SOURCE: Appel, Alfred, Jr. “The Grotesque and the Gothic.” In A Season of Dreams: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, pp. 73-103. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965.

In the following essay, Appel distinguishes between grotesque and gothic elements in American fiction, using the works of Eudora Welty as examples of an author who successfully uses the grotesque to expound on themes of social and individual displacement while instilling a sense of compassion and hope in the reader.

The grotesque and Gothic have always been major modes in American fiction and popular culture, from Brockden Brown to Paul Bowles, from frontier humor to W. C. Fields. Perhaps the grotesque is so persistent an American genre because of the peculiarly American belief that happiness is the norm of existence—a belief that is accompanied by an almost fanatical resistance to any suggestions to the contrary. It is not surprising that...