Edgar Allan Poe, The fall of the house, The Fall of the House of Usher, Literature, American Literature, Dark Romantic Literature, Gothic Literature

1. “The Fall of the
House of Usher”
Edgar Allan Poe
1839

2. “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The gothic context of the tale
• The doubling motif of the tale
• The function of setting in the tale
• The structural unity of the tale

3. The Gothic literary tradition
• Begun in eighteenth century England
• Novelists
– Horace Walpole
– Ann Radcliffe
– Matthew “Monk” Lewis
• Popular form in British literary journals
• Imported into American short story - 19th century
• Key ingredient was sensationalism

4. Gothic Architecture in America
• Started in US about
1840
• Steeply pitched roofs
• Pointed arch windows
• Elaborate trim around
roof edges
• High dormers
• Lancet windows

5. • Poe’s “house of
Usher” looks more like
a medieval castle or
English cathedral in
Gothic style

6. • The house might look
something like this
(from a photograph by
Simon Marsden in his
Visions of Poe)

7. Elements of Gothic Writing
• Emphasis on setting
– Exterior: landscape
– Interior: houses
• Castle-like architecture
• Characters are brooding, secretive
• Buried family secrets
• Long history of family tied to place

8. The Doubling Motif
• In literary criticism, this is called a
“doppelganger,” from the German for
“double-goer”
• Examples are:
– Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis
Stevenson)
– The Secret Sharer (Joseph Conrad)

9. What function does the
doppelganger motif serve?
• Represents the dual nature of man
– In Poe, one side of man is reason, or the mind
– The other is emotion, or the body
• Roderick and Madeleine are genetically
twins, but psychologically they are also
doubles.

10. Who Represents What?
• Roderick
–
–
–
–
–
–
An artist figure (509)
Nervous agitation (509)
Lives in dark upstairs apartment (511)
Cadaverous complexion (511)
“want of moral energy” (511)
“excessive nervous agitation” (511-12)

11. • Roderick’s mental condition is affected by his
environment
• “He was enchanted by certain superstitious
impressions in regard to the dwelling which he
tenanted . . . An effect which the physique of the
gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into
which they all looked down, had, at length, brought
about upon the morale of his existence.” (512)

12. • Here, “physique” refers to something physical
• And “morale” refers to something mental
• Roderick is all mind in a weak body
• He represents in one way the life of the isolated
artist
– Paintings
– Reading
– Guitar playing

13. • Madeleine
– Illness has debilitated her
– All descriptions focus on the body
– “gradual wasting away of the person” (513)
– Roderick and the narrator screw down the lid of her
coffin (518)
– She returns from the tomb to reclaim her twin brother,
her “double”
– “the huge antique panels…threw back” (521)
– She “fell heavily inward upon…her brother and…bore
him to the floor a corpse”

14. What is Poe’s point?
• Poe addresses the dual and conflicted nature
of the Self
• Mind and body are at war with each other in
each of us
• We try to repress one side and live without it
• But we cannot achieve a harmonious
existence in this way

15. The Function of Setting - Exterior
• The “house of Usher” has two meanings
1. The physical dwelling
2. The family line, or lineage
– “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent”

16. • The house is also a type of character in the
story
– Like the family, it is of “an excessive antiquity”
(510)
– The landscape is overgrown and ragged
– On the front down the middle is “a barely
perceptible fissure” going in “a zigzag direction”
(510)

17. Interior Setting
• Gothic architecture (511)
–
–
–
–
“windows were long, narrow and pointed”
“feeble gleams of encrimsoned light”
“dark draperies”
“atmosphere of sorrow”
• Roderick lives upstairs (mind)
• Madeleine is entombed below ground (body)

18. Structure and Unity
• Poe creates texts within texts
1. “The Haunted Palace” (poem) reflects the
Usher family life in the house (515)
2. “The Mad Trist” (story) parallels Madeleine’s
return from the grave
3. The storm outside is analogous to the turmoil
inside the characters in the house
4. The book titles in Roderick’s library are
symbolic of the themes of the story

19. Roderick’s Library
• “the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean
D’Indagine”
• “the Directorium Inquisitorum”
• “old African Satyrs, over which Usher would
sit dreaming for hours” (516-17)

20. Poe’s Theory of Literary Unity
• Poe earned his living as a “magazinist,” not a fiction
writer.
• He was an editor and reviewer for many major
magazines.
• Poe wrote a great deal of literary criticism, literary
theory, and book reviews.
• His theory of literary unity was articulated in a
review of Hawthorne’s collection of stories, TwiceTold Tales in 1842

21. • An author should “conceive, with deliberate
care, a certain unique or single effect to be
wrought out, [and] then invent such … events
as may best aid him in establishing this
preconceived effect.
• In the whole composition there should be no
word written, of which the tendency, direct or
indirect, is not to the one pre-established
design.

22. Unity in “Fall of the House of
Usher”
• First and last paragraphs are mirror images
of each other, creating symmetry
• The texts-within-text reinforce the central
theme
• The house itself symbolizes the split in the
family
• The construction of the house reflects a
“perfect adaptation of parts” (510)