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
The physical dwelling
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
“The Haunted Palace” (poem) reflects the Usher family life in the house (515)
“The Mad Trist” (story) parallels Madeleine’s return from the grave
The storm outside is analogous to the turmoil inside the characters in the house
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, Twice-Told 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)