Southern Ontario Gothic is a sub-genre of the Gothic novel genre and a feature of Canadian literature

Canadian literature

Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is often called CanLit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian Literary criticism...

 that comes from Southern Ontario

Southern Ontario

Southern Ontario is a region of the province of Ontario, Canada that lies south of the French River and Algonquin Park. Depending on the inclusion of the Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, its surface area would cover between 14 to 15% of the province. It is the southernmost region of...

. The term was first used in Graeme Gibson

Graeme Gibson

Graeme C. Gibson, CM is a Canadian novelist who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is a Member of the Order of Canada , and was one of the organizers of the Writer's Union of Canada . He has a long term relationship with the novelist and poet Margaret Atwood.In 1996 he decided to stop writing novels...

's Eleven Canadian Novelists (1973) to recognize an existing tendency to apply aspects of the Gothic novel to writing based in and around Southern Ontario. In an interview with Timothy Findley

Timothy Findley

Timothy Irving Frederick Findley, OC, O.Ont was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials.-Biography:...

, Gibson commented that Findley's novel The Last of the Crazy People

The Last of the Crazy People

The Last of the Crazy People is the first novel of Canadian author Timothy Findley. It was published in 1967, in Britain, and later on in Canada, and was one of the first novels ever to be labelled as Southern Ontario Gothic....

shared similarities with the American Southern Gothic genre, to which Findley replied, "...sure, it's Southern Gothic: Southern Ontario Gothic."

Notable writers of this sub-genre include Alice Munro

Alice Munro

Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...

, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

, Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies

William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...

, Jane Urquhart

Jane Urquhart

Jane Urquhart, OC is a Canadian novelist and poet.-Biography:Born 200 miles north of Thunder Bay, Ontario in Little Longlac , Ontario, Jane Urquhart is the third of three children and the only daughter of Marian and Walter Carter, a prospector and mining engineer...

, Marian Engel

Marian Engel

Marian Engel, OC, née Marian Ruth Passmore was an award-winning Canadian novelist.-Summary:Born May 24, 1933 in Toronto, Ontario, to teacher parents Frederick Searle and Mary Elizabeth Passmore...

, James Reaney

James Reaney

James Crerar Reaney was an influential Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor, "whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol."...

 and Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy

Barbara Gowdy, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Born in Windsor, Ontario, she is the long-time partner of poet Christopher Dewdney and resides in Toronto.-Literary career:...

.

Like the Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot...

 of American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writers such as William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

 and Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty

Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...

, Southern Ontario Gothic analyzes and critiques social

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 conditions such as race, gender, religion and politics, but in a Southern Ontario context. Southern Ontario Gothic is generally characterized by a stern realism

Realism (arts)

Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

 set against the dour small-town Protestant morality stereotypical of the region, and often has underlying themes of moral hypocrisy. Actions and people that act against humanity, logic, and morality all are portrayed unfavourably, and one or more characters may be suffering from some form of mental illness

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

.

The Gothic novel has traditionally examined the role of evil in the human soul, and has incorporated dark or horrific imagery to create the desired setting. Some (but not all) writers of Southern Ontario Gothic use supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 or magic realist

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

 elements; a few deviate from realism entirely, in the manner of the fantastical gothic novel. Virtually all dwell to a certain extent upon the grotesque

Grotesque

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...

.

Notable works of the genre include Davies' Deptford Trilogy, Findley's Headhunter

Headhunter (book)

Headhunter is a novel by Timothy Findley. It was first published by HarperCollins in 1993.-Plot summary:The novel is set in a dystopic Toronto, Ontario buffeted by a mysterious plague called sturnusemia, which is believed to be carried by starlings...

, Atwood's Alias Grace

Alias Grace

Alias Grace is a historical fiction novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. First published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Canadian Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize....

and The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin is an award-winning, bestselling novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. Set in Canada, it is narrated from the present day, referring back to events that span the twentieth century.The work was awarded the Man...

, and Munro's Selected Stories.

The genre has been criticised as having "little or nothing to distinguish it from everyday, garden-variety type realism."