SOURCE: "The Gothic Architecture of The Member of the Wedding," in Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, Vol. XVI, No. 2, Winter, 1964, pp. 59-72.

In the following essay, Phillips discusses how McCullers' works fit into the genre of the modern Gothic novel.

The Modern Gothic in American literature, the genre of the grotesque, is currently the subject of much discussion by Leslie Fielder, William Van O'Connor, Irving Malin and other critics. The novels of the South written in this century—works by William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers—are in particular classified as Gothic. A plethora of Faulkner studies have already been published. Capote and Miss O'Connor, on the other hand, are writers in mid-career. Carson McCullers, however, has produced a distinguished body of fiction during the past three decades, a corpus which is only beginning to receive a deserved recognition. The novels of Mrs. McCullers...