regshoe

We read the "Ballad" in school, in secondary edcuation English, late in the 80s... and I recall engaging discussiona in our course about the relative sense of queerness that Miss Amelia exuded. At least 2/3 of the course were convinced she was lesbian (and felt duly disappointed when she fell in love with Cousin Lymons). (But was it love? Was it not rather a from of emotionally stunted co-dependency where Amelia thought she found support and affection with another human being who was equally marginalised?)

Oh, yes, this is very much Southern Gothic at its finest. :D To just quote a bit from wiki, "warped rural communities replaced the sinister plantations of an earlier age"... "the representation of the South blossomed into an absurdist critique of modernity as a whole." ... "Southern Gothic particularly focuses on the South's history of slavery, racism, fear of the outside world, violence, a fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements"... that kind of thing. :D