Social Issues in Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic writers love, just love, commenting on social issues—social issues that pertain to Southern society, that is. Themes of honor, betrayal, integrity, and hypocrisy, among others, are central to Southern Gothic literature.
Southern Gothic writers are interested in questions like: What are Southern values? What sort of hypocrisy underlies these values? What makes Southern cultural and social identity unique? The South, after all, was a society that had condoned slavery for hundreds of years. What kind of moral integrity does a society like that have? Southern Gothic writers explore the question of moral integrity, in particular, by exploring social issues in their work—from family, to race, to poverty.
Shmoops:
Social issues are a big theme in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Check out the way in which the story treats this theme here.
Homosexuality was a taboo subject at the time that Tennessee Williams was writing, but he doesn't shy away from tackling this issue in his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Here are characters talking about, and dealing with, sex and sexuality in the play.