One of the major aspects of language is categorization. It is essential for us to organize our thoughts about reality in our minds, since the complexity of evaluating every single thing on its own would be too high. And yet, such simplifications sometimes can also obscure our perceptions of the uniqueness of the analyzed object.
Edgar Allan Poe’s relationship with Southern Gothic, and Southern literature in general, is an example of that. Due to the lack of the themes considered major in the genre, such as “the importance of family and place, social class, religion and the tragic haunting of slavery” he has often been separated from the tradition, to the point where “few readers think of him first and foremost as a ‘Southern’ writer” (Wright 2018: 9). Despite that, I believe it is not only proper to credit him with being a foundational force of the genre, but also quite a fitting representation of it.
Before we try to question whether an individual is or is not a writer of Southern Gothic, however, it is essential to explore the major characteristics of the genre further, in order to give a more precise definition of it. First things first, gothic literature would denote “tales of mystery and horror, intended to chill the spine and curdle the blood [and] contain a strong element of the supernatural” (Cuddon 2013: 356). It is immediately clear that Poe’s fiction can be easily put in that category. The Southern Gothic variation is a more specific genre with particular qualities such as madness, decay and despair, pressure of past upon the present, slavery, racism, fear of the outside world, violence, fixation on the grotesque, and a struggle between realistic and supernatural elements (Bridget as cited in Elis 2013: 3-18). Poe manages to qualify in the majority of them. As such, it seems sensible to analyze his works in the cultural context of the American South, its history, and its mutual influence between it and the stories.
A large amount of research has been conducted recently regarding Poe’s relations to race. In spite of his alleged “pro-slavery pronouncements” Lesley Ginsberg claimed that “The Black Cat” emphasized the corruption of slave-owners and that its implications would show his awareness that slavery was “at the heart of the American ‘political uncanny’” and identify it as a source of the “collective psychosis” in American consciousness (Monnet as cited in Kennedy 2019: 371).
The usual argument against Poe’s Southern qualities is the placelessness of his stories. Because he aimed to write the universal messages of introspective analyses of the human soul, the narratives he wrote rarely divulged where they are taking place, and if they did, that hardly mattered to the overarching theme. And it is true to a large extent, since Poe is beloved all over the world, having been translated to many languages by brilliant writers such as Baudelaire or Leśmian, it is easy to see that the context is not necessary for readers to appreciate the genius of the short stories. It is clear that Poe’s focus on characters’ psyche (Tomc as quoted in Hayes 2002) makes him the explorer of the personal. And as famous psychiatrist Carl Rogers put it, “what is most personal is most universal” (as quoted in Rowson 2014).
The major aspect that I would argue for, however, is to remember that just because the work of art is universal, it does not mean that it does not come from a specific mindset and place. Obviously, the experience of our minds reading is completely different from that of Poe’s mind while writing the stories, but for him, it came from somewhere. And while he had a complicated relationship with the South, it is inconceivable that it would not influence him at least to some degree. When we consider the biographical details we can see how his life was driven, in part, by the culture he has been brought up in, since “Poe often adopted the carefree manner of the planter-gentleman, falsely assuming an air of privilege and propriety” (Wright 2018: 14), the idiosyncrasies many critics read as the deconstruction of the “shadow fancies” and the shallowness of Southern gentry personae (Wright 2018: 14).
Nowhere is that deconstruction more visible in Poe’s works, as in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which serves as the perfect example of the gentry’s extinction over time. It is an instance of the focus on both the universal-personal of his psychological explorations, but also of more local and contemporary meditations on society. As Wright (2018: 13) claims:
“[The Fall of the House of Usher] is arguably his most ‘Southern’ story. Set in a characteristically anonymous dreamscape, it has all the elements that would later come to characterise the Southern Gothic: great house and family falling into decay and ruin; a feverish morbid introspective hero; an ethereal heroine; implications of incest; a pervading sense of guilt propelled by the past (…). Above all, it is the central organising symbol of the once-great ruined mansion that strikes the most familiar Southern Gothic notes.” (Wright 2018: 13).
The sense of ‘southerness’ in the story is also enlarged by the fact that it is a story in which the setting is the dominant aspect. We can see that the mansion is the source of incredible uneasiness and anxiety for the narrator immediately when he sees the building.
What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, 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.
Despite the narrator “[presenting] himself as a rational, orderly friend capable of coping with Roderick Usher’s negative fantasies, [his] vocabulary is strikingly Gothic in its implications” (Fisher as quoted in Hayes 2002). It is clear that no matter the starting psychological stability or lack thereof, the house is overpowering. It ultimately manages to consume the Ushers and almost does so with the narrator, who only very narrowly escapes before its collapse. Not only that, but despite also claiming that the mansion gives “little token of instability,” he does notice certain fissures that would be imperceptible to other observers, as if his highly subjective sensibility is predisposed to notice such fatalistic scenarios (Monnet as cited in Kennedy 2019: 378).
All of that can easily point us to the conclusion that Poe’s writing not only has a strong influence on the genre of Southern Gothic, but also is likely preoccupied with the early analysis of social elements that made the genre bound to emerge. In such a reading the house would become a representation of the plantations’ entrapment, mysteriousness, and influence on the Southern family’s ominous destiny, and it echoes the decay of the plantation mansions, one of the most common sites of the Southern Gothic (Wright 2018: 14).
The mansion itself also serves many more symbolic purposes. Through the inclusion of the poem “The Haunted Palace” and its allegorical connection between the family and the house, between the ebon floor and the Black slaves basis of the Southern society, and between Madeline’s condition and the crypts beneath that come from “below,” Poe manages to connect the mind and the mansion and frames the entire story “as a descent into madness by Usher, or the narrator, or both, triggered by mechanisms of denial, repression, and lack of conscience” (Monnet as cited in Kennedy 2019: 378-379). In an interesting way, we can see the house being endowed with consciousness and mind of its own, although the characters seem to vehemently deny it, in a very similar way to how the Southern society tried to deny the humanity of Black slaves so as to uphold the economic and social order (Monnet as cited in Kennedy 2019: 379).
At the end of the day, Poe’s works comment upon American culture, both of the South and North, disregarding any artificial placements in canons. His stories reflect the one last idea I wanted to mention here–mainly that if the South is the nation’s ‘other,’ then Poe also fits that role perfectly. In his own words: From childhood’s hour I have not been / As others were—I have not seen / As others saw—I could not bring / My passions from a common spring— / From the same source I have not taken / My sorrow—I could not awaken / My heart to joy at the same tone— / And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone.”
References:
Cuddon, John A. and Matthew Birchwood. 2014. The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory. (5. ed., publ. in paperback.) London: Penguin Books.
Ellis, Jay (ed.). 2013. Southern gothic literature. Ipswich, Massachusetts : Amenia, NY: Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Publishing ; Grey House Publishing.
Hayes, Kevin J. 2006. The Cambridge companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, J. Gerald, Scott Peeples and Caleb Doan (eds.). 2019. The Oxford handbook of Edgar Allan Poe. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Rowson, Jonathan. 2014. “Mindfulness: What is most personal is most universal”
(https://www.thersa.org/blog/2014/05/mindfulness-what-is-most-personal-is-most-universal) (date of access: 06.06.2023).
Wright, Tom F. 2016. “Edgar Allan Poe and the Southern Gothic”, in: Susan Castillo Street and Charles L. Crow (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 9-20.
(http://link.springer.com/10.1057/978-1-137-47774-3_2) (date of access: 6 Jun. 2023).