Democracy and the American Gothic

While the political undercurrent of the American Gothic has been firmly established, few scholars have surveyed the genre's ambivalent relationship to democracy.

The American Gothic routinely undercuts centralized authority by exposing the dark underbelly of the status quo; at the same time, the American Gothic tends to reflect a widespread mistrust of the masses.

American readers are too afraid of democracy-and not yet fearful enough.

This concise volume theorizes the democratic and anti-democratic elements of the American Gothic by surveying the conflicted imaginaries of the genre's mainstays, including Charles Brockden Brown, George Lippard, Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King.