The Fall of the House of Usher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. The story
was first published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in September 1839. It was heavily revised
before being included in a collection of his fiction entitled Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque in 1840. It contains within it the poem "The Haunted Palace", which had earlier been
published separately in the April 1839 issue of the Baltimore Museum magazine.
Plot summary (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section3.rhtml)
An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless
day.” This house—the estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious.
The narrator observes that the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere
from the decaying trees and murky ponds around it. He notes that although the house is decaying
in places—individual stones are disintegrating, for example—the structure itself is fairly solid.
There is only a small crack from the roof to the ground in the front of the building. He has come
to the house because his friend Roderick sent him a letter earnestly requesting his company.
Roderick wrote that he was feeling physically and emotionally ill, so the narrator is rushing to
his assistance. The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never
flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation to generation,
thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. The Usher family has
become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the inhabitants with their home.
The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way
through the long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is
paler and less energetic than he once was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves
and fear and that his senses are heightened. The narrator also notes that Roderick seems afraid of
his own house. Roderick’s sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sickness—perhaps
catalepsy, the loss of control of one’s limbs—that the doctors cannot reverse. The narrator
spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. He listens to Roderick play the guitar and make
up words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he cannot lift Roderick’s spirit. Soon,
Roderick posits his theory that the house itself is unhealthy, just as the narrator supposes at the
beginning of the story.
Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below the
house. He wants to keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her body
for scientific examination, since her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps Roderick
put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death.
The narrator also realizes suddenly that Roderick and Madeline were twins. Over the next few
days, Roderick becomes even more uneasy. One night, the narrator cannot sleep either. Roderick
knocks on his door, apparently hysterical. He leads the narrator to the window, from which they
see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. The narrator tells Roderick that the gas is a
natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon.
The narrator decides to read to Roderick in order to pass the night away. He reads “Mad
Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning, a medieval romance. As he reads, he hears noises that
correspond to the descriptions in the story. At first, he ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his
imagination. Soon, however, they become more distinct and he can no longer ignore them. He
also notices that Roderick has slumped over in his chair and is muttering to himself. The narrator
approaches Roderick and listens to what he is saying. Roderick reveals that he has been hearing
these sounds for days, and believes that they have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to
escape. He yells that she is standing behind the door. The wind blows open the door and
confirms Roderick’s fears: Madeline stands in white robes bloodied from her struggle. She
attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As
he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and crumbles to the ground.
Analysis 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his
work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt. These emotions centre on Roderick Usher
who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. Like the narrator in "The TellTale Heart," his disease causes his hyperactive senses. The illness manifests physically but is
based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to
be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac.
Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own selffulfilling prophecy.
The House of Usher, itself doubly referring both to the actual structure and the family,
plays a significant role in the story. It is the first "character" that the narrator introduces to the
reader, presented with a humanized description: its windows are described as "eye-like" twice in
the first paragraph. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher
family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. This connection was emphasized
in Roderick's poem "The Haunted Palace" which seems to be a direct reference to the house that
foreshadows doom.
L. Sprague de Camp, in his Lovecraft: A Biography [p.246f], wrote that "[a]ccording to
the late [Poe expert] Thomas O. Mabbott, [H. P.] Lovecraft, in 'Supernatural Horror,' solved a
problem in the interpretation of Poe" by arguing that "Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline, and
the house all shared one common soul". The explicit psychological dimension of this tale has
prompted many critics to analyze it as a description of the human psyche, comparing, for
instance, the House to the unconscious, and its central crack to the personality split which is
called schizophrenia. Mental disorder is also evoked through the themes of melancholy, possible
incest and vampirism. An incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline is not
explicitly stated, but seems implied by the strange attachment between the two.
Major themes
The doppelgänger theme, prominent in such works of Poe as "William Wilson", appears
as well in "The Fall of the House of Usher". The reflection of the house in the tarn is described
in the opening paragraph, and "a striking similitude between the brother and sister" is mentioned
when Madeline "dies".
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Poe uses the theme of the death and resurrection of a woman here as well as in "Ligeia"
and "Morella."
The theme of mental illness is explored in this work, as it is in numerous other tales such
as "Berenice".
Interment while alive is also explored in "The Premature Burial" and "The Cask of
Amontillado".
There are also various Gothic elements, such as the decrepit castle and tarn, whose signs
of decay reflect the mental condition of Usher, which is rapidly deteriorating.
Literary significance & criticism
This highly unsettling macabre work is considered as the masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon
Gothic literature. Indeed, as in many of his tales, Poe borrows much from the Gothic tradition.
Still, as G. R. Thomson writes in his Introduction to Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe[p
36], "the tale has long been hailed as a masterpiece of Gothic horror; it is also a masterpiece of
dramatic irony and structural symbolism."
The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of Horace Walpole's Castle
of Otranto, a late 18th Century novel which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre. But
Poe's version of Gothic literature is a biased one because it is fundamentally hyperbolic -- horror
is here so intense that it verges on the grotesque. Romanticism is represented in the same way,
for the character of Usher brings the stereotype of the Romantic poet to its extreme. Usher
closely resembles the bedazzled, melancholy genius who is haunted by death and madness.
However, he inspires awe as well as repulsion, owing to his corpse-like appearance. He is even,
to a certain extent, a comic character. Indeed, he is both a sublime musician and writer as well as
a hopeless drug addict. He is seemingly in love with his own sister, whom he irresponsibly
buries even though he knows she is cataleptic.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section3.rhtml
Analysis 2
“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the quintessential -features of the Gothic
tale: a haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. For all its
easily identifiable Gothic elements, however, part of the terror of this story is its vagueness. We
cannot say for sure where in the world or exactly when the story takes place. Instead of standard
narrative markers of place and time, Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement
weather and a barren landscape. We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and
neither we nor the -narrator know why. Although he is Roderick’s most intimate boyhood
friend, the narrator apparently does not know much about him—like the basic fact that Roderick
has a twin sister. Poe asks us to question the reasons both for Roderick’s decision to contact the
narrator in this time of need and the bizarre tenacity of narrator’s response. While Poe provides
the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot
that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The story begins without
complete explanation of the narrator’s motives for arriving at the house of Usher, and this
ambiguity sets the tone for a plot that continually blurs the real and the fantastic.
Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story. The narrator is mysteriously
trapped by the lure of Roderick’s attraction, and he cannot escape until the house of Usher
collapses completely. Characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its
structure, so it assumes a monstrous character of its own—the Gothic mastermind that controls
the fate of its inhabitants. Poe, creates confusion between the living things and inanimate objects
by doubling the physical house of Usher with the genetic family line of the Usher family, which
he refers to as the house of Usher. Poe employs the word “house” metaphorically, but he also
describes a real house. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the mansion, but we learn
also that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The family has no
enduring branches, so all genetic transmission has occurred incestuously within the domain of
the house. The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure
has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family.
The claustrophobia of the mansion affects the relations among characters. For example,
the narrator realizes late in the game that Roderick and Madeline are twins, and this realization
occurs as the two men prepare to entomb Madeline. The cramped and confined setting of the
burial tomb metaphorically spreads to the features of the characters. Because the twins are so
similar, they cannot develop as free individuals. Madeline is buried before she has actually died
because her similarity to Roderick is like a coffin that holds her identity. Madeline also suffers
from problems typical for women in -nineteenth--century literature. She invests all of her
identity in her body, whereas Roderick possesses the powers of intellect. In spite of this
disadvantage, Madeline possesses the power in the story, almost superhuman at times, as when
she breaks out of her tomb. She thus counteracts Roderick’s weak, nervous, and immobile
disposition. Some scholars have argued that Madeline does not even exist, reducing her to a
shared figment of Roderick’s and the narrator’s imaginations. But Madeline proves central to the
symmetrical and claustrophobic logic of the tale. Madeline stifles Roderick by preventing him
from seeing himself as essentially different from her. She completes this attack when she kills
him at the end of the story.
Doubling spreads throughout the story. The tale highlights the Gothic feature of the
doppelganger, or character double, and portrays doubling in inanimate structures and literary
forms. The narrator, for example, first witnesses the mansion as a reflection in the tarn, or
shallow pool, that abuts the front of the house. The mirror image in the tarn doubles the house,
but upside down—an inversely symmetrical relationship that also characterizes the relationship
between Roderick and Madeline.
The story features numerous allusions to other works of literature, including the poems
“The Haunted Palace” and “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning. Poe composed them himself
and then fictitiously attributed them to other sources. Both poems parallel and thus predict the
plot line of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” “Mad Trist,” which is about the forceful entrance
of Ethelred into the dwelling of a hermit, mirrors the simultaneous escape of Madeline from her
tomb. “Mad Trist” spookily crosses literary borders, as though Roderick’s obsession with these
poems ushers their narratives into his own domain and brings them to life.
The crossing of borders pertains vitally to the Gothic horror of the tale. We know from
Poe’s experience in the magazine industry that he was obsessed with codes and word games, and
this story amplifies his obsessive interest in naming. “Usher” refers not only to the mansion and
the family, but also to the act of crossing a -threshold that brings the narrator into the perverse
world of Roderick and Madeline. Roderick’s letter ushers the narrator into a world he does not
know, and the presence of this outsider might be the factor that destroys the house. The narrator
is the lone exception to the Ushers’ fear of outsiders, a fear that accentuates the claustrophobic
nature of the tale. By undermining this fear of the outside, the narrator unwittingly brings down
the whole structure. A similar, though strangely playful crossing of a boundary transpires both in
“Mad Trist” and during the climactic burial escape, when Madeline breaks out from death to
meet her mad brother in a “tryst,” or meeting, of death. Poe thus buries, in the fictitious gravity
of a medieval romance, the puns that garnered him popularity in America’s magazines.
http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/usher/#point
Characters
There are three significant characters in this tale: the narrator, Roderick and Madeline
Usher. The narrator is a boyhood friend of Roderick Usher. He has not seen Roderick since they
were children; however, because of an urgent letter that he received from Roderick which
requested his aid, the nameless narrator decides to make the long journey. ("...[I]t was the
apparent heart that went with his request --which allowed me no room for hesitation....")
Roderick and Madeline Usher are the sole, remaining members of the long, time-honored Usher
race. When Madeline supposedly "dies" and is placed in her coffin, the narrator notices "a
striking similitude between brother and sister...." It is at this point that Roderick informs his
friend that he and the Lady Madeline had been twins, and that "sympathies of a scarcely
intelligible nature had always existed between them." Due to limited medical knowledge or to
suit his purposes here, Poe treats Madeline and Roderick as if they were identical twins (two
parts of one personality) instead of fraternal twins. He implies that Roderick and Madeline are
so close that they can sense what is happening to each other. This becomes an important aspect
in the unity of effect of this particular story.
Point of View
Unlike many of Poe's stories, this particular story does not use the typical, first person
point of view where the protagonist tells a personal account of a crime that he or she has
committed. Instead, the narrator is a character of whom we know very little, who acts like a
participant/observer. It is easy for the reader to become "the friend" in Poe's story as both the
narrator and the reader invite "madness" as they are drawn into the underworld of the mind
where fantasy becomes reality. Twice near the end of the story, Roderick calls the narrator
"Madman!" However, the narrator escapes, to watch both the tenants and the house of Usher
disappear into the tarn, an underworld which is their true home.
Style and Interpretation
"The Fall of the House of Usher" illustrates Poe's critical doctrine that unity of effect
depends on unity of tone. Every detail of this story, from the opening description of the dank
tarn and the dark rooms of the house to the unearthly storm which accompanies Madeline's
return from the tomb, helps to convey the terror that overwhelms and finally destroys the fragile
mind of Roderick Usher.
Terror, even this extreme which results in madness and death, is meaningless unless it is
able to somehow illustrate a principle of human nature. One approach to understanding the true
significance of this story lies in the many connections that Poe establishes for the reader.
Roderick and Madeline are not just brother and sister but twins who share "sympathies of a
scarcely intelligible nature" which connect his mental disintegration to her physical decline. As
Madeline's mysterious illness approaches physical paralysis, Roderick's mental agitation takes
the form of a "morbid acuteness of the senses" that separates his body from the physical world
making all normal sensations painful: "...the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could
wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these were from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror."
Besides the fact that Roderick and Madeline are not just twins but represent the mental
and physical components of a single being or soul, there is also a connection between the family
mansion and the remaining members who live within. Poe uses the phrase "House of Usher" to
refer to both the decaying physical structure and the last of the "all time-honored Usher race...."
Roderick has developed a theory that the stones of the house have consciousness, and that they
embody the fate of the Usher family. "He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in
regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence for many years, he had never ventured
forth...." Roderick also makes another connection between a house and a person in the poem,
"The Haunted Palace." The crack in the Usher mansion which is at first barely discernible by the
narrator, symbolically suggests a flaw or fundamental split in the twin personality of Roderick
and Madeline, and fortells the final ruin of both family and mansion.
The narrator is connected to the Usher family since he and Roderick were once close
boyhood companions. They have not seen each other for many years, and it is only because of
their past closeness and the apparent emotion in Roderick's request that convinces the narrator to
make the journey. As a result of this, the narrator spends the opening paragraphs reflecting upon
the past as well as trying to prepare himself for the imminent reunion; however, nothing
prepares him for the "altered" state of his childhood companion: "...a caderousness of
complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very
pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a
breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely molded chin, speaking in its want of of
prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a
countenance not easily to be forgotten." ( Some of Poe's critics like to say that Poe is describing
himself here.)
The narrator tries to comfort and rescue Roderick from an illness in which the exterior
self has been lost to the interior world of the imagination. The isolation of Roderick's life from
outer reality can be seen in the atmosphere surrounding the mansion which seems to arise from
the decayed trees and dank tarn. Roderick's fantasy world is like that of an artist: his music; his
literature which deals with extremes of the human imagination; and his art that portrays a vault
which is illuminated from no visible source but is "...bathed...in a ghastly...splendor." Roderick,
unlike an artist, has lost control of his fantasy world so that it has become all of reality.
In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe explores the inner workings of the human
imagination but, at the same time, cautions the reader about the destructive dangers within.
When fantasy suppresses reality and the physical self, as in Roderick's case, what results is
madness and mental death. Madeline's return and actual death reunites the twin natures of their
single being, claiming Roderick as a "victim to the terrors that he had anticipated."
The true focus of this story is the narrator's reaction to and understanding of these
strange events. Even to look into the dark imagination where fantasy becomes reality is to evoke
madness. That is why Roderick twice refers to the narrator as "Madman" in the final scene. The
narrator has made a journey into the underworld of the mind and is nearly destroyed by it;
however, he manages to escape and turns to watch as the "House of Usher" crumbles into "...the
deep and dank tarn."
Theme
According to Edward H. Davidson in his book Poe: A Critical Study, "The Fall of the
House of Usher" can be interpreted as "a detailed account of the derangement and dissipation of
an individual's personality." The house itself becomes the "symbolic embodiment of this
individual." The fissure or the crack in the decaying mansion, that is noted by the narrator near
the beginning of the story, represents "an irreconcilable fracture in the individual's personality."
Roderick represents the mind or the intellect, while the portion of personality that we refer to as
the senses (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling) is represented by Madeline. During
the course of the story, the intellect (Roderick) tries to detach itself from its more physically
oriented twin (Madeline). This can be seen in Roderick's aversion to his own senses as well as
by his premature entombment of his twin sister. Living without Madeline (that is without the
senses), Roderick's condition deteriorates. He begins to suffer from an "...intolerable agitation of
the soul." At the end of the story, Madeline returns from her premature tomb to claim the
maddened Roderick, " a victim to the terrors he had anticipated." As the two are reunited in
death (the mind can neither live nor die without its physical counterpart, the senses), the house (
a symbol of a now deranged individual) crumbles into the "deep and dank tarn," as the narrator
flees in terror for his own sanity.
http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/PoeFall.htm
Edgar Allan Poe:
Biographical Contexts For "The Fall of the House of Usher"
by Douglas Scharf
In the summer of 1838, Edgar Allan Poe left the city of New York, where he faced
criticism and minimal recognition, and moved to Philadelphia, where he would soon gain
profound success (Quinn 268). Just a year prior to this move, Poe married his cousin, Virginia
Clemm, who accompanied him to Philadelphia (Wagenknecht 18). Little is known of Poe’s time
in New York other than the fact that he faced severe poverty with total earnings amounting to
under one hundred fifty dollars (Peeples 31). Therefore, since Philadelphia shared the prestige
with New York as a publishing center, it offered Poe new publishing opportunities and opened
the doors to success (Quinn 268). He found this success editing Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine
from 1839-1840 and then Graham’s Magazine from 1841-1842 (Peeples 74). During this time,
Poe delivered lectures on American poetry, published thirty-six tales including "William
Wilson," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and also
released a collection of stories in 1840 entitled Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (Peoples
74). It was during this peak of Poe’s publishing career that he published "The Fall of the House
of Usher." This tale relates to various aspects of Poe’s life including his occupation as an editor,
his battle with alcohol and drugs, his psychological and emotional well-being, and the impact of
death on his life and work.
Although Poe found success while working for Burton and Graham, he did not find
contentment, for neither Burton’s magazine nor Graham’s met Poe’s expectations of his ideal
publication. Poe was frustrated with his career and aspired to edit a magazine of his own, a
magazine of a higher class than that of Burton’s or Graham’s (Peeples 75). He strove towards
the publication of his own magazine, which he would call the Penn and later change to Stylus,
but Poe soon discovered his endeavors would be in vain. He blamed his failure on George Rex
Graham, Poe’s employer, who agreed to financially support the Penn, but then withdrew his
backing. Although it was during this time that Poe was most successful in terms of publishing
his work, he was not financially prosperous. According to Scott Peeples, author of Edgar Allan
Poe Revisited, "[i]n 1841, his best earning year, he probably made about $1,100, just above
poverty-level wages by the standard of the time" (75).
One aspect of Poe’s life that may have been very influential in "The Fall of the House of
Usher" was his drinking habits (Wagenknecht 30). Like many dimensions of Poe’s lifestyle, the
severity of his drinking problem is often debated (30). It has been said that a single glass of wine
would get Poe drunk and although this may not be exactly accurate, it can be said that one drink
would affect him visibly (30). Poe was raised in a drinking society and an inclination for alcohol
also seems to have been prevalent in his family (31). Although Poe was certainly a drinker, he
did not a revel in the bars or taverns (32). According to Edward Wagenknecht, author of Edgar
Allan Poe: The Man Behind The Legend, Poe "had neither the virtues nor the vices which
flourish in the tavern atmosphere" (32). The immediate effect of such drinking habits was the
endangerment to Poe’s health, but it also "made him an easy target for his literary enemies
throughout the 1840s" (Peeples 77). Thomas Dunn English, in his temperance novel, The Doom
of the Drinker, portrays a dishonest drunk evidently based on Poe (77).
In addition to his drinking practices, Poe’s use of opium has also been an issue of
suspicion. Much of this suspicion is directly connected to "The Fall of the House of Usher"
when Poe likens Roderick’s voice to that of an "irreclaimable eater of opium." According to
Wagenknecht, this is "[o]ne of the most widely believed legends about American writer's," but
he asserts "the evidence is quite unconvincing" despite the arguments of other biographers to the
contrary (41). Wagenknecht bases his position on the testimony of "friends and associates" and
the fact that "no medically-trained person who ever saw Poe supports the hypothesis of drug
addiction" (42). Arthur Quinn, author of Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography, shares
Wagenknecht’s position that "Poe was not a drug addict," and supports his argument with an
account of an alleged suicide attempt by Poe in 1848 (Wagenknecht 43; Quinn 693). Poe is
professed to have taken an ounce of a drug, which was rejected by his stomach. Quinn asserts
that if Poe was a drug addict, he would have correctly calculated the proper lethal dosage (694).
Quinn also notes the fact that opium was "frequently given in small doses for pain, and Poe may
well have taken it in that form" (694).
Yet, another area of Poe’s life scrutinized by critics and readers was his psychological
and emotional wellbeing, which also may have been influential in the writing of "The Fall of the
House of Usher." Wagenknecht contends that "if [Poe] was mad, his whole generation was mad
with him. Fascination with death was typical of the Romantic movement; so was the attraction
of incest; so was the association of death with love" (57). Therefore, the historical context in
which Poe published his work must be taken into consideration. Scott Peeples argues that Poe’s
works were "written to appeal to popular tastes, and some elements that seem bizarre and
grotesque to modern readers were in fact conventional" (77). They were written "for a midnineteenth-century American audience, whose frames of reference were in many respects
different from those of late-twentieth-century readers" (77). Wagenknect then contends that in
addition to the cultural understanding of Poe’s subject matter, an exploration of the methods by
which Poe presents this material must also be considered (57). Poe’s material and subject matter
may have often been aberrant, but his methods were not according to Wagenknect (57). "His
heroes analyze their obsessions in a sane, perfectly logical way, and he presents the analysis in
terms of a highly finished style" (57). Therefore, Poe’s work is less a reflection of his
psychological state and more a reflection of his "immersion in his own place and time" (Peeples
77).
Finally, the theme of death in much of Poe’s work, including "The Fall of the House of
Usher," may have been a direct reflection of Poe’s personal encounters with death. According to
Peeples, "[e]ven the briefest biographies of Poe emphasize the impact that the deaths of loved
ones – women especially – had on his work..." (46). His natural mother died when Poe was only
two and his stepmother, France Allan, died in 1829 when Poe was twenty, but the most
influential experience of death for Poe was that of his wife, Virginia in 1847 (Wagenknecht 19).
Virginia contracted tuberculosis in 1842, which was followed by five years of "physical
exhaustion and nervous collapse" for Poe (19). In addition, Peeples examines the cultural shift in
general attitudes towards death during the nineteenth century from a focus on the finality and
grimness of death to the hope of everlasting life (46). Nineteenth century America "emphasized
the hope of keeping alive a person’s spirit and in some ways denied the physical fact of death"
(46). Peeples contends that amid this shift, "Poe constructed allegories that explored the death
experience" (46).
Poe’s work, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," was influenced by many
experiences throughout his life and also by the culture in which he lived. His employment at
Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in the early 1840’s proved to be one
of the most prosperous times of his publishing career, yet Poe faced many obstacles in his
private life during this time including poverty and alcohol abuse. Although his alleged alcohol
and drug addictions are issues yet to be settled, they were clearly an influence in his life and
work. In addition to his habits regarding alcohol and drugs, his psychological stability has also
been called into question. The impact of death, which was prevalent throughout his life, was
tremendous. Regardless of the many struggles Poe encounter, he has emerged as one the greatest
Romantic writers in American history.
Works Cited
Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: Coopers Square
Publishers, 1969.
Wagenknecht, Edward. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend. New York: Oxford UP,
1963.
Downward Transcendence in "The Fall of the House of Usher"
by Astrid Nadeau
According to Beverly Voloshin in "Transcendence Downward: An Essay on 'Usher' and
'Ligeia,'" Poe presents transcendental projects which threaten to proceed downward rather than
upward" in his story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (19). Poe mocks the transcendental
beliefs, by allowing the characters Roderick Usher, Madeline Usher, the house and the
atmosphere to travel in a downward motion into decay and death, rather than the upward
transcendence into life and rebirth that the transcendentalists depict. The transcendence of the
mind begins with Roderick Usher and is reflected in the characters and environment around him.
The beliefs of transcendentalists are continuously filled with bright colors and ideas, and
heavenly-like tones. The character Roderick Usher suffered much from a morbid acuteness of
the senses" which refers to his transcendental beliefs (Poe 1465). Usher finds his transcendental
connection with the oversoul but instead of brightness he finds gloom with black, white and gray
colors. Madeline Usher suffers from "a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent
although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character" (Poe 1465). This results from a
loss of contact with the physical world, again a characteristic of a transcendentalist, yet negative
instead of positive. According to Voloshin "Madeline matches her bother's pallor, but her special
mark is red-a faint blush when she is interred and blood on her garments when she emerges"
(22). Both characters differ from transcendentalists with their disintegration of the body and
mind instead of a rebirth of the body and mind of a transcendentalist.
Because of his connection with the oversoul Roderick Usher finds it difficult to
communicate with words, so instead he uses paintings and writings to describe his inner
thoughts. Voloshin describes how in "The Haunted Palace," a writing by Usher, he explains his
own " fall of order into chaos, reason into madness, innocence into experience" (20).
Representing another downward and deathly transcendence is Madeline, who is painted in the
"vault or tunnel" by Roderick. In the painting, Roderick portrays Madeline in a tomb, and gives
her no chance to have her own beliefs by locking her in. By doing this, Roderick breaks the
transcendental belief that says being locked into the past is wrong, and each person should break
free to create beliefs of their own.
Just as the transcendence into decay is found in the characters of "The Fall of the House
of Usher" it is also found in the actual house and the environment around it. The story begins in
the autumn of the year with an extremely gloomy appearance and ends even more gloomy with
the "full and blood-red moon" radiating down (Poe 1474). Voloshin compares an example from
the environment to the idea of downward transcendence." The narrator's account begins with his
feelings of 'depression,' which finds its parallel in the setting: the day is 'dull, dark and
soundless,' without ordinary sensory stimulation, and similarly, the scene is oppressive and
melancholic, without vitality" (19). Transcendentalists feel as though life and light is found
when a complete connection with the oversoul is made, yet Poe displays opposite feelings with
the gloomy environment he portrays. Usher's house fills with gloom as it reflects on Usher's
illness, or his connection with the oversoul. The house resembles Usher with it's head shape,
"bleak walls and vacant eye-like windows" (Poe 1461). The downward transcendence Poe uses
to describe the environment and the decaying mind of Usher connect together to give the house
it's gloomy outward appearance.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" represents a continuous opposition to the
transcendentalist views. The mockery of the transcendentalist views are found through the
characters, the environment, and the house; instead of light and life, Poe displays a continuation
of darkness and death. The complete decay of Usher is found in the house as the narrator
witnesses "my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder" (Poe 1474). Voloshin
describes the end of Roderick, Madeline and the house as "falls together, into the abyss, though
in a paradox typical of Poe, Roderick's destruction may also be that supreme moment of
transcendence..." (23). Poe views the transcendentalist thoughts as much too bright and
unrealistic, and the ultimate transcendence downward displays his opposite opinions. The
decaying mind of Usher, the gloomy environment, and the downward structure of the house all
work together to destroy the traditional bright transcendentalist ideas, and to complete the final
"Fall of the House of Usher."
Works Cited
Voloshin, Beverly. "Transcendence Downward: An Essay on 'Usher' and 'Ligeia.''' Modern
Language Studies 18 (1988): 18-29.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Fall of the House of Usher." The Heath Anthology of American
Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter, et al. 3rd Edition. Vol.1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 1461-74.
Annotated Bibliography of Criticism
By David A. Cranor, Jr.
Hoeveler, Diane Long. “The Hidden God and the Abjected Woman in ‘The Fall of the House
of Usher.’” Studies in Short Fiction 29:3 (Summer 1992): 385-96.
In this critical review Diane Hoeveler suggests Poe’s intention in “The Fall of the House
of Usher” is to implore its readers to question each mysterious aspect of the House of
Usher. Hoeveler claims that our human nature provides us with the motive to follow the lead of
Poe and to try to discover “the heart of meaning that must exist somewhere within the confines
of the text” (386). In the essay Hoeveler argues that “Poe suggests that both history and religion
can only be understood primarily as discourse systems, dialogical constructs that sacrifice male
strength and creativity to the female-embodied powers of life and death, in other words, the
cyclical nature of generation” (388). Hoeveler posits that the Usher twins are a product of Poe’s
wild imagination. Their abstractive existence is at the end of a “cultural cycle.” They are
simultaneously hyperaware of the “fictional nature of both history and religion” (388). It is
because of the knowledge that, “like their creator, they longer have the will or desire to sustain
themselves. They only have the energy to self-destruct” (389). Poe’s tale becomes a conduit for
the “extremely cryptic” expression of his “frustration and anger toward the female” domination
in the battle between the physical and the cerebral (389). The self-created “fantasy of the purely
masculine” universe that is Roderick’s utopian fantasy is, in the end subverted by his “selfprojected fantasy of a female double”(389). Hoeveler suggests that Poe’s implication is that this
self-defeating “compulsion…informs all institutionalized religions”(389).
Hoeveler demonstrates her thesis by deconstructing the religious symbolism employed in
the tale; the first symbol Hoeveler deconstructs is Roderick Usher’s favorite “the Vigiliae
Mortuorum” (386). She posits that the books' iconographic and ideological importance is the
main reason for using this particular text. Her impetus is to prove that “there must be a hidden
meaning implicit in the use of the book” (387). A second point of support is built upon the
repressed misogynistic impulses continually evidenced by Roderick in the text. She points to
common parallels between this type of repressed anger and the impetuses’ of “all
institutionalized (and presumably patriarchal) religions as we have known them” (389).
Hoeveler makes a third point regarding the implied unnatural relations between Roderick and his
sister Madeline, a strange, unnatural “family that never put forth collateral branches”
(390). Hoeveler explores the characteristics of Madeline as they relate to Roderick’s own
physical traits. This leads to her next observation on the author’s textual commentary, a
dialogical discourse on worship, which ultimately provides the individual with false sense of
security. Religion, Hoeveler points out, functions primarily to “ institutionalize female power
and status” (391). Roderick through his worshiping is ultimately motivated by a need for selfpreservation-the preservation of the patriarchy.
The next point Hoeveler makes is her largest in regard to the readers' understanding of
Roderick Usher as an abject hero. She argues that Poe employs the literary device of polyphony
in the novel to set up of Roderick as the “abject hero.” This final point leads her to a transition
into the second section of the essay where she explores the relationship of Roderick to
Madeline. In this section Madeline is described as a created projection of the diseased mind of
her brother. Hoeveler states that the house itself is like a self-created grave, wherein Roderick “
literally walls his abjected self/his ‘sister’ into”(394). All of this is related to Roderick’s
narcissistic arrogance. She concludes the second major section with an explanation of the
symbolism of Roderick’s reading as being on par with “ a purification rite” (394). Roderick is,
according to Hoeveler operating from a position of fear. She supports this claim with critical
support from a number of credible sources. Her final section focuses on Roderick and his
validation of fear, and the purging of the unclean desire. In the end he inscribes his own
madness. The obvious conclusion is that Poe has used the mind of the reader to allow such a
creation to exist, if only for a while.
Kaplan J. Louise. “The Perverse Strategy in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” New Essays on
Poe’s Major Tales. Ed. Kenneth Silverman. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993. 45-64.
In her essay on Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Louise Kaplan explores both the
story’s “currents and undercurrents” as well as the authors’ impetuses for writing the classic
horror story (47). She structures her Freudian argument under the context of sexual
perversion. Kaplan posits, “[p] erversion is a complex strategy of mind”; this psychoanalytic
finding is one Poe, knowingly and deliberately, employed in his own life and in several of his
tales (46). She states in her thesis that the intention of the essay is to exhibit “Poe’s mastery of
the perverse strategy, with its mystifications and concealments, its ambiguous relationship to the
moral order, [and] its pretense of a fundamental antagonsim to representational reality”
(47). Her argument is “guided by the principles of the perverse strategy,” and includes her own
“interpretations of the moral and aesthetic plights of the artist protagonist, Roderick Usher...”
(47).
She begins her argument suggesting that the strange “specters of incest and necrophilia
[that] hover in the background” are representational of the “sexual aberration” of perversion
(47). Poe, Kaplan claims, employs these images intentionally because they transgress the “laws
of statics, symmetry, and proportion” (48). These intentionally created “illusions…are
employed to preserve the borders of the moral order, even as they render a picture of moral
disintegration”; this is Poe’s perverse strategy (48-9). She continues to build her argument
focusing on the intentional undercurrents of the poetry and music created by Roderick Usher,
which “enable…moral nihilism” (51). Kaplan next claims that Poe’s “perverse strategy is an
unconscious method that regulates the life of Desire…”and does not undermine authority; rather,
it "is an attempt to preserve the moral order" (52). Her argument is extended into a deep
exploration of the characteristics of perversion. Kaplan continues to suggest “there must be an
undercurrent beneath the current so easily and ingeniously detected by our reasonable narrator”
(58). In the conclusion she reiterates the various points of her argument and supports them with
popular and similar critical views. Overall, the essay is cogent and well developed. Kaplan
makes a number of textual discoveries and brings in appropriate critical support where
necessary.
May, Leila S. “‘Sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature’: The brother-sister bond in Poe’s,
‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Studies in Short Fiction 30.2 (Summer1993): 387-97.
In her essay on “The Fall of the House of Usher” Leila May focuses on the implications
of the brother-sister relationship in 19th century America. May establishes a context by
exploring the “complicated and contradictory conception of the [larger] family" in the early
nineteenth century (388). May frames her argument by examining the environment of the
typical post-industrial, nuclear family paying specific attention to the “typical” values and mores
of the day. She highlights the many contradictions in the “hyperreal and hypersensitive
organization” that comprised the family unit (388). May exposes the “demarcated and strictly
disciplined” roles, which had to be maintained in order to reinforce the patriarchal
standard. Specifically, May focuses on the role of the sister as the “sanctorum of moral
virtue”(389). May argues that in “literature of the fantastic” such as Poe’s “The Fall of the
House of Usher" "the principle of individuation itself collapses, taking along with it the very
possibility of the family and the social system that it sustains, and prefiguring a release and
discharge of feminine desire in new and revolutionary forms--hinting at the subversive forms of
sisterhood that may have been precisely the ones that lay hidden and smoldering in the deepest
fears of Victorian patriarchy itself ” (390). Madeline is symbolical of the Victorian sister; her
body “is the very site upon which [the] ideology [of patriarchy] is enacted” (394). Her sonorous
uprising in the end of story from her inscribed and literal entombment within the House of Usher
causes complete chaos and total destruction of the family structure.
In her argument, May establishes an analogous connection between the structure of “the
House of Usher” and the typical 19Th Century family. She points to several contemporary
“Victorian” novels that place great emphasis on the role of the sister to uphold the strict social
standards of the era. May next suggests that the image of Roderick Usher mirrors the
House. She acknowledges how both of them are “in the same terms of degeneration”
(392). Her argument crests with the declaration of what she sees as the reason why the story
functions so well. May posits that the “unraveling (hierarchical) distinctions between
male/female” is the reason the story is at once “simultaneously terrifying and…liberating”(393).
May posits that Poe was aware of what he was doing when he wrote this story. This is
evidenced in the emphasis placed on the “terrifying” aspects of the increasing character
tension. May highlights another important theme in the story: the symbolic sibling relationship
itself and what it seems to represent. She points to the “sympathies of a scarcely intelligible
nature” that phenomenally occur between the Roderick twins (393). May makes her final
supportive point regarding the nature of the “nineteenth-century bourgeois domestic ideology”
that she sees being textually represented and physically embodied in the sister, Madeline.
Madeline-the nineteenth century every-sister is the focal point for the “perpetration of
patriarchy” (394). Through the textual act of burying her in the “foundation of the familial
edifice” Madeline is momentarily silenced. The isolation, while temporary, ends and with it the
so to does the House.