Poe's Gothic Architecture: Decay, Madness, and Morality

"Ligeia," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Masque of the Red Death" each present a gothic setting within which the action of the tale takes place. Each of the houses is not only decaying but also somewhat bizarre. As each tale unfolds, an unhealthy relationship between the structure and its inhabitants is revealed.

"Ligeia" takes place in two gothic locations: first, the city on the Rhine — "dim and decaying" (p. 102) — where the narrator meets, marries, and loses Ligeia; then the abbey in the "wildest and least frequented portions of fair England" (p. 102), which is in a state of "verdant decay" (p. 103). By mentioning the river Rhine, Poe sets the first part of his tale in Germany, the place of origin of the gothic tradition; by making the city "large, old, decaying" (p. 97), he establishes an atmosphere of potential decadence and horror. We are told little, however, of the house itself, other than a mention of the "closed study" (p. 98) in which Ligeia would appear as if from nowhere and lay her hand on the narrator's shoulder. This closed study seems to be not only a happy memory of the intimacy of their life together, but also a symbol of their shared intellectual interests. By making it closed to others, the exclusive and obsessively devoted nature of their love for one another is emphasized.

After Ligeia's death, the distraught husband moves to England and the moldering abbey, where, for somewhat unclear reasons, he marries the lady Rowena — the opposite of his lost bride. The original religious atmosphere of the abbey, linked as it is to the resurrection of Christ, is now taken over by the dark forces of nature, notably the vine that smothers the window.

Similarly, the will to live — the primal rejection of death that characterizes the strong-minded Ligeia — overlays the religious parallel of Christ's submission to death and His subsequent resurrection. This contrast of Christianity and paganism is referred to in the mention of monks and Druids.

The setting for Ligeia's murder of Rowena — in order to assume her body — and her subsequent return to her horrified husband is the gothic chamber of Rowena. The images with which Poe describes this room are eastern, befitting its relationship to the narrator's opium addiction. It is situated in a "high turret of the castellated abbey" (p. 103), establishing its gothic character, and is pentagonal in shape, accounting for its Druidic association. The furnishings, including sarcophagi in the corners, are Egyptian or Arabic, reminding the reader of ancient myths of rebirth — for example, the resurrection of Osiris from his scattered parts. A "pall-like canopy" (p. 103) hangs over Rowena's bridal bed, forecasting marital troubles ahead. The phantasmagoric light from the serpentine censer and the shifting patterns of the rug and wall hangings create a sense of foreboding illusion that fits the opium delirium of the husband. Ligeia's final determined struggle into some semblance of death-in-life could be actual, or merely the delusions of her husband as he succumbs to his drug and joins her in death. By setting this crisis in the high tower — symbolic of the mind — and making it inaccessible to others, such as the servants, Poe dramatizes the solitary nature of the choice between life and death.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" takes place in a "singularly dreary tract of country" (p. 177), where a melancholy mansion looms over a sinister tarn. The narrator in this tale seems not to inhabit an opium dream but to be in the depressed, nervous, and suggestible state that follows a drug-induced experience. Unlike the narrator of "Ligeia," he is a spectator to the action rather than a participant. The disintegration of the Ushers and of their ancestral home is mirrored by the anonymous narrator, by the story he reads to Roderick, and by the waters of the tarn.

The gothic atmosphere is established immediately, not only by the desolate setting but also by the grim aspect of the house itself and its barely discernible crack, which will ultimately cause it to shatter. It is a mansion of "excessive antiquity" (p. 179), one that seems to retain its integrity but is in reality held together by little more than the fungus encrusting it. We are told that the family tree of the Ushers is similarly ancient and unsupported by branches.

The narrator is shown to the quarters of Roderick Usher through a forbidding corridor in which he encounters an unsavory doctor. The hall is furnished with the familiar symbols of death and phantasmagoria, and Roderick's chamber likewise features a gothic window and ancient furnishings. Roderick — whose description is reminiscent in some ways of Ligeia — is not only hypochondriac but also agoraphobic; he is imprisoned in the decaying house of his ancestry. Because he cannot leave the house, and has no relationships other than with his boyhood friend the narrator and with his cataleptic and apathetic sister, the house is doomed.

The action of the tale takes place in a series of mirrors that serve to distance the Ushers and their fate from reality. First, the tarn mirrors the house itself and ultimately swallows it. Then, because the Ushers are morbidly attached to art, the song that Roderick sings — "The Haunted Palace" — prefigures the demise of the house at the hands of "evil things in robes of sorrow" (p. 184). The robes of sorrow are Madeline's death-wrappings; she is Roderick's twin and hence his reflection. The narrator also observes Roderick's painting of the vault under the earth, another prefiguring of the dungeon where they entomb Madeline. As the Ushers grow progressively more deathly, the natural world around them becomes alive; Roderick is convinced that the trees and fungi are sentient.

Finally, as the storm rages, the narrator attempts to soothe Roderick by reading him The Mad Trist. However, as Roderick appears to slip into a catatonic trance, he is in fact entirely attuned to the mirroring sounds which the narrator only dimly perceives: the sounds of Madeline struggling out of her tomb. She finally appears at the door, and she and her brother die in each other's arms — an incestuous ending to the ill-fated house. As the narrator flees, he glances back to see the house subsiding into the unreal world of its mirror image.