When I finish reading a text I will often consult the internet for some perspective – reviews, commentary, background, etc. My reading about ‘The Fall of the House of Usher‘ was largely un-illuminating – lots of people writing about how wonderful the story is – gothic, macabre, atmospheric are the terms most often used – but no-one able to clearly articulate why. It seems either you ‘get’ Poe or you don’t, and so far I don’t.

Here, for example, is some commentary in the journal of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore (and let’s not pass too quickly over the fact that there is an Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore) written by someone from the Tennessee Technological University (which sounds a really august centre of learning):

“Many readers consider Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ to be one of the greatest short stories in all of world literature”.

Do they, really? I can’t find any evidence for that, and none is cited, which for an academic publication is disappointing. The writer continues:

“Few would disagree, at least, that it is one of Poe’s most popular and justifiably famous works.”

If this hyperbole were a one-off then I would be unjustified in quoting it, but that is far from the case – the reviewers on Goodreads, Amazon/com and Amazon.uk are near unanimous that Poe is a genius (which I am sure explains the whole marrying your 13 year old cousin thing) and that his story-telling and prose is outstanding. The editor of the Penguin Classics edition, David Galloway, describes ‘The Fall‘ as “one of Poe’s finest tales ….whose richness and totality of effect entitles it to unquestioned place among the short-fiction masterpieces of all time. Perhaps no other single short story has exerted such profound influences on other artists as Poe’s ‘Germanic’ tale“. Unquestioned place? Not ‘an unquestioned place’ – has the author’s gothic way of expressing himself transferred itself to the editor?

So what is it I am missing? I decided to give ‘The Fall‘ a further look following this research – surely the story has more to offer than I originally thought?

“During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher”. 

Poe establishes his themes and techniques as soon as possible – he piles up the adjectives, alliteratively where possible, keeps on adding subordinate clauses one after the other, and is slow to tell the reader what is going on, even though the tale is told in the past tense (or more strictly the pluperfect – “I had been passing alone”). This is almost a prose poem, and makes it quite easy to copy and/or parody. Indeed, so over the top is Poe’s writing that it can easily be read as self-parody.

Poe also establishes early on that the phrase “The House of Usher” means both the family, and their home. Thus the term “fall” used in the story’s title tells us that both the house and the family are to meet their end in the course of the tale. The description of a “fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag fashion” together with a long description of the decayed fabric of the house, suggests a likely fate for both the house and the family. The additional suggestion a little later that the house has gained a form of sentience from the family, builds even closer links between the two.

Switching to the present tense, to give a more immediate sense to the narrative, the narrator describes his host, Roderick Usher, clearly suffering from a psychological illness of an undefined nature – he is pale and lethargic, suffering from nerves and ‘fear’. His sister, Madeline, has a mysterious sickness that doctors cannot treat. The narrator tries to cheer Roderick up – he listens to him play the guitar, and reads him stories, but without effect.

“I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of the performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. 

It would be ridiculous to hold Poe to any normal standard of coherence or clarity in what is a tale of the supernatural, but his characters’ behaviour is still puzzling. The Lady Madeline passes away from her mysterious illness, and Roderick announces that he plans to inter her body in one of the vaults within the main family house, rather than the nearby burial grounds. The reasons given are, as always, ambiguous and vaguely sinister. The vault is lined with metal walls and a heavy iron door. Our last look at the corpse sees that she has “a faint blush upon the bosom and face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death.”

Any reader versed in the conventions of the gothic will be able to fill in the rest of the narrative without assistance from the author (or reviewer).

I could continue to delve into the depths of this narrative to try and find some additional value, but there comes a point when you just have to accept that certain styles of writing are just not to your taste. If you enjoy overblown, over the top, over-written gothic horror then this will be your cup of tea. But don’t be disappointed if you don’t find it the masterpiece that some believe it to be.