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The American Gothic Tradition
Gothic literature is a popular genre of horror fiction with its roots in late eighteenth century novels such as The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. Scholars tend to define Gothic novels by their atmosphere, which stems from use of common tropes such as an isolated mansion, a family secret, the haunted past, or doppelgangers. Often Gothic literature uses the supernatural and uncanny to explore the social anxieties of its time, including sexuality, class upheaval, or women’s liberation. As the United States established itself as an independent nation, its writers began to develop their own literary voice, including their own form of Gothic literature. Although the American Gothic borrows from the European, it changes Gothic aesthetics to suit American contexts. Many literary historians cite Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown (1798) as the first American Gothic novel. The novel, with its formulaic series of hauntings and murder, also explores how many early settlements in the United States involved fringe religious groups. Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” also exemplifies the early American Gothic, blending the recent history of the United States and its experimental class system with superstition.
Later American Gothic writing, such as the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, returned to this exploration of horror in religious fanaticism in works such as The Scarlet Letter. The American Gothic also tends to explore the workings of an individual mind, especially an individual’s descent into madness and the powerlessness of rationality to stop it, as in the work of both Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. American Gothic also surveys the power and danger of the natural world. Although European Gothic and Romantic literature is no stranger to the concept of the sublime, that is, the sense of awe mingled with terror found in the beauty of nature, American literature took this concept further. Works such as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick turn the ocean itself into a Gothic venue of unearthly terror and existential dread.
Although Edgar Allan Poe is a quintessential writer of the American Gothic, “The Fall of the House of Usher” at first appears to draw more from European Gothic tropes. It involves an isolated, spooky manor and a distinctly European setting involving an aristocratic family. Unlike many European Gothic tales, however, Poe leaves ambiguous the source of the terror. While the house has a gloomy atmosphere and its residents seem secretive and frightening, there is no clear culprit, no confirmed murderer or ghost in the shadows. Some literary critics have attempted to make the story fit the Gothic genre more neatly by reading Madeline or Roderick as a vampire or demon preying on their sibling. Other scholars have suggested that Poe’s use of European Gothic tropes serves to show European modes as old-fashioned and disintegrating, much as the House of Usher itself. The House of Usher is ancient by the time the narrator arrives, and the narrow family line cannot sustain itself.
