Acknowledgment
This research was supported through funding from the Rice University Humanities Research Center and the Fondren Fellows program.
Introduction
In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” an unnamed narrator receives a request from his childhood friend, Roderick Usher, to stay with him at his family mansion. Roderick hopes that the narrator’s visit will alleviate the “mental disorder” from which he has been suffering.1 However, the question of whether Roderick’s condition constitutes “madness” is much more complicated than the narrator acknowledges—especially given that the “mad” Roderick sometimes has a stronger grasp on reality than the narrator himself. The label of “madness” becomes a means of dismissing truths that do not serve the interests of the person applying the label—in this case, the narrator—rather than a description of a person’s inability to perceive and react appropriately to objective reality. Consequently, this label inflicts immense damage upon those who perceive unpleasant truths while allowing false or misleading perspectives to be accepted as reality. Thus, the narrator’s portrayal of Roderick’s condition demonstrates the arbitrariness of the label of “madness” and the disastrous consequences that arise when this label is applied to people who accurately perceive reality.
“A Morbid Acuteness of the Senses”
The story introduces Roderick’s mental illness as “a morbid acuteness of the senses”:2
[T]he most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.3
Roderick’s heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli reflects theories about mental illness from the era in which “The Fall of the House of Usher” was composed and published. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, irritated nerve fibers were believed to cause mental illness.4 This specific condition manifested as a heightened sensitivity remarkably similar to Roderick’s.5 For instance, such patients were unable to “sustain the slightest alien impression. The faintest sound, the weakest light afford[ed] them extraordinary symptoms.”6
This heightened sensitivity was thought to “overcharg[e] the soul’s capacity to feel,” inducing overly emotional reactions to environmental events.7 Thus, this conception of Roderick’s disorder presents his intense reactions to stimuli and events as irrational; his nervous sensitivity causes him to react in what the narrator presents as an inappropriate, overly emotional manner. For instance, when the narrator and Roderick both hear strange sounds in the Usher mansion, the narrator attempts to rationalize the sounds and discounts Roderick’s frightened reaction. He describes Roderick as exhibiting “a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor.”8 This description of Roderick’s reaction as “mad hilarity” and “hysteria” presents Roderick’s behavior as both overly emotional and the product of his mental illness. Thus, the narrator discounts Roderick’s fear as inappropriate for the situation, produced by his condition rather than any objective quality in the stimuli to which he reacts.
Moreover, the narrator’s treatment of Roderick during this intense emotional state further presents Roderick’s behavior as unjustified by the reality of his experiences. The narrator dismisses the strange sights and sounds that induce Roderick’s fear as “merely electrical phenomena not uncommon” or the product of “the rank miasma of the tarn.”9 The narrator grounds Roderick’s perceptions in logical, scientific causes that would not warrant the extreme reaction Roderick displays. Furthermore, it presents Roderick’s reaction as dismissive of reality; consumed by emotion, Roderick fails to consider the likely, tangible causes rooted in the surrounding environment that the narrator mentions. Thus, the narrator appears logical, grounded, and sane, while Roderick seems irrational and out of touch with reality because of his nervous condition.
Although the narrator presents Roderick’s nervous sensitivity as a source of madness, he labels similar symptoms displayed by Roderick’s family members as virtues:
[Roderick’s] very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science.10
The Ushers’ “sensibility of temperament” matches both Roderick’s condition and the nerve fiber theory of mental illness. The family’s ability to notice “intricacies” beyond the “easily recognizable beauties” of music suggests an above-average sensory perception akin to Roderick’s heightened senses. Moreover, their charitable acts appear to be the product of the emotional sensitivity produced by irritated nerve fibers, which causes affected individuals to feel “too a strong a sympathy for what happens around them.”11 However, while these are the same symptoms that Roderick displays, the narrator does not present them as illogical or evincing a mental disorder. Instead, he praises them: their artistic creations are “exalted,” their charitable acts “munificent yet unobtrusive.” This latter commendation presents the Ushers as able to tailor their emotional response to align with social norms; their charitable acts are controlled enough to be discreet and thus solicit respect from society. Thus, the narrator illustrates the Ushers as having a strong enough understanding of reality to be aware of—and act in accordance with—the social norms in their environment. This presentation of the Ushers starkly contrasts with the narrator’s portrayal of Roderick as ignoring the environmental context out of which stimuli arise.
Because the Ushers’ sensitivity produces a social benefit through their contributions to charity and art, their sensitivity—unlike Roderick’s—is not only praised by the narrator, but by society as well. The narrator claims that the Ushers “ha[ve] been noted, time out of mind” for these qualities, presenting the Ushers’ sensitivity as the source of a long-standing, positive reputation in society. Thus, society honors the Ushers, and benefits from doing so; the Ushers’ reputation presents them as a model of socially valuable behavior. Even though the Ushers’ sensitivity could be considered the symptom of a mental disorder, they escape the negative label of madness because they serve the interests of society.
The narrator, on the other hand, benefits from portraying Roderick as “mad.” During his stay at the Usher mansion, the narrator helps Roderick seal the body of his recently deceased sister, Madeline, in a vault, where it will be kept for two weeks before she is buried. However, both Roderick and the narrator have cause to doubt whether Madeline is actually dead; they both know that she experiences “affections of a partially cataleptical character.”12 As catalepsy causes a “suspension of sensation and consciousness” which can persist for “days,” it is possible for Madeline to appear as if she is dead when she is merely in a cataleptic trance.13 Thus, Roderick’s heightened senses, which allow him to perceive the sounds of his living sister moving and escaping from the vault, implicate the narrator in the act of burying a woman alive. By dismissing Roderick’s intense fear—the fear that he buried his sister alive—and writing off his ability to hear her movements as mental illness, the narrator allows himself to ignore the possibility of what he has done to Madeline. Thus, “madness” emerges in “The Fall of the House of Usher” as an arbitrary label applied not to specific symptoms, but to perspectives and behaviors that threaten the entity who applies the label.
“The Mere Inexplicable Vagaries of Madness”
In the narrator’s attempts to dismiss Roderick as “mad,” he portrays Roderick as not only irrational, but actually psychotic. However, in attempting to uphold this view of Roderick, the narrator reveals his own delusional tendencies. Thus, he appears more deserving of the label of madness than the person whom he presents as such.
For example, the narrator attempts to intensify his illustration of Roderick’s madness by claiming that Roderick believes his house is sentient and has exercised an “influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family.”14 The narrator presents this belief as a “singular feature of [Roderick’s] mental condition” and the product of “his disordered fancy.”15 He not only pathologizes Roderick’s belief, but by describing it as a “fancy,” directly claims that it is not based in reality. Moreover, the narrator also claims that the absurdity of this belief speaks for itself in revealing Roderick’s psychosis: “Such opinions [as Roderick’s] need no comment, and I will make none.”16 The narrator’s assertion that no commentary is necessary—that Roderick’s belief alone sufficiently demonstrates his madness—is strange, as the narrator’s commentary, rather than Roderick’s own words, create the image of Roderick as mad. During all the sections of the story in which Roderick discusses the influence of the house, the narrator paraphrases Roderick’s words rather than quoting him. Thus, the reader only sees Roderick’s beliefs through the filter of the narrator’s interpretation. Roderick’s own words do not illustrate him as psychotic; the narrator’s words do.
The story is unclear about whether Roderick actually believes his physical house is sentient and has shaped his family’s fate, but the narrator ignores this evidence. Firstly, the narrator describes Roderick as speaking of the house’s influence “in terms too shadowy here to be restated.”17 The narrator cannot quote Roderick because he does not fully understand what Roderick is saying, which casts doubt on the reliability of his paraphrases. The narrator himself admits his lack of comprehension, yet he ignores this fact when he uses the statements he does not understand to evaluate Roderick’s sanity. In an attempt to highlight Roderick’s delusionality, the narrator reveals that his beliefs defy logic and reality.
The narrator also clearly does not consider alternate interpretations of Roderick’s theories, instead latching onto a literal interpretation that casts doubt on Roderick’s sanity. He assumes—and never doubts—that when Roderick speaks of his house, he refers to the literal building in which he lives. However, the phrase “House of Usher” refers to “both the family and the family mansion.”18 Thus, Roderick could be speaking figuratively about the influence of his ancestors. The narrator knows this interpretation is possible—he recollects the two meanings of “House of Usher” on his way to the mansion—yet he never considers it. In doing so, the narrator again ignores the facts of reality to support his belief in Roderick’s madness.
After Roderick and the narrator bury Madeline in the tomb, the narrator describes Roderick’s condition as worsening:
[A] tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound.19
Roderick’s “extreme terror” is, indeed, caused by his “oppressive secret”: his fear that he has accidentally buried Madeline alive. However, even though his reaction is valid and justified given the extremity of the situation, the narrator still dismisses it as “madness.” He acknowledges that Roderick appears to be struggling to suppress a secret but discounts these impressions. He claims that he only “th[inks]” Roderick is hiding a secret, and immediately after acknowledging this, he “resolve[s] all” of Roderick’s strange behaviors “into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness.” The dismissal of the possibility of Roderick’s secret—and the narrator’s immediate claim that madness, instead, explains Roderick’s behavior—suggests that the narrator does not want to consider the possibility of his complicity in burying Madeline alive. He seems to know—or, at least, fear—that Roderick’s secret is his belief that Madeline is still alive. Confirming Roderick’s fear would necessitate action—checking on Madeline—that could confirm the narrator’s guilt. By dismissing Roderick’s behavior as the product of madness, the narrator avoids the unpleasant feelings that would arise from seriously acknowledging or asking about Roderick’s secret. Thus, he can continue to suppress his own anxieties and ignore his involvement in possibly burying Madeline alive.
The narrator intensifies his presentation of Roderick’s madness by entertaining hallucination as a possible explanation for Roderick’s behavior. Despite knowing that Roderick’s hearing is unusually sensitive, the narrator claims that Roderick seems to be hearing an “imaginary sound” rather than a sound that is too soft for the narrator to perceive. This yet again exemplifies the narrator ignoring the facts he knows about reality to form conclusions that paint Roderick as psychotic. Furthermore, it facilitates the narrator’s suppression of his own fears about Madeline. By claiming that the sound is “imaginary,” he not only makes Roderick’s fear seem like the reaction to a hallucination rather than a real secret, but he also dismisses the possibility that there are any strange, faint sounds—such as those produced by a person struggling to escape a coffin—occurring in the house. Thus, the narrator presents Roderick as “mad” not because Roderick cannot understand or accurately perceive reality, but because he can—and his vision of reality is not one that the narrator wants to acknowledge. The narrator thus reveals how the label of madness can be used as a tool to suppress unpleasant truths. “Madness” has no basis in truth or reality; it only considers the idea of truth or reality that the person applying the label wants to believe.
“Madman! I Tell You That She Now Stands Without the Door!”
The narrator benefits from discounting Roderick’s fears and behaviors as “madness,” but he does so at the expense of Roderick himself. Roderick reveals the immense suffering he experiences because of how the narrator treats him in a lengthy monologue at the end of the novel. Here, Roderick himself is quoted, providing a rare, extended opportunity to hear Roderick’s true voice, unfiltered by the narrator’s paraphrases and commentary. He begins by explaining his conviction that he and the narrator have buried Madeline alive:
Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! 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. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak!20
The dashes in Roderick’s monologue visually illustrate the length and constancy of his suffering. He becomes stuck on the word “long,” repeating it several times as if he is unable to adequately quantify the duration he has been hearing his sister; his stress and guilt have distorted his sense of time.
His dashes further demonstrate the intensity of these emotions when Roderick repeats the phrase “I dared not,” eventually building to “I dared not speak!” In “Marginalia [part XI],” Edgar Allan Poe describes the dash as a method of showing “an emendation”: the dash “stands, in general, for these words—‘or, to make my meaning more distinct.’”21 When Roderick repeats the phrase “I dared not,” he uses the em-dash to correct and clarify it by adding italics; he makes his meaning—his fear about voicing his beliefs—clearer by increasing his words’ emotional intensity. This illustrates his inability to tell anyone about his perceptions and fears as a significant driving force of his immense distress. Thus, he implicates the narrator in intensifying his distress. Because the narrator discounts Roderick’s fears and dismisses his perceptions, Roderick does not feel safe or comfortable confiding in the narrator. Instead, he bottles up his stress inside himself, where it builds up and heightens his suffering.
Roderick’s insertion of the phrase “oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!” within his repetitions of “I dared not” suggest that he thinks he should be “pit[ied]” specifically for his inability to “dar[e]” to reveal the truth. He thus presents his silence as the consequence of his own personal fault—a lack of courage—rather than blaming the narrator for creating an environment in which Roderick does not feel comfortable voicing his beliefs. When the label of madness is applied arbitrarily, the people who are silenced may internalize blame like Roderick does. Instead of realizing he is actively being oppressed by a person who does not want to hear the truth, he blames himself and intensifies his guilt.
Furthermore, the dashes surrounding “oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!” and “I dared not” illustrate “a stepping-up of intensity, a rhetorical charge toward an ultimate claim,” a use of the dash which Joan Dayan identifies as occurring in Poe’s works.22 Roderick’s “ultimate claim”—“We have put her living in the tomb!”—clearly states the truth that the narrator has been attempting to silence. Through the word “[w]e,” Roderick even implicates the narrator in the act of burying Madeline alive. He then supports this claim with the same evidence the narrator dismissed as “madness”; the “imaginary sounds” that the narrator supposed Roderick heard are indeed the real sounds of Madeline’s “first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.” Once Roderick is able to tell his truth in his own words, the behaviors that the narrator dismissed as “madness” appear justified. His intense emotional reactions reflect the extremity of his situation and respond to real stimuli that his “acute” perception allows him to sense. Thus, Roderick only appears “mad” when his voice is silenced by the narrator.
At the end of his monologue, Roderick turns to the narrator, pleading for the narrator to help him and confirm his perceptions. He believes that the living Madeline has escaped from her coffin and the vault, and is coming to the room where he and the narrator are:
[“]Oh! 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 footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!”23
This section of Roderick’s speech demonstrates how he has internalized the label of “madness.” Because of the narrator’s dismissal of his perceptions as hallucinations, Roderick lacks confirmation from another person that the stimuli he perceives exist in the real world. Consequently, he presents his sensory observations as questions: “Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?” This expresses his uncertainty in his own perceptions; he sounds as if he is begging the narrator to confirm that he is actually hearing Madeline’s approach and not hallucinating. Roderick’s doubt demonstrates how powerful the label of madness can be; the person who perceives the truth can be made to question the reality of their own experiences.
Roderick also asserts that he and the narrator need to act to prevent Madeline from “upbraid[ing]” Roderick. He asks where he can run to escape from her, indicating the urgency of action by claiming she will arrive “anon.” However, the narrator does not do anything. He simply observes Roderick’s action—“he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables”—and, by contrast, emphasizes his own inaction. Consequently, Roderick accuses the narrator of being the true “[m]adman”; it is the narrator, not Roderick, who is ignoring the reality of the situation and not reacting appropriately to its urgency and danger. In his desperation to convince the narrator to help and believe him, he exerts all his energy, screaming “as if in the effort he were giving up his soul.” However, even when he clearly asserts the reality of the present moment—Madeline “now stand[ing] without the door”—the narrator still fails to supply Roderick with the help that the situation demands of him; his need to cling to his delusion is too strong.
Despite Roderick’s emotional plea, the narrator still does not appear to believe him. He even describes Roderick’s cry with a hyperbole: “as if in the effort he were giving up his soul.” This indicates that he still thinks Roderick’s reactions are too extreme. In reality, the narrator merely perceives them as such because he has still not acknowledged the reality of Madeline’s impending arrival. Even after Madeline enters the room, the narrator does nothing to help Roderick. He continues to observe what is happening and describes no actions from himself, not even as Madeline dies and falls on top of Roderick, who consequently dies of fright. It is only after both Roderick and Madeline are dead that the narrator acts; he “fle[es] aghast” from the Usher mansion.24 As he runs away, the entire Usher mansion crumbles and sinks into the lake surrounding the house. By failing to help Roderick and then running away, the narrator prioritizes his need to deny the truth over the safety of his friend. With all other witnesses dead and all evidence destroyed with the house, the narrator grants himself the possibility of continuing his delusion. He never has to tell anyone the truth of what happened; he can even dismiss the events as hallucinations or deny his own involvement in burying Madeline. Thus, the label of madness triumphs over truth. As the sole survivor, only the narrator has the power to decide who was “sane” and who was “mad” in the Usher mansion. However, the narrator’s victory comes at an extreme price: the death of Roderick and Madeline. Ultimately, “The Fall of the House of Usher” demonstrates how the arbitrary label of “madness” values a desirable, but false, perspective above the lives of human beings, and allows people to suffer and even die in the name of hiding unpleasant truths.
Conclusion
“The Fall of the House of Usher” illustrates how those with the power to apply labels to others do so in a manner that serves their own self-interest, often at the expense of those being labeled. Although the story largely focuses on the narrator applying the label of madness to Roderick, it acknowledges that society, too, has the power to determine reputations and decide how people are perceived by others. It implicates the label of madness as a tool of social oppression, a means of silencing perspectives and truths that defy a powerful social group’s idea of what reality should be. Unfortunately, this arbitrary labeling continues to harm people today, on both interpersonal and societal levels. From gaslighting in abusive relationships to the continued presence of the harmful practice of conversion therapy, labels of “mental illness” or “madness” persist as weapons to oppress the real experiences of people. However, as Roderick’s accusation against the narrator at the end of “The Fall of the House of Usher” illustrates, the true madmen are the people who prioritize the maintenance of a delusion over truth and the well-being of their fellow human beings.
Bibliography
Dayan, Joan. “The Analytic of the Dash: Poe’s Eureka.” Genre 16 (1983): 437-466.
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1988.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales, 117-137. New York: Signet Classics, 2006.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “Marginalia [part XI].” Graham’s Magazine 32, no. 2 (1848): 130-131.
Tissot, Simon-André. Traité des Nerfs et de Leurs Maladies. Vol. 1, part 2. Paris, 1778-1780. Quoted in Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1988.