Duality and Equivocation: Deconstructing Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Duality and equivocation are constant throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  From the opposing ideologies of rational thought and supernatural fear, to the very lives and deaths of Roderick and Madeline Usher, Poe interweaves numerous binaries into an ambiguous tale that blurs the line between truth and imagination.  Traditional interpretations of this text suggest the unreliability of the narrator, arguing that Poe intended the narrator’s experiences as a dream, or perhaps a descent into madness.  Given the power of Poe’s language such interpretations are certainly understandable.  The narrator, from inciting incident on, is led through the stories events by Roderick’s imaginative creations: his letter and music, his poetry and paintings and his “fantastic yet impressive superstitions” (Bieganowski 182).  When we trace the events unfolding for the narrator, the tale appears to be a series of utterances made manifest by and for the narrator. True to this interpretation, Poe’s narrator readily admits the influence of superstition both on himself and Roderick Usher.  In his first description of the house, the narrator describes the building and its environs in terms of the “insufferable gloom” that pervades his spirit.  He describes the setting as “desolate,” “bleak,” and “decayed” (Poe 26).  These words describe the narrator’s impression of the house and surrounding landscape.  The author misspeaks when, having “dispelled what must have been a dream” (Poe 26), he has the narrator examine the House of Usher with a more a rational eye. The narrator notes that the appearance of decay belied “any extraordinary dilapidation” (Poe 26).  The almost constant equivocation, the caginess with which Poe balances fantasy and fact, lends itself to interpretive supposition.  By deconstructing the tale we can glean the author’s subtly misspoken clues in order to divine a deeper understanding of the story.

The commonly held belief that Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a supernatural tale, or that it contains supernatural elements can both be attributed to and argued by the introduction of Roderick Usher.  The duality of this statement is supported by the binary nature of Poe’s work.  Upon seeing his childhood friend for the first time, the narrator exclaims: “Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher” (Poe 27).  At this point the reader is led to believe that Roderick Usher’s countenance has changed dramatically so as to leave the narrator  with “a feeling half of pity, half of awe” (Poe 27).  However, the author quickly misspeaks, suggesting that Roderick Usher has always possessed “a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid” (Poe 27).  The narrator suggests that “the mere exaggeration of the prevailing characteristic of these features” (Poe 27) caused doubt as to whom he spoke.  Again the author misspeaks, suggesting that Roderick’s letter influenced the narrator’s perception of the man when he writes:  “For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits” (Poe 27).  Roderick Usher perpetuates Poe’s dualism by simultaneously suggesting that his malady was “a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy” (Poe 28), and “a mere nervous affection…which would undoubtedly soon pass off” (Poe 28).

To this point the author has given preference to imagination, and in doing so has fostered feelings of fear and supernaturalism.  His misspoken hints suggest a rational explanation for the condition of both Roderick and his house.   In an interesting twist, however, Poe begins to give credence to rational thought.  His narrator suggests that Roderick has been enslaved by “an anomalous species of terror” (Poe 28), stating that he “was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted” (Poe 28).  The narrator’s implication appears to match the author’s earlier innuendo – that Roderick Usher’s malady has been heavily influenced by his environment.  Usher himself supports this theory when he hesitantly admits “that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin” (Poe 28) – his sister’s illness.   Madeline Usher’s sudden appearance and subsequent demise allow Poe to cloud the border between fact and fantasy.  The external influences that so engendered fear and superstition in Roderick Usher begin beleaguering Poe’s narrator.  Usher’s “long improvised dirges” and the paintings “over which his elaborate fancy brooded” (Poe 29) bring to the narrator’s mind Fuseli, a late-eighteenth-early-nineteenth century painter interested in psychological horror and the supernatural.  The image of the narrator as the lone voice of reason remains intact.  He refers to his friend as a “hypochondriac” (Poe 29), his artwork phantasmagorical, and his rhapsodies as “wild fantasias” that revealed “the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne” (Poe 30).  The obscure texts Poe provides them with, from Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell to the Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Ecclesiae Maguntinæ deal with supernatural occurrences, death and damnation and are intended to imply the same external influence the narrator so readily addressed regarding Roderick’s rhapsodies and paintings.  The author suggests this influence when he writes: “I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac” (Poe 32).  Of these, the book that served as Usher’s “chief delight” was the Vigiliae, an obscure Catholic text dealing with services for the dead (Mabbott).

These texts foreshadow the death of Madeline Usher as surely as the “unusually sharp grating sound” (Poe 33) caused by the donjon gate presaged her apparent resurrection.  The use of the word “apparent” here is appropriate given the narrator’s description of Madeline Usher:  “Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead – for we could not regard her unawed” (Poe 33).  Her illness had left “the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face” (Poe 33).  The author misspeaks when he refers to the lingering smile upon Madeline’s face as suspicious (Poe 33).  To understand why, we must revisit the narrator’s original impression of the house itself.  Although the narrator is initially swayed by supernatural influence, he ultimately admits the house lacked “any extraordinary dilapidation” (Poe 26).  Poe deliberately misspoke when first introducing his narrator to the story’s Gothic setting.  Likewise, he misspeaks when he reveals the “suspiciously lingering smile” on Madeline Usher’s face.  When seen through the fantasia-filled eyes of superstition the house and its surroundings seemed strange and terrible.  Influenced by Usher’s Fuseli-inspired paintings and the supernatural works of men like Swedenborg and Machiavelli, Madeline appeared strange and terrible in death.  In each instance Poe misspeaks, revealing the truths masked by imagination. The house is free of “any extraordinary dilapidation” (Poe 26). Madeline Usher’s features contain a faint blush and a “suspiciously lingering smile” (Poe 33).

From this point forward superstition strengthens its grip on Poe’s narrator: “It was no wonder that his condition terrified-that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions” (Poe 33). The narrator fights against the onslaught of superstitious thought. “I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room” (Poe 33), but he ultimately succumbs to the overwhelming power of imagination. With the description of his narrator’s struggle Poe misspeaks again, hiding clues that point to the simple truth that imagination and reality in the House of Usher are quite different. Though he admits to having been swayed by the strength of superstition, the narrator asserts that his fears are groundless: “There sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm” (Poe 34). By emphasizing the baseless nature of these emotions, the author is clearly defining the line his narrator is about to cross. “Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable” (Poe 34) the narrator ultimately submits to the superstitions plaguing him. These “unaccountable yet unendurable” fears are made manifest by the tempestuous weather and fuelled by the reading of Sir Launcelot Canning’s Mad Trist, culminating in Roderick Usher’s revelation “We have put her living in the tomb!” (Poe 36).

Duality and equivocation appear constantly throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  From the opposing ideologies of rational thought and supernatural fear, to the very lives and deaths of Roderick Usher and his sister, Poe masks these binaries within the dark shadows of superstition.  Given the vividness and richness of Poe’s language and the Gothic nature of the text it is easy to understand how this could be interpreted as a supernatural tale. As Stocker indicated, “Doubling is a constant theme in Derrida’s work,” making deconstruction an ideal theory to apply to “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Given the dual nature of Poe’s tale, it is through deconstruction that we can see beyond supernaturalism in order to examine the true Gothic elements of this text.

Works Cited

Bieganowski, Ronald. "The Self-Consuming Narrator in Poe's 'Ligeia' and 'Usher'." American Literature (1988): 175-187.

Mabbott, Thomas Ollive. The Books in the House of Usher. 22 May 2011 .

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Fall of the House of Usher." The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. John C Stott, Raymond E Jones and Rick Bowers. 4th Edition. Nelson Education, 2006. 24-37.

Stocker, Barry. "The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Derrida: on Deconstruction." Routledge, 2006.