Introduction

This volume analyzes U.S. Regionalist Gothic literature penned by women writers between 1850 and 1930. Regionalist Gothic is perceived from several angles—from the perspective of different economic situations, changing attitudes about nature, women’s changing place in the home, a developing industrial landscape, the incursion of the urban into the rural, the end of the myth of the pastoral or the frontier, and reformulations of national history. Various contradictory attitudes inherent in the assumed safety of a place emerge, with hauntings connected to the landscape as well as to changing family dynamics. The collection of essays seeks to redress the monolithic vision of American Gothic by analyzing the various sectional attempts to Gothicize what is most claustrophobic or peculiar about the local history or domiciles.