Image: Manvir Dobb
The Fall of the House of Usher stands proud as one of Poe’s most famous, detailed and macabre pieces of fiction. First published in 1839, its underlying themes of madness, isolation and relationships have been well discussed since its publication. But what lends the story a particularly dark edge is the near-presence of death. It is “near-presence” because as we later learn, is never witnessed as a finishing point. Rather, dying is observed as a torturing, debilitating process for the mind and soul, as both Roderick and Madelaine Usher fall deeper into the crevasse between life and death.
This liminality is what makes Poe’s story so chilling and unsettling. It is a disconcerting dive into the psyche like little else, the house itself is indicative of Roderick’s collapsing mental state - “no portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and crumbling conditions of the individual stones.”
The home symbolising the destruction of the body and mind is a typical characteristic of Poe’s fiction. But what really shines through in The Fall of the House of Usher is how Rodrick is caught between the total states of life and death. His disease is debilitating, eating away at both his physicality and personhood (on a side note, there is a fascinating body of academic research on terminally ill patients and the liminal state between life and death). This betwixt state, however, is personified best by Rodrick’s sister, Madeline. Poe almost torments us with the apparent lack of death in the dead body, writing “the disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left… the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile on the lip which is so terrible in death.” Asides foreshadowing a later development in the story, this description also perfectly captures Poe’s evocation of liminality. While he is far from the only author to bring this concept to the foreground of their writing, few achieve it with such blood-curdling unease as he does.
The Fall of the House of Usher refers not only to the physical house, but the family. While Poe captures dying as a slow process, what makes the ending feel so totalising is that not only the house is gone, but the family as well. Their physical bodies have died, and so has their identity as recognised in their home and name. The complete death proves to be slow and unforgiving.
There is a meticulousness to Poe’s story that only adds to the sense of slow-burning terror. Every detail adds some new ingredient to the story, and such vivid imagery is conjured in a very short space of time. Poe has a fair share of defining stories out there, but The Fall of the House of Usher is certainly a must read to appreciate why he became a staple name in Gothic Fiction, a name that has lived on long after his final works went to print.