The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that centers on a visitor who arrives at the decaying mansion of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher. The atmosphere is dark and oppressive, mirroring the troubled state of Roderick, who is afflicted by both physical and mental illnesses. The narrative unfolds as the visitor witnesses Roderick's increasing paranoia and despair, compounded by the mysterious illness of his twin sister, Lady Madeline. As the story progresses, Roderick's belief in the malignant influence of the house on their family’s fate becomes more pronounced. Following Lady Madeline’s death, her brother’s deteriorating mental state culminates in a horrifying revelation that she was entombed alive. The tale concludes with a dramatic climax, where the house splits apart, symbolizing the end of both the Usher lineage and the physical structure itself. The story is regarded as a classic of Gothic literature and has inspired numerous adaptations in various forms of media, reflecting its lasting impact on American culture.
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
First published: 1839
Type of work: Short fiction
Type of plot: Gothic
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: House of Usher
Principal Characters
Roderick Usher , a madmanMadeline , his sisterThe Narrator , a visitor
The Story
As the narrator, a visitor and old acquaintance of the Usher family, approaches the House of Usher, he is forewarned by the appearance of the old mansion. The fall weather is dull and dreary, the countryside is shady and gloomy, and the old house seems to fit perfectly into the desolate surroundings. The windows look like vacant eyes staring out over the bleak landscape. The visitor comes to the House of Usher in response to a written plea from his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. The letter tells of an illness of body and mind suffered by the last heir in the ancient line of Usher, and although the letter strangely fills him with dread, the visitor feels that he must go to his former friend. The Usher family, unlike most, left only a direct line of descent, and perhaps it is for this reason that the family itself and the house became one—the House of Usher. As the visitor gets closer, the house appears even more formidable. The stone is discolored and covered with fungi. The building gives the impression of decay, yet the masonry did not fall. A barely discernible crack extends in a zigzag line from the roof to the foundation, but otherwise there are no visible breaks in the structure.
The visitor enters the house, gives his things to a servant, and proceeds through several dark passages to the study of the master. There he is stunned at the appearance of his old friend. In Usher’s cadaverous face, his eyes are liquid and his lips are pallid. His weblike hair is untrimmed and floats over his brow. All in all, he is a depressing figure. In manner, he is even more morbid. He is afflicted with great sensitivity and strange fear. There are only a few sounds, a few odors, a few foods, and a few textures in clothing that do not fill him with terror. In fact, he is haunted incessantly by unnamed fears.
Even more strangely, he is imbued with the thought that the house itself exerts great influence over his morale and that it influences his spirit. Usher’s moodiness is heightened by the approaching death of his sister, Lady Madeline. His only living relative, she is wasting away from a strange malady that baffles the doctors. Often the disease reveals its cataleptic (muscular rigidity marked by a lack of response to external stimuli) nature. The visitor sees her only once, on the night of his arrival. She passes through the room without speaking, and her appearance fills him with awe and foreboding.
For several days, the visitor attempts to cheer the sick master of Usher and restore him to health, but it seems, rather, that the hypochondria suffered by Usher affects his friend. More and more, the morbid surroundings and the ramblings of Usher’s sick mind prey upon his visitor. More and more, Usher holds that the house itself molded his spirit and that of his ancestors. The visitor is helpless to dispel this morbid fear and is in danger of subscribing to it himself, so powerful is the influence of the gloomy old mansion.
One day, Usher informs his friend that Madeline is no more. It is Usher’s intention to bury her in one of the vaults under the house for a period of two weeks. The strangeness of her malady, he says, demands the precaution of not placing her immediately in the exposed family burial plot. The two men take the encoffined body into the burial vault beneath the house and deposit it upon a trestle. Turning back the lid of the coffin, they take one last look at the lady, and the visitor remarks on the similarity of appearance between her and her brother. Then Usher tells him that they are twins and that their natures were singularly alike. The man then closes the lid, screws it down securely, and ascends to the upper rooms.
A noticeable change now takes possession of Usher. He paces the floors with unusual vigor. He becomes more pallid, while his eyes glow with even greater wildness. His voice is little more than a quaver, and his words are utterances of extreme fear. He seems to have a ghastly secret that he cannot share. More and more, the visitor feels that Usher’s superstitious beliefs about the malignant influence of the house are true. He cannot sleep, and his body begins to tremble almost as unreasonably as Usher’s.
One night, during a severe storm, the visitor hears low and unrecognizable sounds that fill him with terror. Dressing, he paces the floor of his apartment until he hears a soft knock at his door. Usher enters, carrying a lamp. His manner is hysterical and his eyes are those of a madman. When he throws the window open to the storm, they are lifted almost off their feet by the intensity of the wind. Usher seems to see something horrible in the night, and the visitor picks up the first book that comes to hand and tries to calm his friend by reading. The story is that of Ethelred and Sir Launcelot, and as he reads, the visitor seems to hear the echo of a cracking and ripping sound described in the story. Later, he hears a rasping and grating, of what he knows not. Usher sits facing the door, as if in a trance. His head and his body rock from side to side in a gentle motion. He murmurs some sort of gibberish, as if he is not aware of his friend’s presence.
At last, his ravings become intelligible. He mutters at first but speaks louder and louder until he reaches a scream. Madeline is alive. He buried Madeline alive. For days, he heard her feebly trying to lift the coffin lid. Now she has escaped her tomb and is coming in search of him. At that pronouncement, the door of the room swings back and on the threshold stands the shrouded Lady Madeline of Usher. There is blood on her clothing and evidence of superhuman struggle. She runs to her terrified brother, and the two fall to the floor in death.
The visitor flees the house in terror. He gazes back as he runs and sees the house of horror split asunder in a zigzag manner, down the line of the crack he saw as he first looked upon the old mansion. There is a loud noise, like the sound of many waters, and the pond at its base receives all that is left of the ruined House of Usher.
In Popular Culture
Many decades after its publication,"The Fall of the House of Usher" continued to enjoy a reputation as a classic of Gothic literature, a seminal work of early American short fiction, and one of the most popular stories by Edgar Allen Poe.
Starting in the early twentieth century, the story was adapted into a number of other forms of media, including two silent film versions in the 1920s and a 1960 Hollywood film entitled House of Usher, which starred Vincent Price as Roderick Usher. In 2023 streaming service Netflix released a limited horror series, entitled Fall of the House of Usher, which was created by Mike Flanagan and starred Bruce Greenwood as Roderick Usher. In addition to telling a heavily fictionalized story based on the Usher family, the series also incorporated story elements from a number of Poe's other works, including "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) and "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843).
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