The Usher mansion is the central element of the story of the House of Usher: indeed,

it is where the action happens, as the narrator is invited by his old childhood friend Rodrick
Usher to spend some weeks with him, as his disease is getting the better of him and he feels
like he needs some company to survive to the hard time he faces. The mansion is presented
as a family legacy, “passed from sire to son”. It is home to the twins Rodrick and Madeline,
as well as to some other minor members of the family. But of course, this isn’t just a simple
house: we’re in literature aren’t we? Everything is important! That’s why we are going to
discuss and talk about the role and the importance of the House of Usher in the story.
Without further ado, let’s get right into it!

1. A weirdly distorted and supernatural place

As the story begins, the narrator arrives at the mansion, and starts right away by
describing the weird feeling that invades him, and the weird atmosphere surrounding the
house. Even before meeting his friend in person, he already knows something is wrong. The
house’s setting is mournful, with decayed trees and an overall sad atmosphere: nature isn’t
seen as something which brings joy but as something more negative. The house appears
big, and even menacing… It is a very unfriendly mansion, that the narrator even goes to call
the “mansion of gloom”. The narrator is confused as he tries to understand without much
success what is happening to him, what he is feeling: as he says, “it was a mystery all
insoluble”.
The house therefore appears to have some kind of supernatural characteristic, as it
has a weird aura, a weird influence. The narrator even goes to give human characteristics to
the house: the “eye-like windows”. The house looks to be more than just a simple house,
and to have some kind of spirit...

A little bit later, the narrator explains how wide the interior is, so wide actually that the
eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber”. There also are
windows which are “long” and “pointed”, and which only enlighten the nearest part of the
room: the house even looks menacingly weird to some extent. When Madeline is about to be
buried in the house’s dungeon, the narrator describes “the door of massive iron” which
causes “an unusually sharp, grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges'': this description
gives an impression of heaviness to the whole scene. Finally, the furniture is described as
“comfortless”, which overall doesn’t make the house a nice place to live in.
This description of the weird house is part of the gothic architecture dynamic: in
gothic stories, the setting is either a big mansion or a castle, both very gloomy and
mysterious: in these stories, the action’s setting isn’t any regular setting as it plays an
important role in the story’s atmosphere. The descriptions are all distorted, which
emphasizes the whole feeling that this story gives.

2. The metaphor of a lost family

“Its principal feature seemed to be that of excessive antiquity”: of course, the

mansion is very old and not well-maintained: “minute fungi overspread the whole exterior”,
the “crambling conditions of the individual stones”, the “antique furniture”… nobody seems to
care about the house. There even is a “barely perceptible fissure, which, extending to the
building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction”: the house hasn’t fallen
yet, but it looks like it is about to explode!
 We do know that the house is tied a lot to its inhabitants, the Usher family. And just
like the house, it isn’t what it used to be: this big mansion is now only inhabited by a few
persons: there isn’t much left from the whole big family. The house is left in this state just like
the Usher family is slowly getting extinct. Therefore, we think that the house may be a
metaphor of the Usher family: as time passes, the cracks in the house are getting bigger, just
like the family can’t seem to reunite, or to repair itself. The Usher family does seem to be
mysterious: as the narrator explains, “[Rodrick’s] reserve had been always excessive and
habitual”, which is also symbolized by the strange character of the house.
Probably the most shocking event of the story is what happens at its end: just like
what was overshadowed in the first pages of the story, the cracks are getting bigger and
bigger and the house finally falls apart. This tragic event doesn’t happen during any normal
moment: it happens right after Rodrick discovers that he had buried his sister alive. We think
this reveal was the last straw: the last bit, the only link left between the two last members of
the family, has been broken in the worst way possible. As there is nothing left of the Usher
family, the mansion has no reason to stand anymore, which explains why it happened. This
event truly is the heart of the story, and it is even mentioned in the story’s title: the word “fall”
means autumn, but could also mean this idea of the end of an era, just like how the house
fell apart.

3. A sad place: a bad influence?

During the whole story, nobody really seems to enjoy their life at the Usher mansion:
both Rodrick and Madeline live a mournful life here, and the narrator even explains that this
overall impression of emptiness affects him: “I feel like I breathed in an atmosphere of
sorrow”. The narrator can’t seem to recognize his old friend as he was completely changed
because of his malady. In short, the house lacks “vitality”. It even looks like a prison to some
extent, as the characters never get out of it: they seem too stuck in their miserable feeling to
be able to enjoy the exterior world.
These impressions of sorrow and despair are of course due to Rodrick and
Madeline’s diseases, which affects their senses, their emotions, etc… It is weakening them
both. Rodrick explains that this malady gives an over-acuteness of the senses, but we think
this disease gives them fear. If Rodrick can hear everything that is happening, and every
little feeling puts him uncomfortable, it may be because he experiences fear! Not much is
known about Madeline, but we know that Rodrick was so scared of losing his precious sister
that he literally buried her alive! I think this fear is caused by the mysterious past events of
the family: these people are left in shambles, which of course has drastic consequences. We
will for sure never know, but it is always interesting to try to guess the deep meaning of
Poe’s stories.

So, we’ve seen that the house is much more than what it seems to be at first sight. In
Poe’s stories, everything has a meaning, obvious or not, which is what makes his stories so
rich and so popular nowadays.
+ formulation
+ quotes
+ parts structure
+ more presentation of the house?

+ title word play

+ irredeemable gloom ; unredeemed dreariness