Gothicizing American History: Religion, Race, and Politics in Joyce Carol Oates’ The Accursed

Racist politics and white moral superiority are persistently parodied and subverted in Oates’s recent Gothic novel, The Accursed. The novel turns back to early twentieth century Princeton, an elite society struggling under the “Crosswicks Curse,” and reconsiders history through the Gothic lens to critique the discriminatory ideology of America’s classic Religious Right. Appropriately, this paper isolates the recurring problematic of racism in the novel first to demonstrate how through the creation of the “other,” racist politics and white moral superiority were rationalized by the powerful, and second to recognize how national leaders obsessed with ideas of purity lead double lives engendering a duality that emerges from their warped interpretations of Christianity. Further, by addressing the duplicity inherent in American history, religion, and its socialist/secularist discourses, this reading defines The Accursed as a postsecular reflection seeking to re-vision the nation’s past.