Two Sides of Oneself

1
Two Sides of Oneself

• Duality of man (man is both good and evil, light
  and dark can be contained in same person)
• Mirror Image (the double or look-alike
  stranger)
• Twin characters (separate yet inseparable)
• Doppelgangerthe motif of the double or fractured
  image fairly common to literature

2
The Doubling Motif

• In literary criticism, this is called a
  doppelganger, from the German for double-goer
• Examples are
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)
• The Secret Sharer (Joseph Conrad)

3
What function does the doppelganger motif serve?

• Represents the dual nature of man
• In Poe, one side of man is reason, or the mind
• The other is emotion, or the body
• Roderick and Madeleine are genetically twins, but
  psychologically they are also doubles.

4
Who Represents What?

• Roderick
• An artist figure
• Nervous agitation
• Lives in dark upstairs apartment
• Cadaverous complexion
• want of moral energy
• excessive nervous agitation

5

• Rodericks mental condition is affected by his
  environment
• He was enchanted by certain superstitious
  impressions in regard to the dwelling which he
  tenanted . . . An effect which the physique of
  the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn
  into which they all looked down, had, at length,
  brought about upon the morale of his existence.

6

• Here, physique refers to something physical
• And morale refers to something mental
• Roderick is all mind in a weak body
• He represents in one way the life of the isolated
  artist
• Paintings
• Reading
• Guitar playing

7

• Madeleine
• Illness has debilitated her
• All descriptions focus on the body
• gradual wasting away of the person
• Roderick and the narrator screw down the lid of
  her coffin
• She returns from the tomb to reclaim her twin
  brother, her double
• the huge antique panelsthrew back
• She fell heavily inward uponher brother
  andbore him to the floor a corpse

8
What is Poes point?

• Poe addresses the dual and conflicted nature of
  the Self
• Mind and body are at war with each other in each
  of us
• We try to repress one side and live without it
• But we cannot achieve a harmonious existence in
  this way

9
The Function of Setting - Exterior

• The house of Usher has two meanings
• The physical dwelling
• The family line, or lineage
• the entire family lay in the direct line of
  descent

10

• The house is also a type of character in the
  story
• Like the family, it is of an excessive
  antiquity
• The landscape is overgrown and ragged
• On the front down the middle is a barely
  perceptible fissure going in a zigzag
  direction

11
Interior Setting

• Gothic architecture
• windows were long, narrow and pointed
• feeble gleams of encrimsoned light
• dark draperies
• atmosphere of sorrow
• Roderick lives upstairs (mind)
• Madeleine is entombed below ground (body)

12
Structure and Unity

• Poe creates texts within texts
• The Haunted Palace (poem) reflects the Usher
  family life in the house
• The Mad Trist (story) parallels Madeleines
  return from the grave
• The storm outside is analogous to the turmoil
  inside the characters in the house
• The book titles in Rodericks library are
  symbolic of the themes of the story

13

• An author should conceive, with deliberate care,
  a certain unique or single effect to be wrought
  out, and then invent such events as may best
  aid him in establishing this preconceived effect.
  
• In the whole composition there should be no word
  written, of which the tendency, direct or
  indirect, is not to the one pre-established
  design.

14
Unity in Fall of the House of Usher

• First and last paragraphs are mirror images of
  each other, creating symmetry
• The texts-within-text reinforce the central theme
• The house itself symbolizes the split in the
  family
• The construction of the house reflects a perfect
  adaptation of parts

15
In his seminal essay, The Philosophy of the
Short-Story, Branden Matthews, argued that the
dominance of the three-decker novel had killed
the Short-Story in England, while in France and
America conditions had favoured the development
of the short-fiction which was different in kind,
not merely in length, from the novel (Shaw).
Matthews went on to state that in the late
nineteenth-century, English writers lacked the
tradition of storytelling as an instinctive
literary art, and the main reason that accounted
for this was the dominance of the Victorian
novel.Similarly, Shaw claims that the rise of
the short story in England was closely linked
with the emergence of the modern artist and the
arousal of anti-Victorianism in the widest sense
towards the end of the nineteenth-century.Further
more, V.S.Pritchett suggests that the
essentially poetic quality of the literature
produced under tense pioneering conditions in
America has nothing to do with the literary
polish which characterises the Victorian novel,
since the origins of American literature stem its
power from something raw and journalistic.
(Shaw)- Shaw, Valerie. The Short-Story A
Critical Introduction. London and New York
Longman, 1983