Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" details the end of an aristocratic Southern family line a gothic manner that is to be expected from Poe. Although Poe's writing focuses primarily on the Gothic quality, it is also important to note the southern nature of his writing. Poe may have been born in Boston, but he grew up in the South. Although a sense of southern quality is not at the forefront of his works, Poe's Gothic writing style exhibits a southern influence that is worth examining for its depiction of the antebellum South. Ellen Glasgow, a postwar Southern author who demonstrates the birth of critical thinking in Southern literature, uses the same underlying Gothic principles and themes that are established by Poe in "The Fall of House Usher” in his short story “Jordan’s End.” in order to parallel the end of a Southern family line with the end of the old Southern way of life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original Essay On the surface, both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Jordan's End” appear to be almost identical in style and story . . Both stories center on the mental decline of the last of a family line, develop a gothic atmosphere and explore the theme of isolation. However, when comparing the two stories, it becomes evident that Poe and Glasgow have different authorial intentions in their writings. Poe's writing demonstrates a cohesion between the story's gothic elements, suggesting that his only intentions were to create a standalone work of horror, and it is a mere coincidence that the setting of "The Fall of the Dead Usher House” takes place in Virginia. The authors of The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs state that "Poe records little that is obviously Virginian. The emphasis is on sublime gothic beauty/terror” (Flora, MacKethan, and Todd 942). Nevertheless, there is a sense of eloquence in Poe's writing that can only be achieved by a Southern gentleman. In opposition to this, Glasgow uses the elements of Gothic literature to critique the Old South way of life instead of focusing solely on the beauty and terror of Gothic stylization. Poe writes Gothic works with the aim of creating something eloquent and otherworldly; Glasgow uses the Gothic style to support a critical examination of the fall of the Old South and the people of this period. Glasgow establishes a very southern quality in his work through the use of local colors, the mention of the Civil War, and the character of Father Peterkin. Father Peterkin allows Glasgow to more freely include aspects of southern literature without disrupting the unity of the story, and his dialect reveals a very southern quality. The narrator of “Jordan's End” reflects on Father Peterkin's dialect after learning the correct Virginian pronunciation of the surname “Jordan”: “The name was invariably called Jurdin by all classes; but I had already discovered that names are rarely pronounced as they are spelled in Virginia” (359). Glasgow helps establish the southern element of the story in the distinction of Father Peterkin's dialect. Poe establishes a theme of isolation in "The Fall of the House of Usher" that is carried over into Glasgow's "Jordan's End." Geographic isolation is an important factor to consider in Southern literature, because living in the rural Old South means being isolated from the rest of the country and other local populations. The isolation affected the way the inhabitants of theSouth lived in the Old South. People who lived in the rural Old South, like Roderick Usher and Alan Jordan, were confined by geographic boundaries such as mountains and rivers. Neighbors and towns were very far away, making it difficult to socialize outside of the family. Poe describes the isolation of Roderick Usher: I also learned the very remarkable fact, that the stock of the Usher race, so honored ever since, had produced, at no time, any lasting branch; in other words, that the whole family was in the direct line of descent and that it had always been so, with very insignificant and very temporary variations. (104) Poe means that the Usher family has always been small. There has never been a deviation from a direct lineage among Ushers, which essentially means that Usher's genetic heritage is restricted. Similarly, Glasgow describes the Jordan family as so entirely isolated that they practiced intermarriage and inbreeding. Inbreeding in the Jordan family led to the development of mental illnesses in the males of the Jordan family and, like the Ushers, they never expanded their family beyond an immediate lineage which was ultimately the cause of the end of their family. lines. As Father Peterkin, a character in “Jordan's End,” describes it, the Jordan family “ran away” (Glasgow 359). Glasgow suggests that the grotesque nature of inbreeding is a product of both isolation and Old South ways of thinking. A literary critic describes the subject: It is the narrow-mindedness born of pride, the ethnocentrism born of ignorance, which has led families like the Jordans to the kind of inbreeding which has produced generational madness. after generation. The way of life, the way of thinking, and the refusal to admit that things had changed – all these were the causes of the decline of the Southern aristocracy. (Ross) Glasgow follows Poe in using Southern aristocratic characters, but she does so in order to discuss the decline of these types of people in the Old South. Glasgow wishes to offer the reader an understanding of the decadence of an old way of life, and she does so by using the Jordan family as a symbol of the end of an era in the South. Both Poe and Glasgow use symbolism in their short stories to help achieve their desired effects. Poe uses symbolism in "The Fall of the House of Usher" in his description of the Usher family home. Poe writes of the house in a way that is conducive to its careful Gothic structure: The fading of the ages had been great. Tiny mushrooms invaded the entire exterior, hanging in a thin, tangled web from the eaves. And yet, all this was beyond any extraordinary dilapidation. No part of the masonry had fallen; and there seemed to be a wild inconsistency between the still perfect fit of the pieces and the crumbling state of the individual stones. (105) Poe writes about the inconsistency of how Usher's house seems to collapse and defy time at the same time because the same inconsistency exists in his character Roderick Usher. Poe uses the house as a symbol for the character Roderick Usher. Poe describes Roderick Usher: “I looked at him with a feeling half of pity, half of respect” (106). Poe uses this symbolization to create a more coherent short story in which all parts are intertwined. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe states that "critics have long noted that 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is carefully structured" (Hayes 179). The main goal of Poe's writing is to create a unified literary work. Both stories use symbolism in their names. “The Fall of the House of Usher” has adouble meaning as it tells the story of the fall of the Usher family line, and the house imitates the Usher family and declines throughout the short story until it eventually falls as well. Poe creates a connection between the current Usher family home and the Ushers themselves, and he does so very literally. It's as if the house and the Usher family are one. Poe writes that Roderick Usher fell dead to the ground, and he also writes that the walls of the house “broke apart” (116). Again, the symbolization Poe uses in this work is done in a way that unifies each individual aspect of his writing. "Jordan's End" also offers a double meaning in the symbolism of his name: "This is the name of the mansion of the ruined south which constitutes the main setting of the story, and it is also a reference to the decadent state of the Jordan family” (DelFattore and Cassidy). The connection Poe makes between the Usher family and the Usher House is retained in "Jordan's End", and this connection can be seen through the similar depictions of Alan Jordan's appearance and the Jordan House. Glasgow describes the Jordan family home: Desperate as it appeared on this first approach, I supposed that Jordan's End must once have possessed charm as well as distinction. The proportions of the Georgian facade were impressive, and there was a beauty of design in the picturesque doorway and rounded stone steps which were now covered in brocade of an emerald moss pattern. But the whole thing was in dire need of repair. (360) Alan Jordan is described similarly: “His head was bowed forward, his eyes staring fixedly at an image we could not see; her restless fingers braided and undid the fringe of a checked shawl. However helpless he was, he still possessed the dignity of simple physical perfection” (364). The similarities between the way Poe and Glasgow connected the family and the family home demonstrate a clear coherence between the two texts. Glasgow, however, uses symbolism somewhat more abstractly in his story than Poe does. The decline of the Jordan family is symbolic of the decline of the old Southern way of life after the Civil War. Some critics agree with the assertion that Glasgow's work evokes the fall of the old Southern way of life: "the state of the physical location where the last of the Jordan line resides reflects the state of that lineage, and by extension, the decline of a way of life” (Ross). Many parallels can be seen between the end of the Jordan family line and the end of the Old South way of life. Glasgow speaks directly to the parallels between the Jordan family and the South before and after the Civil War through Father Peterkin. Father Peterkin said: “I remember the days when old Mr. Timothy Jur'dn was the proudest man around; but after the war the sorter began to go down with him” (359). Glasgow uses Father Peterkin as a way to create a direct connection between the Jordan family and the southern way of life in his writing. She creates this direct connection so that readers can more easily see the parallel between the fall of the Old South and the fall of the Usher family. Glasgow suggests that the Jordans and the Old South appeared to be functioning well before the war. But after the war, we saw a collapse of a way of life. What was once prosperous met its downfall and the turning point was the civil war. More abstractly, the ending of Glasgow's short story remains ambiguous and can be examined as another parallel between the Jordan family line and the Old South. The doctor left Alan Jordan with a full bottle of painkiller, but when he returned to see Jordan the next day, the bottle was empty and Jordan was dead.. 2015.