The Meaning of Incest in Edgar Allan Poe's

Master Anglo-American Studies, 2nd year of study
The meaning of incest in Edgar Allan Poes The Fall of the House of Usher
Ana-Maria Drozd University of Craiova
According to Kennedy, J. Gerald in his book Introduction: Poe in Our Time, The Fall of the House of Usher is considered Poe's most famous work of prose because it embraces several gothic and romantic features such as premature burial, highly macabre atmosphere, compulsive impulses and the dangerously morbid. Before starting our commentary upon the incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline we need to keep in mind the fact that we cannot interpret the tale realistically, as a weird commentary on a tragic real estate because even though an incestuous relationship between Roderick and Madeline is never explicitly stated during the story, many critics evoked a possible incest because of the strange attachment between them. The allusion to incest in The Fall of the House of Usher is directly related to the characters slow demise and to the violent deaths of both brother and sister. The plot of the tale goes on as a social call: a nameless narrator answers the request of an old boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, to provide social solace from some nameless malady that made Usher to become morbidly acute in all his senses. The source of Rodericks mental illness is later suggested to be attributed to his incestuous love for his sister. The narrator finds the state of Ushers health shocking; Usher reveals that part of his gloom will be followed by the imminent death of his cataleptic twin sister, Madeline, his last and only relative on earth. (Poe 2003: 198) The twins Roderick and Madeline are a close version of each other despite their differences in gender. Soon after, Madeline dies and is buried in the family crypt, after which a fearful tempest comes. As the narrator and Usher spend the night reading the Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning, life imitates art as the literary knight Ethelred shatters the hermits door, so, too, the resurrected Lady Madeline enters in full fury and she falls upon her brother and kills
him. As the narrator flees the scene, the full, setting, and blood-red moon (Poe 2003: 216) expands the fissure of the House of Usher, and the edifice sinks. That relationship between Roderick and Madeline is an issue of sexual identity. Being twin siblings, Roderick and Madeline become an androgynous figure: Madeline provides Rodericks female perspective, and this is why he has both isolated her and violated her liberty. Roderick depicts Madelines burial chamber through his painting that most captivates the narrator is of an underground vault or tomb, illuminated by a flood of intense rays (Poe 2003: 188) that bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.(Poe 2003: 188) Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy. Finally, the guilt of burying his sister alive overcomes him and he screams, I hear it, and have heard it.We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin (Poe 2003: 215). With the apparent death of Madeline, Roderick enters the last phase of his own degradation, a species of mad hilarity in his eyes. (Poe 2003: 198) As the infuriated Madeline approaches and penetrates the library, Roderick assumes his final, as he knows she is capable of taking his life in the same way the tried with her. He even considers hiding from her. He shrieks whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her upon the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? (Poe 2003: 215). Madeline appears out of the ponderous and ebony jaws of the house. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle, which captures both her breaking of the vault and her brothers violation of her virginity. The allusion to incest in The Fall of the House of Usher is directly related to the violent deaths of both brother and sister because the scene in which Madeline falls inward upon her brother is almost reminiscent of a sexual approach. They embrace she lets out a low moaning cry upon which they fall heavily inward on each others bodies as they die together in their embrace. Critics of Poes short story point out the intimation of the relationship between Roderick and Madeline Usher is also alluded when the narrator, giving readers a back story to the Ushers, explains, the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it washad put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain (Poe 2003: 200). It means that
the Ushers preserved their sacred bloodline and race by incestuous relationship between family members to preserve their bloodline and race intact. Popular culture lured Poe into archaeology, especially Egyptology. This is why we can say that Roderick and Madeline are a glimpse of the incestuous relationship that preceded moral civilization, as the Egyptian goddess Isis was sister-wife to Osiris and they fell in love from the womb. The fact that Madeline and Roderick are twins emphases the idea that incest is an extension to the circumstance that they shared the same womb at the same time and perhaps they too fell in love in the womb. Being twins, Madeline and Roderick might have developed a sort of narcissism, a love for the Usher race. As Narcissus was in loved with his reflection when he looked in the mirror, so Roderick by participating in an incestuous sexual relationship is extendedly having sex with a version of himself. Spencer also explains that difference creates situations that are characterized by tension, rivalry, challenge, and opposition, but also provide for stimulation, growth, and for real love, love of a being who is more than a reflection of the self, a being who is an authentic autonomous individual (Spencer 1987: 445) If Platos myth of the androgyny is representative of two parts or selves (man and woman) of one individual, then the fraternal twins Madeline and Roderick are the perfect example. As twins, sharing one womb, they were essentially one single cell at their conception. Then, they then split apart in the womb and became two complementary people. Just as some suggest that a man and woman who have sexual intercourse become one person, so Roderick and Madeline, through their incestuous union, become a single identity. Crumbley, Paul. Students Encyclopedia of Great American Writers, Volume II: 1830 to 1900. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010. Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990. Poe, E. P. The Fall of the House of Usher. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. Kennedy, J. Gerald. Introduction: Poe in Our Time collected in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford University Press, 2001. Spencer, Sharon. 1987. The Ambiguities of Incest in Lawrence Durrells Heraldic Universe: A Rankian Interpretation. Twentieth Century Literature, (436-448).

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Master Anglo-American Studies, 2nd year of study

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