Stănescu Maria-Alexandra 19th Century American Literature

3rd Year, Group 3, Romanian- English Course professor: Anca Peiu

Seminar instructor: Dragoș Manea

A Matter Of Vampirism

They say that we must not associate the life of an author with his work, but I consider that in
Poe’s case it is impossible. His hard and sad life is very well reflected in his work, like in a
mirror. As we can see from “The Norton Anthology of American Literature’’, “the life of Poe is
the most melodramatic of any of the major American writers of his generation”(The Norton
Anthology of American Literature 1353). A hard but full of mystery life. I can prove it, on the
one hand, by using Poe’s own words from the poem “Alone”, and on the other hand, by using
professor Peiu’s interpretation.

Then, in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life, was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still…
( Poe 973)

“The House of Usher represents his projection of a dearly missed home’’. (Peiu 67) If we see it
from the point of view of the strong relation between Roderick and his sister, Madeline, we can
accept this idea, but if we think about the possible incestuous relationship between them , I don’t
know if it is about “a dearly missed home’’anymore. It is true, Poe was married with his younger
cousin who died after twelve years of marriage and yes, it can be a ’’ projection “ of his life.
I personally believe that inside the mysterious world of the horror story “The fall of the House of
Usher’’ a vampirism matter is hidden. While I was reading this short story I had in mind the key
of a supernatural world, because I know that where is mystery there must be something the
reader should search for. I discovered that Poe or the unnamed author left us a lot of clues and
our “job’’ was to discover and decode them.

Written in 1839, the novella “The Fall of the House of Usher’’ brings us into the mysterious word
of an aristocratic family, the Ushers, and their strange and spooky habits. When we think about
Poe, mystery is a key word. From what I have read from Poe, I could notice that he often liked to
play with our minds by chosing to give us the story, sometimes in a schematic structure, and then
letting us to build up on it. I personally chose to read it into the fantastic key and I found out that
there were some facts that can be related to vampirism.

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Firstly, in the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher’’, the action takes place in an
unidentified place, I could say “illo tempore’’, as professor Anca Peiu also said and I could also
add, like in fairytales: “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hound oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone…’’(Poe
51). He says “in the autumn of the year’’, but what year? At least, he tells us that the story takes
place in the autumn. But why autumn and not spring? I think that it can be related to the title,
“The Fall of the House of Usher’’. As we know, in autumn leaves are falling and maybe Poe
wanted to highlight the fact that there is actually something about falling, about decline and why
not, about death. But what kind of death, a real one, or better said a change into a supernatural
creature?

Secondly, we find out that Roderick Usher sent our unnamed teller and also character of the story
(who has been his friend since boyhood but from whom he had no news for a long time) a
letter, in which he said that he was very ill and that he desired to see him, being the only real
friend he actually had, and maybe hoping that his society will help him. From the letter we find
that Roderick suffers from an “acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed
him’’(Poe 52). The question which rises is the following: What was his illness about? It was a
bodily illness, a mental disorder or both? Again, mystery or the possibility of multiple
interpretations. Why he suddenly remembered of his old friend? Did he feel alone, or did he feel
terrified about what was happening with his body and also with his sister? Can we consider his
symptoms as the signs of turning into a vampire? As we can notice, the illness is not named. It
can be considered both, as a strange mental and bodily disorder and as a sign of vampirism.

Third, the “very ancient family’’ lives in a spooky mansion:

I looked upon the scene before me, upon the mere house, and the simple
landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant
eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees, with an utter depression of soul which I can
compare to no earthly sensation…

(Poe 51)

Again, why is the mansion so strange? It seems that the dwellers are not disturbed by it and from
here I can assume that there is something evil there and we can build up many suppositions: the
Gothic and creepy aspect of the house, with its antique furniture, with “dark and tattered
draperies’’(Poe 63) may show that the dwellers were no longer humans or that they were in such
a hopeless situation that they could only wait for death to come. And why the narrator seems to
fear of “the vacant eye-like windows’’? According to professor Anca Peiu (Peiu 68), “the
universal popular saying about eyes as the windows of the soul is the inevitable suggestion for
any reader here’’. True, but I believe that such eyes can be also interpreted as the eyes of an
hidden enemy, maybe the evil’s eye or a mask for a vampire eye, which is, actually, always
different and which may be the mark of the house.

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Fourth, by the description of the house, we can notice that “no portion of the masonry had fallen;
and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones.’’(Poe 53) But still, the title is somehow predictable:
in the end, there will be a fall, but the fall of a family. Later, we find that “perhaps the eye of a
scrutinizing observer may have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from
the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it
became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn’’ (Poe 53). Maybe it shows that what was meant to
protect (the roof) is broken, symbolizing that apparently there is no problem, but if you look
again, you will see that it all comes from the center, from its dwellers perhaps. Or, it can
represent the vampire mark: on the one hand, wondrous and dangerous beauty and on the other
hand, death, loneliness and evil. Another mystery.

In the same way, I wonder why both Usher and his sister had a problem with the light(they could
not bear it), and also why his sister’s encoffined body should be put in a place “entirely without
means of admission for light?’’(Poe 61) Should it be a suggestion of vampirism? I think that we
can take it into consideration. I can prove that there is also a matter of vampirism, by showing
the following fragment, where the action takes place after Madeline was encoffined:

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the
mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were
neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step.
The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue, but the luminousness of his
eye had utterly gone out. (Poe 62)

Strange, again! At the beginning he could hardly move or walk and now, out of the blue, “he
roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step’’. For this reason, he
is a supernatural creature, if we have in mind the matter of vampirism. Another argument will be
the pallor of his face: “ his countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan, but, moreover, there
was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes, an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole
demeanor’’. (Poe 63) It is true, this is a tricky interpretation, because, on the one hand, Usher and
his sister could suffer of a physical and mental disease, maybe something genetic and, on the
other hand, it can really be a matter of vampirism.

After all, the mystery is in our hands, we just have to have the patience to seek for it. While I was
reading “The Fall of the House of Usher’’, I had in mind Eliade’s novella, “Miss Christina’’, to
which I found a few similarities: in both of them the action takes place at a mansion, in both of
them mystery is a key word, in both of them there is a trio: Egor, Simina (the little girl, more a
hybrid, half human and half vampire, possessed by her aunt, the vampire Miss Christina) and the
vampire Miss Christina, respectively Roderick Usher, Madeline and the narrator. According to
professor Anca Peiu, “ the trio Madeline-Roderick-narrator can be viewed as a threefold image
of the Freudian id-ego-superego representation of human psyche’’(Peiu 61), but in my opinion
here we have a proof that there is a matter of vampirism, because as we can see we have a

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human, the narrator and maybe two vampires, Madeline, already turned into a vampire and
Roderick, her brother, which is almost a vampire. The same thing happens in Eliade’s “Miss
Christina’’, where we have a human, Egor and the army of the supernatural creatures represented
by the vampire Christina and her niece Simina, the hybrid little girl. Another similarity is what
professor Anca Peiu calls “ the death of a beautiful woman’’, which is, according to her, “ a
pattern representative for the Southern Gothic tradition, and particularly for Poe’s belief’’ (Peiu
60). She also notices that this pattern is present in Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee’’ and I found it in
Eliade’s novella, “Miss Christina’’ (here, the beautiful woman who dies is Sanda, Egor’s
girlfriend and Simina’s older sister).

Another passage that got my attention was the one when after Madeline was put in the coffin the
narrator noticed that she and Roderick were pretty much alike and after his face expression
Rodrick clarified that he and Madeline were twins, like Roderick had the ability to read minds.
And if he could do that, he definitely cannot be a human being. According to professor Anca
Peiu the similarity between the two can be explained as being part of the Southern Gothic
tradition, known as’’the double, the twin siblings or the doppelgänger.’’ (Peiu 64) From what I
know so far, it is pretty common for a vampire to have a doppelgänger, like the human Elena was
the doppelgänger of the vampire Katerina Petrova, from the TV show “The Vampire Diaries’’.
And I also notied that the doppelgänger of a vampire must be a human, and here, Roderick is still
a human or maybe he is turning into a vampire, like Elena form the TV show “The Vampire
Diaries’’ did, in the end.

This story also reminds me about the novel “Wuthering Heights’’ and I am thinking about the
storm scene, when both, Catherine and Usher, wanted to keep the window open. Here, again, we
can interpret it as a result of their illness or mental disease, but it can also be interpreted as an
effect of the evil’s influence.

Another thing that crossed my mind was why Roderick finally confessed the narrator that they
had buried Madeline alive? Did he do it because he could no longer think clearly and then felt
guilty? Did he do it because he knew that one day she would return, as a vampire and he was
afraid of her revange? Was he hallucinating? Was she already a vampire and that was why he
buried her alive, “without means of admission of light”(Poe 61) and in a place which was used as
“a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substances’’(Poe 62) and
having an iron door: “ We have put her living in the tomb!’’(Poe 66) But was she really alive,
like a human being? Maybe that is why Roderick said, at the beginning, that:

Much of the peculiar gloom which thus affected him could be traced to a more natural and far more
palpable origin, to the severe and long continued illness, indeed to the evidently approaching
dissolution, of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative on
earth. (Poe 55)

Although, if we look carefully, we can notice that by burying his sister in that place, with no
means of light, he wanted to protect her. As we know, vampires are afraid of light because it can

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burn their skin and they cannot walk in day time. So maybe he wanted to protect her, but what is
the purpose of the iron door? Did he want to protect himself too? Again, if she was dead, why
did she show up in the end and killed her brother? As we can see from the narrator’s description,
Madeline looked strange, as she herself was bitten by a vampire or like she was killed for being
one of them.

There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon
every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling
to and fro upon the threshold, then with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the
floor a corps, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
(Poe 66)

Again, was it a matter of revenge because her brother could not accept her as she really was, a
vampire, or was it the revenge of an ill person jealous of the fact that her brother was still alive?
But how can a dead person return from the dead?

All in all, despite this double interpretation, I choose to believe the vampirism one because I
think it would be more in Poe’s style and it would add a plus of horror to the story, but in the end,
this is just a matter of personal choice.

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 Works Cited

1. Allan Poe, Edgar, Classic fiction, The Complete Illustrated Works of Edgar Allan Poe,
edition published in 2013 by Bounty Books.

2. Baym, Nina( University of Illinois), Gottesman, Ronald ( University of Southern

California), Holland, Laurence B. (Johns Hopkins University), Kalstone, David ( The
State University of New Jersey), Murphy, Francis ( Smith College), Hershel Parker
( University of Delaware), Pritchard, William H. ( Amherst College), Wallace, Patricia B.
( Vassar College), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Third Edition, Volume
I, W. W. Norton & Company, 1979, printed in the United States of America.

3. Peiu, Anca, Five Versions of Selfhood in the 19th Century American Literature, Editura
C. H. Beck, București, 2013.