Southern Fiction

Southern Fiction's History

The history of Southern fiction dates back to the late eighteenth century. Because the South was not settled by Puritans like the North, it encompassed a larger variety of individuals looking to find a new life, freedom, and beauty in the warmth of the weather and fertile green landscape. These settlers differed in ideals from the Puritanical beliefs of the Northern settlers. While the majority of the northern settlers saw themselves and the land as inherently evil and corrupted, the settlers in the South saw potential in the land and felt it to be a new beginning, a New Eden.

Southern fiction stemmed from a need for the South to find a unifying experience and express their individual ideals separate from the rest of the vastly different landscape of the United States. Frontier writing was commonplace, and the region's history is portrayed as a revolving process more than a linear one.

Plantations expanded in the South in the early 19th century. The plantation was a common setting, and depending on the perspective of the writer, slavery was presented as either a positive relationship between two divided races or a source of contention. Although the detrimental effects of slavery are evident, the institution has influenced the writings, culture, and worldview present in Southern fiction. The pre-and post-Civil war time periods are both crucial in how Southern fiction is written and understood.

Fig. 1 - This is a traditional antebellum Southern plantation home with pillars.

After the South lost the Civil War, society entered Reconstruction. Literature became somewhat nostalgic. The antebellum South was presented in an idealized and romanticized light, with a yearning for the pre-war Southern culture. Other writing turned a critical eye to the institution of slavery and condemned it while still celebrating the beauty of the Southern landscape, unique Southern dialects, and the Southern heritage.

Novelist, essayist, lecturer, and humorist Mark Twain ( 1835-1910) introduced The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which criticized slavery and its damaging effects to all races and society, while simultaneously offering an authentic representation and celebration of the different and unique traits of the South. Kate Chopin (1851-1904) provided an authentic portrayal of Southern culture in much of her work and shocked audiences with the release of The Awakening (1899), which looked at the role of women and questioned societal traditions.

The 1920s and 1930s introduced writers with a more objective perspective of the South and its history. Rather than criticizing the past, these writers focused on growth, and development, and used new literary techniques such as stream-of-consciousness to connect with the expanding audience. After World War II, Southern fiction revealed an embracing of a changing society. Arising from the Civil Rights Movement, more female and African-American writers began to have a place in Southern fiction. The voice of the South in Southern fiction grew immensely post-World War II, and has since morphed to reveal a more nuanced perspective of the South, unique in its characters, experiences, history, and setting.

Characteristics of Southern Fiction

Despite the varied past of the Southern region of America and the various subgenres, there are often some pervading traits found in many pieces representative of Southern fiction. Fiction from the South is about the culture and belief systems of the geographic location. Typical characteristics of Southern fiction are:

• a strong sense of past
• a solid establishment of place
• vivid visual imagery
• symbolism
• themes of family and community
• religious influences
• racism
• social class

Authors of Southern Fiction

Southern fiction has many sub-genres and includes both contemporary and classic American authors. They often use vivid details, symbols, and colloquial language to help add to their writing. Some examples of traditionally considered Southern writers are William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Lilian Smith, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor and Mark Twain.

William Faulkner

No list of Southern writers is complete without William Faulkner (1897-1962). In total, Faulkner wrote 26 books of poetry and fiction during his 40-plus year writing career. In his writing, he reflects a variety of themes, ideas, and beliefs that are grounded in and often criticize the Southern region of Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent the majority of his years. In an extraordinary example of the importance of place or setting in Southern fiction, Faulkner created a fictive county, Yoknapatawpha, based on Lafayette. The county-seat of Yoknapatawpha, Jefferson, is where much of Faulkner's fiction is set. Through his creative invention of place, Faulkner also emphasized time or period as a crucial element of place.

This excerpt from Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" expresses how Faulkner can effortlessly establish a setting through the description. He simultaneously shows how his titular character, Miss Emily, is a symbol of the past and has become a sort of tradition in the town. Although the town's architecture has changed to match the changing times, her own home and Miss Emily remain unchanged, and a sort of obligation passed down from one generation to the next.

Richard Wright

Richard Wright (1908-1960) grew up during a time of intense racial segregation and discrimination in the American South. He was born to sharecropping parents, but his father abandoned the family when Wright was only five years old. The family moved around and settled in Jackson, Mississippi. Wright stopped attending school when he was seven to work and help support the family. His many varied jobs taught him much about life and supplied him with endless material that would later inform his writing. Arguably one of Wright's most influential pieces, Native Son (1940), paints a dark, realistic, and unflinching portrait of oppression, hypocrisy, and racial discrimination and subjugation.

Fig. 2 - The writer Richard Wright used his own experience growing up impoverished in the South to critique American race relations.

Lillian Smith

Lillian E. Smith (1897-1966) is best known for her novel Strange Fruit (1944). Highly controversial at the time it was published, the book was initially banned in Detroit and Boston. Strange Fruit explores the controversial theme of interracial relationships. Smith explored the perspectives of African-American characters in her novel with maturity and honesty that had not been broached by other writers of her time. The authentic portrayal of these characters made the conclusion of her novel notable and cruel.

Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was an American short story writer and novelist. Using her upbringing in the American South to inform her pieces, Welty explored the damaging effects of racism and celebrated the determination of the African-American community.

In characters like Phoenix Jackson from her short story "A Worn Path" (1941), Welty portrays a woman who can love selflessly and give unconditionally after experiencing the cruelties of slavery. Phoenix Jackson's resilience is admirable as she traverses hard routes to retrieve medicine for her ailing grandson. Representative of a community that rises from the ashes, Phoenix Jackson is steadfast when faced with racism, discrimination, and physical exhaustion. Like other Southern fiction writers, Welty often used imagery in her writing to add depth and meaning. The main character in "A Worn Path" is named after the mythological creature, the Phoenix, that dies in a burst of flames and rises again from its own ashes.

Ralph Ellison

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1913-1994) was an American writer, critic, and scholar often categorized as a Southern writer. He is best known for his novel Invisible Man (1952). Narrated in the first-person point of view from the perspective of an unnamed African-American man, the novel explores the difference between the Northern and Southern forms of racism and how the effects of such discrimination and segregation can be isolating.

The opening of Invisible Man shows young African-American boys being forced to brutally fight one another in order to entertain white men. From the onset it reveals the dehumanizing effects of racism. The self-aware narrator realizes his role and value in society are not dictated by how others view him but by his own standards and definition.

Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee (1926-2016) was an American novelist. Her best-known work, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Told from the perspective of an innocent girl, Scout, the novel explores the South's perspective of race, class, and community in the 1930s. Using the real-life 1936 Scottsboro case as inspiration, Lee showed the damaging effects of racial stereotypes and discrimination. She also showed how intellectual thought, reasoning, and education were a way to break down racial barriers. Using her attorney father as inspiration for the character Atticus Finch and her childhood friend Truman Capote (1924-1984) as inspiration for the character Dill, Lee was able to infuse much of her childhood experiences and long-held ideals into her acclaimed novel.

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was an American short story writer, essayist, and novelist. Commonly associated with the subgenre Southern Gothic, her writing is commonly set in the South and infused with elements of grotesque creatures or characters, extreme violence, and religious undertones and symbols. She wrote two novels and over thirty short stories during her writing career.

One of her most famous short stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1953), is set in the country roads of the South. Using references to old plantation homes and religion, O'Connor shows the conflict between old Southern values and the younger generation. While the grandmother character is interested in how others perceive her, the Misfit, the piece's antagonist, searches for purpose and only finds pleasure in committing heinous crimes. O'Connor shocks the reader with violence to help her characters and readers achieve insight.

In this excerpt, O'Connor uses vivid visual imagery to describe the setting and passing landscape of the South. The description is reminiscent of a colorful painting and shows an authentic appreciation for the surrounding area and foliage found in the South.

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain (1835-1910), was an American essayist, orator, humorist, and novelist. Using his upbringing in Hannibal, Missouri, and his experience on ships to inform his pieces, Twain wrote about the damages of slavery from a uniquely Southern perspective. He used his innate ability to observe human nature and express the hypocrisy within society. Often through innocent characters, such as his hero Huck Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Twain examines institutionalized racism and still shows the beauty of the Southern culture and the variety of dialects.

The Importance of Southern Fiction

Southern fiction is important because it represents a unique region in America with defining characteristics and social, political, and societal influences that are exclusive to the area. The American South is at once rural and cosmopolitan, urban and elegant, brutal and romantic. The South is a region of cultural growth and flowering but holds true to traditions and is unmoved and unchanged. The South lives in dichotomy and finds truth in those dichotomies. The region is different from the rest of the nation because of its intimate experience with slavery. However, the region is diverse, singular, large, varied, and can serve as a microcosm for the nation it is a part of.