broaden critical and theoretical discussion among scholars and students, and to enhance the nature and availability of existing scholarly resources.
Series Editor
Carol Margaret Davison – University of Windsor, Canada
Editorial Board
Xavier Aldana Reyes – Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Katarzyna Ancuta – Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Frances A. Chiu – The New School, USA
Ken Gelder – University of Melbourne, Australia
Tabish Khair – Aarhus University, Denmark
Tanya Krzywinska – Falmouth University, UK
Vijay Mishra – Murdoch University, Australia
Marie Mulvey-Roberts – Universityof the West of England, UK
Andrew Hock Soon Ng – Monash University, Malaysia
Inés Ordiz – University of Stirling, UK
David Punter – University of Bristol, UK
Dale Townshend – Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock – Central Michigan University, USA
Maisha Wester – University of Indiana, USA
Gina Wisker – University of Brighton, UK
Nineteenth-Century Southern Gothic Short Fiction
Haunted by the Dark
Edited by Charles L. Crow and Susan Castillo Street
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
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© 2020 Charles L. Crow and Susan Castillo Street editorial matter and selection
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940388
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-387-2 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-387-6 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I The Tales
Chapter One Victor Séjour, “The Mulatto” (1837, new English translation by Susan Castillo Street)
Chapter Two Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)
Chapter Three Edgar Allan Poe, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” (1844)
Chapter Four Henry Clay Lewis, “A Struggle for Life” (1850)
Chapter Five George Washington Cable, “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” (1879)
Chapter Six Lafcadio Hearn, “The Ghostly Kiss” (1880)
Chapter Seven Thomas Nelson Page, “No Haid Pawn” (1887)
Chapter Eight Charles Chesnutt, “Po’ Sandy” (1888)
Chapter Nine Grace King, “The Little Convent Girl” (1893)
Chapter Ten E. Levi Brown, “At the Hermitage” (1893)
Chapter Eleven Kate Chopin, “Désirée’s Baby’’ (1893)
Chapter Twelve M. E. M. Davis, “At La Glorieuse” (1897)
II Background
Chapter Thirteen J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer : Letter IX (1782)
Chapter Fourteen Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia : Query XVIII (1785)
Chapter Fifteen Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Liberty or Death: Proclamation, 28 April 1804”
Chapter Sixteen Charles Brockden Brown, “On the Consequences of Abolishing the Slave Trade to the West Indian Colonies” (1805)
Chapter Seventeen Leonora Sansay, from Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo : Letter II, Letter XXI (1808)
Chapter Eighteen Thomas Ruffin Gray, from “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1831)
Chapter Nineteen Lafcadio Hearn, “St. Johns Eve—Voudouism” (1875)
Chapter Twenty George Washington Cable, from “Salome Müller: The White Slave” (from Strange True Stories of Louisiana , 1890)
Chapter Twenty-One George Washington Cable, from “The Haunted House in Royal Street” (from Strange True Stories of Louisiana , 1890)
Chapter Twenty-Two Charles W. Chesnutt, “Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the South” (1901)
Chapter Twenty-Three W. E. B. Du Bois, selection from “Of the Black Belt” (from The Souls of Black Folk , 1903)
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to express our gratitude to the following scholars for their expertise on the Francophone Caribbean, their collegiality and their invaluable assistance: Thomas A. Klinger, William Marshall, Martin Munro and Richard H. Watts.
Thanks are due as well to Matthew Sivils for discovering the few known facts about E. Levi Brown. Thanks to David Bean for proofreading.
We are also grateful to Carol Margaret Davison, series editor of Anthem Studies in Gothic Literature, for her unflagging support of this project.
INTRODUCTION
Charles L. Crow and Susan Castillo Street
The Gothic is a dark window into the fears and taboos of a culture. This collection brings together a dozen chilling tales of the nineteenth-century American South with nonfiction texts that illuminate them and ground them in their historical context. The tales are from writers with enduring, worldwide reputations (e.g., Edgar A. Poe), and others whose work will be unknown to most readers. Indeed, one of the stories has not been reprinted for over a hundred years, and little is known about its author, E. Levi Brown.
Similarly, the historical selections are from a range of authors, some canonical, others not, ranging from Thomas Jefferson and the great historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois to the relatively obscure Leonora Sansay. Some of these historical readings are themselves as disturbingly Gothic as any of the tales. Indeed, the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction are tenuous in the Gothic South. It is our contention that Southern Gothic tales are essentially realistic fiction and, even at their most grotesque and haunting, are closely linked to the realities of southern life.
All Gothic writers disturb and sometimes delight us by evoking our fears. The Gothic is a literature of crossing borders, often forbidden borders: between consciousness and nightmare, known and unknown, civilization and savagery, the living and dead … and the list could be extended almost forever. Gothic confronts taboos and universal fears, but it also provides a chart of the fears of a particular culture, at a particular time.
In America, the great fears, taboos and boundaries often concern race. In Playing in the Dark Toni Morrison explores the issue of “Africanism” in American culture, by which she means the system of assumptions and fears that white Americans have used to define themselves and black Americans. This system pervades all aspects of American culture. Morrison uses the metaphor of the fishbowl: even though it is transparent and easily overlooked, it shapes and contains the life within. 1 Morrison teaches us to be alert for black characters, often silent, on the margins of American stories. And they may be felt even when they are not physically present. No slaves appear in Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” for example, but the story gestures toward slave rebellion, the greatest fear of the Old South.
Race, through slavery, is intertwined with the history of the South. While the “Peculiar Institution” existed elsewhere in the colonial period and early years of the United States, it continued longest in the South and was deeply engrained in its culture. The Civil War was a war to defend slavery, despite claims (still made) by Southern apologists that the rebellion was about an abstract principle of states’ rights. The period after the war was marked by historical revisionism in the South that sought to justify the old plantation system, and painted Reconstruction as a brutal mistake. As part of this rewriting of the past, there arose a literature of Southern nostalgia, sometimes called the “Plantation School,” that romanticized the life of the Old South, depicting happy slaves, paternalistic masters, glamorous balls and elegant manners. This legend was not harmless nostalgia but propaganda in the service of the counterrevolution that began in 1877, following the election of Rutherford B. Hayes. The subsequent period of segregation and denial of rights, enforced by “Jim Crow” laws and lynch law, lasted into the next century. The Gothic, however, is inherently anti-nostalgic, and Southern Gothic provides a counternarrative, exposing the brutalities beneath the myths of the plantation school.
This collection, then, places race—slavery and its aftermath—at the center of Southern Gothic. Such familiar emblems of the Southern Gothic as the swamp and the decaying mansion (seen i