In his comprehensive introduction to the Gothic Tales, Baldick highlights the essential role played by Edgar Alan Poe, and in particular his first gothic tale “The Fall of the House of Usher ". ', played a role in redefining the genre: 'Poe ensured that if before him the dominant note of Gothic fiction had been cruelty, after him it could be decadence'. Although Poe modified certain conventions of the Gothic, he always maintained in his tales the important function that this genre had in literature: to overthrow the dominant ideologies of a contemporary society, a function which it still fulfills today. The main technique employed by the Gothic to overthrow the dominant is to move the narrative to a past setting. This makes it less threatening to those in power since it appears as a description of ideologies that no longer exist. In "The Fall of the House of Usher", the house of the title accomplishes the task of moving the reader to a bygone era due to its heritage, despite the fact that the narrative actually appears to take place in the era in which the text was set. been written. writing. It is through the house, what it represents and the domains of possible worlds constructed in its story that Poe managed to formulate a critique not only directed against the bourgeoisie but also against the aristocracy and gender roles in the Company. Equally important in constructing Poe's critique are the roles played by the text's protagonists (Roderick, Madeline, and the narrator) in the text's different realms and textual worlds. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Secrets play a crucial role in the construction of the Gothic narrative and have thus become a convention of the textual Gothic world. The hiding of secrets creates an atmosphere of fear and impending horror that has become a hallmark of the genre. A typical Gothic world is one of anxiety, apprehension, and terror in the face of impending but unidentifiable catastrophe or disaster. When the narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher” first approaches the mansion, he is immediately struck by this omnipresent Gothic atmosphere: “from the first glimpse of the building, a feeling of unbearable sadness invaded my mind. I say unbearable, because this feeling was not relieved by any of those half-pleasant, because poetic, feelings with which the mind habitually received even the severest natural images of the desolate or the terrible” (p. 85). So, from the first paragraph of the story, Poe has already built in the reader a sense of apprehension and knowledge that something sinister or abnormal is surely going to happen. Poe offers the reader a gateway to the Gothic world of the text; a world dominated not only by a desolate landscape but also populated by persecuted characters (usually women) located within the claustrophobic confines of a castle or historic house. Although the Gothic house is somehow endless due to its tunnels and secret passages, it also offers no escape and therefore no sense of closure; the hero or heroine must find a way to escape their limitations so that the story can end. The Bailiffs' house is an integral part of the text, not only as a conventional location for the supernatural activity found in Gothic stories, but also as a symbolic version of the family who have inhabited this house for generations but are now touching on their END. To be able to demonstrate the power of the house and those who reside in it, the author divided the house into two interlocking areas:the exterior of the house, which represents the natural and rational world, and the interior of the house, where madness, irrationality and supernatural rule. The narrator constitutes the threshold (for readers) between the two domains. The narrator moves from the outside world to the inside world of the house which is dying and encroaching on the natural world that surrounds it: "I looked at the scene before me, at the simple house and the simple elements of the landscape of the estate, at the dark walls, on empty eye-shaped windows… on a few white trunks of dilapidated plants. trees. (p.85). The “rotten trees” illustrate how corruption and calamity within the house affects the world around it. As he gets closer to the house, the narrator is even more struck by the deterioration of the building: "I scanned the scene more closely, the real appearance of the building...tiny mushrooms had spread all over the exterior, suspended in a fine tangled web. eaves... yet... no part of the masonry had fallen; and there seemed to be...the crumbling state of individual stones. In this example, one could argue that the dilapidated stones of the building represent the degeneration of the entire house. However, there also seems to be an inexplicable force keeping the house standing when it probably should have collapsed long ago. The interior of the house is a perfect example of the dark, claustrophobic but somehow endless spaces celebrated in Gothic fiction: "the windows were long, narrow and pointed...the general furniture was abundant, without comfort... I felt like I was breathing an atmosphere of sorrow” (p.88). The feeling of impending doom still permeates the corners of the house, which must now surely be linked to the house and therefore to the Usher family residing there. The creation of the house as a symbol of the corruption and decadence within the Ushers is a critique of the traditional system of inheritance of titles and property by aristocratic families, usually left to the eldest son. The aristocracy for generations maintained power and wealth through inheritance of family lines, but the bourgeoisie overthrew this line of power by emerging as a “self-made” class. Even though past generations had squandered all the family money, most aristocratic families still retained their ancestral home or mansion, which thus became a metonym for the power they still wielded over the public. It is possible that the current desolate state of the Usher family is the result of their attempts to maintain their title and wealth within the family and thus commit the incest taboo. “I had also learned the very remarkable fact that the stock The Usher race, however venerable it was, had at no time produced any lasting branch; in other words, that the whole family was in a direct line of descent and had always…” (p. 86). It is well documented in historical texts that inbreeding was prevalent within the European aristocracy in an attempt to retain power. Therefore, Poe disrupts the preservation of titles within aristocratic families rather than the usurpation of titles. However, by the time “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) was published, the bourgeoisie had established itself as the ruling class. Therefore, Poe's criticism had to be directed against them as well and not just against the aristocracy. With the rise of the bourgeoisie and the economic structure it formed, it became imperative that women remain in the private (i.e. domestic) sphere in order to maintain this structure. This has created both a binary between private andpublic, as well as gendered domains within textual worlds. Although I will later argue that Roderick and his sister Madeline are essentially different versions of the same character, it is through their gender that they occupy different textual domains, the feminine and the masculine. Roderick immediately inhabits the masculine domain and therefore the behaviors associated with being a man in a patriarchal society, such as controlling others. Although the text does not contain many examples in which Roderick asserts his patriarchal power, we know that ultimately he controls Madeline. The clearest example is when the narrator and Roderick place Madeline, who they believe is dead but is actually still alive, in a safe under the house. The vault itself signifies the underworld, since it is located under the house and therefore below ground level, like a tomb. This scene suggests the way patriarchy imprisons women in the domestic realm because they pose a threat to its power; Roderick and the narrator buried the unconscious woman not only in the vault but also in the coffin: “We replaced and screwed the lid and, having secured the iron door, we made our way” (p. 95). The horror of Madeline's imprisonment is not realized until the reader is informed that she was in fact buried alive and that Roderick had been aware of this for some time but did nothing to ratify his error: “We put she lives in the tomb!” Didn't I say my senses were sharp? I tell you now that I heard his first faint movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them many nights ago... and yet... I did not dare to speak” (p. 100). Furthermore, even when she was still "alive", Madeline was little more than a passing presence in the house, which in some ways represented how little power women had at that time and their submission to male authority: “lady Madeline”. (for that was her name) crossed a distant part of the apartment and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared" (p. 90) and "the glimpse I had had of her person would be probably the last one I would get that the lady, at least while she was alive, I would not see her anymore” (p.90-91). While I do not dispute that Roderick controls Madeline in the same way that patriarchy controls women, I now propose to explore how these two characters are linked within the text. Besides the fact that they are twins, the main connection between the two siblings is that they both occupy the threshold between the realms of life and death. Neither is dead, but both are struck by a mysterious illness and await death; their morbidity is almost fatalistic, to the extent that they have both resigned themselves to the certainty of premature death. Both characters are described in almost gruesome and unnatural terms: “A cadaverous complexion; a large, liquid and luminous eye without comparison” (p. 88). Both characters suffer from madness: Roderick's madness is a certainty "his face was, as usual, cadaverously pale but, moreover, there was a kind of mad mirth in his eyes and a suppressed hysteria evident in his whole attitude” (p.96). . The reader also assumed that Madeline was also mad, the result of generations of inbreeding: “this silence, however unwelcome and terrible an influence which, for centuries, had shaped the destinies of her family” (p. 94). Ultimately, even though they occupy the same threshold between life and death, it is Roderick's presence in a different gendered realm that causes the Ushers' eventual downfall. The living burial of his sister and his return.