Unlike the other writers in our top five, Tennessee Williams was a playwright, not a novelist or a short story writer. But he's included in the list not only because he's one of the most important playwrights to come out of the South (or anywhere, for that matter), but also because his work exemplifies a lot of the characteristics of Southern Gothic.

Williams was gay, and he took the outsider theme to a new level by depicting gay characters—a taboo subject back in the day—in his plays. Williams also loved writing about dysfunctional Southern families and characters ruined by their inner demons.

A Streetcar Named Desire

This famous play focuses on Blanche DuBois, a faded Southern belle who shows up at her sister's house in New Orleans after being fired from her job as a teacher under mysterious circumstances. (Trust us: the circumstances are pretty bad.) Oh yeah: she's also an alcoholic, and she's slowly losing her mind.

The play is yet another Southern Gothic portrait of a disintegrating family. And boy, do these characters tear each other apart—especially Blanche and her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski.

This play was immortalized on the silver screen (yeah, it's in black-and white, but smokin' black-and-white) with white-hot performances by Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando as Blanche and Stanley. This is Southern Gothic at its very best, folks.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams' own family background wasn't very happy, and he drew a lot of the material for his plays from his childhood.

Here we've got yet another play about a Southern family falling apart: Big Daddy is the dying patriarch of a rich Southern family, whose gay son, Brick, is stuck in an unhappy marriage to Maggie, the "cat on a hot tin roof" from the title. The play depicts a get together in which all the family secrets come out into the open.

Shmoops:

Williams loves depicting characters in the throes of decay and disintegration. Blanche, the troubled heroine of A Streetcar Named Desire, is undone by alcohol in these quotations from the play.

In Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, there's a lot of talk about death. Hey, why not? Check out these quotations about death here.