The Monstrous South: Gothic Characters in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison’s Beloved

The paper examines some of the Gothic features used in character development in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and explores how the two novels complement each other to form a comprehensive picture of the American South around the Civil War. In the traditions of Gothic realism and postcolonial Gothic respectively, the authors describe the 19th-century South as populated with supernatural beings: demoniac slaveholders, monsters who try to fight oppression, zombies whose souls have been devoured by the oppressive system, ghosts and revenants who return to haunt their wrongdoers, and hybrids whose transgressive nature is feared by the oppressors and the oppressed alike