Haddon Hall, Bakewell, Derbyshire, England (2002) The hall that inspired the creation of thornfield hall
Wuthering Heights
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of the Gothic style, unique to Amecican literature. Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. Unlike its predecessor, it uses these tools not for the sake of suspense (悬 念）, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South.
In an extended sense, many novels that do not have a medievalized setting, but which share a comparably sinister (threatening), grotesque (strange), or mysterious atmosphere have been classed as Gothic.
However, Faulkner spent much of his time observing ordinary townspeople as well, and this is why he was able to capture the voice of the common people of Jefferson in the character of the narrator.
Why do we need to find the theme?
By examining the theme of a literary work, we try to find a writer‘s meaningful and challenging insight （领悟） into human existence and human character, which will help us reflect critically about our own beliefs and values and enlarge our vision of life.
He won two Pulitzer Prizes, a National Book Award, and the Nobel Prize for Literature. Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, the same day his great-grandfather, the Old Colonel, had been born on 137 years earlier.
Critical Overview
Faulkner is now regarded by most critics as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.
As is often the case with many challenging American authors, Faulkner was identified as a unique American voice in Europe long before he gained respect at home.
Because Faulkner came from a family with an aristocratic （贵族的） bearing （举止 风度）and associated with other similar families, he was familiar with the arrogance （傲慢）of characters like the Griersons. Some of these people continued to behave as if they were still privileged plantation owners although their wealth was gone.
Subjects or topics:
“loss of innocence‖, ―loyalty and conspiracy （背叛）”, ―revenge‖, ―life and death‖, ―racial discrimination‖ ―women‘s self identity‖
One reason for the difficulty of abstracting the theme from a story is that the theme is fused （熔化）into the other elements of the story, and these elements must be carefully examined in relation to one another as well as to the work as a whole.
The Southern Gothic author usually takes classic Gothic archetypes （原型，典 型）, such as the damsel in distress （落 难的少女） or the heroic knight （有英雄 气概的骑士）, then portrays them in a more modern and realistic spinster (老处 女), or a white-suited, fan-brandishing （挥舞扇子的）lawyer with ulterior （秘 而不宣的） motive （动机）.
Colonel Sartoris, who plays a small but important role in ―A Rose for Emily,‖ is also a major character in the novel Flags in the Dust. Faulkner based part of the character of Emily on a cousin, Mary Louise Neilson, who had married a Yankee street paver named Jack Barron.
His invention of the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, gave him an almost endless source of colorful characters and stories. His greatest novels and short stories are set in Yoknapatawpha. A Rose for Emily happens in Jefferson, a town in this county.
―Americans most fervently （热诚地， 热烈的） hope,‖ The Times crd given by Sweden nor the ―enormous vogue of Faulkner‘s works‖ among foreigners meant that they associated American life with his fiction.
Theme
The theme of a story is whatever general idea or insight the entire story reveals.
A theme need not be a moral or a message; it may be what the happenings add up to, what the story is about. The theme in fiction is its generalized view of life and human nature.
In fact, as late as 1950, after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the New York Times (quoted in Robert Penn Warren‘s introduction to Faulkner: A Collection of Critical Essays) published an editorial claiming that his work was ―too often vicious (cruel), depraved (immoral), decadent （颓废的）, [and] corrupt （腐败的）.‖
Why do we need to find the theme?
Trying to sum up the point of a story in our own words is merely one way to make ourselves better aware of whatever we may have understood vaguely and tentatively.
Southern Gothic
Gothic novel or Gothic romance, a story of terror and suspense, usually set in a gloomy old castle or monastery (修道院)(hence ‗Gothic‘, a term applied to medieval architecture and thus associated in the 18th century with superstition).