Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are both writers who contribute to the genre of
American Gothic. They actually lived and wrote in the same time period, but they each
approached the Gothic in different ways. Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of
Usher” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” were published just four
years apart. The Gothic makes use of a set of elements that are usually easily identifiable as
being ones that are commonly seen repeatedly in the genre. In The Gothic: A Very Short
Introduction, Nick Groom calls them the “seven types of obscurity” (Grooms 77). Many of these
elements can be found in both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Young Goodman Brown”,
but it’s the way that the authors use them that sets them apart as Gothic storytellers. How they
approach the Gothic is tied to narrative. In Poe’s stories, the Gothic drives the narrative where
Hawthorne uses the Gothic to build the story, but it’s not the driving force.
Edgar Allan Poe is well-known for his dark tales, many of which are filled with deeply
disturbed characters, but many of them take place in settings that are very Gothic. This structure
of disturbed characters and dark setting is how Poe has made his mark in the genre. Alan
Lloyd-Smith wrote in American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction that Poe “internalized the
Gothic nightmare claiming in his Preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839), ‘my
terror is not of Germany, but of the soul’ thus opening the way for the psychological ghost story”
(Lloyd-Smith 32). Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher” seem like it would be the
perfect setting for a ghost story and it does contain many of the elements of the Gothic that
would make it appear to be one, but it’s really not a haunted house in that sense. The House of
Usher is literally described by the narrator as “a mansion of gloom” (Poe 110). It is in a remote
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location, it’s dark, the narrator also notices the house is in disrepair, it’s also surrounded by what
the narrator indicates as “sullen waters of the tarn” (Poe 111). The inside of the house as
described by the narrator has bits and pieces that add to the list of elements that are the perfect
recipe for a Gothic story. This story has: darkness, isolation, Gothic architectural features,
antiquarian furnishings, family secrets/rumors, seemingly supernatural phenomena, and madness.
This covers all of Groom’s “seven types of obscurity” (Groom 77-78). The Gothic in this story
is obvious and it plays a major part in how the story progresses. It directs the narrative almost
like a character. The darkness and gloom of the house is palpable. The Usher siblings appear to
be psychologically unstable, and at the end they perish as the house is swallowed up by the
waters of the tarn (Poe 121). The House of Usher isn’t a haunted house as much as it is a house
inhabited by haunted people. Poe uses the all of these themes of the Gothic in this story about
the demise of the Usher family. This story has just the right balance of insanity and gloomy
location to make it a great Gothic read.
Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the Gothic in a much more subtle way. In “Young Goodman
Brown” he is trying to convey a message or a moral; he uses Gothic elements to build the story.
Alan Lloyd-Smith states that “in Hawthorne’s hands the Gothic is performed; it is not allowed to
direct the form of the narrative but is instead manipulated and distorted” for Hawthorne’s own
purposes (Lloyd-Smith 33). He uses the elements of the Gothic for his own purpose and not just
for the sake of the story. “Young Goodman Brown” plays out as a sort of allegory for the
dangers of evil or the devil. This story also has a dark setting, the tone is dark as well, but
Brown appears as a character who is relatively normal. He is on a sinister mission, but he
intends it to be for one night only before he resumes his normal life with his new wife Faith. He
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says, “[Faith] is a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and
follow her to heaven” (Hawthorne 81). Even her name is a reference back to religion and the
way Hawthorne uses it throughout the story has a way of driving the religious aspect of good
versus evil into the forefront. This story has: darkness (physical), the forest, possible riddles,
Puritanism, and possible dreams/hallucinations, according to Groom’s “seven types of obscurity”
(Groom 77-78). The dark forest is used as the meeting place for Brown’s dark mass, or is it just
the place he falls asleep and dreams the whole incident? The rest of these are things that fall into
the categories of Gothic elements, but it’s hard to say whether he did it intentionally or if they
were things that were necessary to tell the story. Hawthorne uses elements of the Gothic to tell
his story partially because they help to convey the message that he wants readers to get from the
story, not because he is trying to write a Gothic story.
When comparing the two stories, Poe has a tale that really checks all the Gothic boxes. It
appears to have all the necessary elements, and these elements drive his narrative to create the
perfect Gothic story. On the other hand, Hawthorne’s subtle use of Gothic elements builds a
story that drives home a moral to readers. They both use some of the same Gothic elements, but
the way they use them is what sets them apart. Poe’s use is more upfront and is the driving force
of the story where Hawthorne’s is subtly woven into a story that has a deeper meaning.
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Works Cited
Groom, Nick. The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction. UP Oxford, 2012. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” American Gothic: An Anthology from Salem
Witchcraft to H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Charles L. Crow, John Wiley & Sons, 2012, pp.
80-88. Print.
Lloyd-Smith, Allan. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction. A&C Black, 2004. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” American Gothic: An Anthology from Salem
Witchcraft to H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Charles L. Crow, John Wiley & Sons, 2012, pp.
110-121. Print.