The Psycho-Sexual Reading of "The Fall of the House of Usher"

             I found this article about Poe's story on http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1972102.htm.  It is written by John L. Marsh who is a professor at Edinboro State College.  

Marsh’s argument suggests that the explanation for Roderick’s behavior and mental condition is a result of extreme guilt from having an incestuous relationship with his sister Madeline.  All moral fiber of the Usher family has been broken for intermarriage has been the family tradition for years.  Marsh explains the doctor’s inability to treat Madeline’s perplexing illness with the idea that broken moral fiber is irreparable.  He explains that a doctor of the times would have been prepared to treat physical maladies but those of moral issues are impossible to cure.

Roderick Usher’s deteriorating state can also be explained by this idea of guilt.  The reader notices that Roderick gets more and more anxious, and seems to go crazier and crazier as the story progresses.  This can be explained as a culmination of fear and guilt for his sin.  His incestuous relationship with his sister has ultimately led to his demise.  Roderick’s paintings also seem to have sexual implications.  Though the reader is never actually shown any of the paintings nor are they described in full detail, the details given enable the reader to conclude that within the paintings lie “erotic symbolism intensifying the introverted sympathies of brother and sister that are hastening them down the road to mutual destruction.”

Marsh furthers his argument of immorality and extreme guilt when describing why Usher chose to bury his sister beneath the house.  He asks “Is he bent in his inordinate lust on violating her dead body? While scarcely pleasant to contemplate, this possibility would account for Poe's final description of the Lady Madeline: ‘There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.’”  Marsh suggests that Roderick’s immorality and guilt lie beyond incest; he seems to suggest that Roderick has a tendency towards necrophilia.

            The death of Roderick at the end of the story is explained simply as a buildup of his guilt.  “It is in his mind that she has come back to take vengeance for the violation of her defenseless body. He has no answer, no defense; there is only the inevitable judgment--death.”  Marsh goes on to conclude that “If Usher is an archetypal hero, if this is a drama of fatal cognition, it rests in the discovery by Poe, through the perverse sensuality of the Ushers, that man dwells in the dark rather than the light. Man, a creature of hitherto unimagined vulnerability, has come into a legacy of degeneration, desolation, and moral ruin.”

            Marsh’s argument suggests that Roderick’s entire being is plagued with extreme guilt for all he has done with and to his sister Madeline.  He dies with her, because he can no longer bear the guilt of his incest and necrophilia.  Roderick seems to portray a character that is full of lust, passion, madness, and simply misery.