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��The ‘House of Usher�� - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.��

The narrator has been unexpectedly and urgently invited to visit Roderick Usher, one of his “boon companions in boyhood��, though he knows (or remembers?) oddly little about this friend.

From the opening words, Poe conjures an unsettling and other-worldly atmosphere with florid and archaic prose and by occasionally slipping an unexpected word in an otherwise ordinary description:
��During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn����
As he approaches “this mansion of gloom�� everything builds to create “an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart��.

��I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.��

Nevertheless, he approaches the house, is admitted, and is led through “many dark and intricate passages��. Even “The physician of the family�� wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity��. But the narrator is shocked at the sight of cadaverous Usher:
��I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.��


Image: Dark and twisty corridors ()

Superstition versus science

Usher is a man of sudden mood changes and manias, keen to talk about the curse of his family line, his dying twin sister, and his struggle with “the grim phantasm, FEAR��. His friend thinks him a hypochondriac. They paint and read and sometimes Usher makes “wild improvisations on his speaking guitar��. He confides his belief in the sentience of all vegetable things, and in a real connection between the family’s fate and the gray stones of the ancestral home, which are covered in fungi and surrounded by decayed trees.

After much setting of mood, a major event happens, triggering other smaller ones. Usher is spooked and sees through a spiritual lens, while his friend pushes a reassuring rationalist perspective.

Meta

This is a short story, but it includes two significant chunks of other works to propel the prophetic undercurrent.

�� A six-stanza poem, , is presented as one of Usher’s works. It has four stanzas of beauty followed by two of horror and seems to echo and predict his family’s fate. (Poe had previously published it as a standalone poem.)

�� One of Usher’s favourite romances is “Mad Trist�� by Sir Launcelot Canning. As the narrator reads it aloud, the story seems to echo in reality around them, culminating in a finale that inverts the opening metaphor of the House of Usher.


Image: Woodcut of the narrator fleeing the House of Usher (artist unknown) ()

Reflections

I last read this ~30 years ago and have vague memories of seeing it on screen, so although I remembered the gist of the story, the telling of it was fresh - in sharp contrast with the archaic phrasing and the “pestilent and mystic vapor�� suffocating the House of Usher. I was especially taken by the odd reflections in the “sullen waters of the tarn�� and the unreliable reflections in it.

See also

�� Ray Bradbury wrote a dystopian sequel to this, Usher II, which I reviewed HERE. It’s included in some editions of The Martian Chronicles, which I reviewed HERE.

�� Another brother and sister living in a creepy house in Julio Cortázar's short story, House Taken Over, which I reviewed HERE.

�� The merging of family dynasty and their home, coupled with secrets, reminded me a little of Mervyn Peake’s magnificent Gormenghast books, which I reviewed HERE.

�� This could easily inspire a story of the effects of Covid-isolation, but I won’t be the one to write it.

Short story club

I reread this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story .

You can join the group here.