Influence of William Faulkner’s Southern Gothic Style in the Writings of Gay and Agee

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An Analysis of the Influence of William Faulkner’s Southern Gothic Style in the Modern Writings of William Gay and Jonis Agee
This literary analysis will describe the influence of William Faulkner’s Southern Gothic writing style in the supernatural and death-obsessed plot devices found in modern novels by William Gay and Jonis Agee. In Faulkner’s plot style he often employs the lost female figure doomed to a supernatural and gloomy existence within the household in stories like “A Rose for Emily” and As I Lay Dying. The gothic nature of these tales relies heavily on the supernatural power of men over women, but more so, how death-obsession emulate this style in Gay’s Provinces of Night. Also, Agee provides a similar supernatural curse on...

.....ves of mysterious death-obsessed father, just as Hedie must, in Agee’s novel, must survive the Ducharme family curse of the “river wives.” In these ways, Faulkner provide a major influence in the use of his Sothern Gothic style in these two modern novels by William Gay and Jonis Agee.
Works Cited
Agee, Jonis. The River Wife: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2008.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. William Faulkner: Novels 1930-1935: As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Pylon. Eds. Joseph Blotner. New York: Library of America, 1985.
---. “A Rose for Emily.” 2010. Moonstar.com. 15 Apr. 2010 <http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Stories/RoseEmily.html>.
Gay, William. Provinces of Night. New York: Faber and Faber, 2002.