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The Fall of the House of Usher

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"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe which was first published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1839. It was heavily revised before being included in a collection of his fiction entitled Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1845. 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.


Themes

Poe always conveys one human characteristic in each of his short stories as one of his major themes. The theme that Poe conveys through this story is that of fear.

The doppelgänger theme, prominent in many of Poe's works, such as William Wilson, appears 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".

The death and resurrection of a woman, a main theme in Ligeia and Morella, is also present here.

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.

There are also various Gothic elements and signs of decay, such as the decrepid castle and tarn, which also reflect the mental condition of Usher, which is rapidly deterierating.

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References to other works of art

Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.

His heart is a suspended lute;
Whenever one touches it, it resounds.

Béranger's original text reads "Mon coeur" (my heart) and not "Son coeur" (his heart).

  • The narrator describes Usher's musical compositions, commenting that:

"Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber."

Poe here refers to Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance) by the German composer Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (1786-1826).

  • He goes on to discuss Usher's painting, saying:

"For me at least - in the circumstances then surrounding me - there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli."

The reference here is to the British painter Henry Fuseli (1741-1825).

Roderick Usher's library

All of the books mentioned in the story are real works except for Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae and The Mad Trist. Aside from these the books are:

  • Robert Fludd/Robertus de Fluctibus (1574-1637):
    • Utriusque Macrocosmi at Microcosmi Historia (published between 1617 and 1619)
    • Integrum Morborum Mysterium: Medicinae Catholicae (1631)
  • Joannes Indagine (1467-1537): Die Kunst der Chiromantzey (c.1523)
  • Marinus Cureau de la Chambre (1594-1669): Discours sur les Principes de la Chiromancie (1653)


Notes:

  • Fludd wrote two works which had sections on chiromancy (palmistry). Both are given above. The relevant sections are entitled, respectively, De Scientia Animae Naturalis cum vitali seu astrologia chiromantica and De Signis sine praesagis chiromanticis.
  • Campanella originally wrote City of the Sun in Italian in 1602 as La città del Sole before rewriting it in Latin between 1613 and 1623 and its subsequent publication in Latin as Civitas Solis in Frankfurt in 1623.
  • De la Chambre later published Discours sur les Principes de la Chiromancie as part of L'Art de Connaitre Les Hommes in 1662.
  • It is unclear to which work by Tieck Poe is referring, as none have titles that translate into English as "Journey into the Blue Distance".

Criticism and analysis

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".

Other writers have claimed that themes of incest and vampirism are suggested in the work.

Film adaptations and influences

In the movie, the narrator falls in love with the sickly Madeline much to Roderick's horrror. As Roderick reveals, the Usher family has a history of evil and cruelty so great that he and Madeline pledged in their youth never to have children and to allow their family to die with them. When Madeline falls into a deathlike slumber, her brother rushes to have her placed in the family crypt. When she wakes up, Madeline goes insane from being buried alive and breaks free through insanity induced strength. She confronts her brother only to fall dead at his feet. Suddenly the house begins to collapse and the narrator flees as Roderick is killed by the falling house.

Themes similar to this were echoed in Stephen King's The Shining and Rose Red.

Czech surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer made a movie based on this story.

Peter Hammill composed and recorded a opera based on the story.

The Alan Parsons Project included an instrumental with the same name on Tales of Mystery and Imagination, an album of songs based on short stories by Poe.

List of films

  • La Chute de la maison Usher (1928) by Jean Epstein
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1949)
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) by Roger Corman with Vincent Price
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1966) (TV)
  • "Zánik domu Usheru" (The Fall of the House of Usher) (1981) (animated version)
  • "Histoires extraordinaires: La chute de la maison Usher" (1981) (TV) with Mathieu Carrière
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1982) (TV) with Martin Landau and Ray Walston
  • The House of Usher (1988) with Oliver Reed

See also

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