Presence, the weight of her family's sins pressing down upon her like a physical force. At night, the manor comes alive with unearthly howls and the sound of shattering glass, as if the very walls are crying out in anguish. Delilah knows she should leave this cursed place, but she is bound to it by blood and by the demons that haunt her own mind. As she drifts through the manor's halls, she wonders if she can escape the darkness that has consumed her family for generations, or if she is doomed to become a tragic chapter in the Blackwood legacy.

Which excerpt best exemplifies why the main character, Joy (also known as Hulga), is a traditional Southern gothic character?

A. The Blackwood Manor had always been a place of darkness and despair, its once-grand halls now crumbling into ruin.
B. But none were as haunted as Delilah Blackwood, the current mistress of the manor.
C. With her sunken eyes, pallid skin, and tangled black hair, she cuts an eerie, ghostly figure as she wanders the decaying halls of her once-grand ancestral home.
D. The manor itself seems to whisper dark secrets, the shadows shifting and writhing as if alive with malevolent spirits.