North American Fiction and Film

Chapter 1: Edgar Allen Poe



Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Table of Contents

The stories to be discussed in this chapter are:
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Poe and the short story

Poe is best known for his short stories, usually cast within the horror or mystery genres, and for his contribution to the development of the short story as a separate literary form. Indeed, Poe has been acknowledged as formulating the basic principles which governed the emergence of the short story in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

These principles included an opening sentence which not only led directly into the story but also encapsulated or pointed to its conclusion; an economy of style and detail in which there were no unwarranted descriptions or elaborations of elements such as setting and character; and a well placed and effective (usually "shock") conclusion. With the "evolution" of the short story these principles are no longer regarded as rules or fixities.

Likewise, the way we read Poe and the reasons we value him have also changed, particularly with the changes contemporary theory has made to the whole field of Literary Studies. Orthodox approaches to, and readings of, Poe have tended to concentrate on the elements of mystery and horror alluded to above. A very basic example of this approach to Poe is the following, taken from Funk & Wagnalls Standard Reference Encyclopedia:
Much of Poe's reputation is based upon his novels of detection, which are regarded as among the most important of the predecessors of the modern mystery novel. His best-known tale of this genre, The Gold Bug, won him a prize of one hundred dollars in 1843; others of his well-known detective stories are The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Mystery of Marie Rogêt. (7134)
Earlier, Funk & Wagnalls also makes reference to Poe's "fantastic horror stories," listing "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Eleonora," and "The Masque of the Red Death" (7134).
The stories we are now to consider are three of those above, namely, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." From orthodox perspectives the first two of these would be classified purely as forerunners of the modern detective story with the last being seen primarily as a horror story. Through contemporary theory we are able to relocate the first two stories as explanations of different ways of knowing and the third as an explanation of the repressed (primarily sexual) forces in the unconscious.
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"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is probably best known through the rather sensationalist film version of the late 1950s/ early 1960s. This version figures multiple female murder victims, the perpetrator ultimately being revealed as a somewhat demented gorilla controlled by the tinkling of bells on bracelets given to the women by his murderous owner. The situation presented in the story itself is rather less colourful, consisting of two murdered women and one frenzied "Ourang-Outang" from Borneo. What is more, much of the story focuses on the mental processes by which the solution to the murders is reached. This concern is present from the opening sentence of the story:
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. (189)
Poe goes on to make the following distinction between two "powers" in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"-the analytic power and ingenuity:
The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. (191-192)
The narrator then directly states that the ambition of the story to follow is to provide an exposition of these opposing faculties:
The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced. (192)
The story focuses its concern with the analytical faculties through the character of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin who appears also in both "The Purloined Letter" and the sequel to the "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt." In all of these stories, I would suggest, Poe uses Dupin to contrast the two opposing faculties, the analytic power and ingenuity.

Dupin takes an interest in the murders in the Rue Morgue when the Parisian police have apparently reached a dead end. In Dupin's estimation, the police take inappropriate approaches to the investigation and attempted solution of the crime:
The Parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures. . . . Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-top where she is found. . . . By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct. (204-205)
The remainder of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," then, follows Dupin as he methodically sifts through the evidence and solves the double murder, flushing out the sailor who owns the Orang-outang.

The end of the story sees a frustrated Prefect of Police whom Dupin indulges in the following manner:
"Let them talk," said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. "Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience. I am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle. Nevertheless, that he failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna,-or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish. (224)
This closing statement, in its contrasting of head with body, echoes the distinction made earlier in the story between the fancy and the imagination. In making the comparisons Poe is calling upon a body of 18th-19th century Romantic theory which privileged intuition and the body above reason. Thus Poe may be seen as opposing the spirit of scientific optimism that governed the late 19th and early 20th century with those older Romantic qualities. "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" makes this opposition even clearer.

This sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" takes as its epigraph the following quotation from German Romantic poet and Novelist Novalis:
There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect.
The story itself then parallels this epigraph in its opening paragraph:
There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such sentiments-for the half-credences of which I speak have never the full force of thought-such sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or as it is technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities. Now this Calculus is in its essence purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact sciences applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation. (210-211)
Poe's s rejection of science in favour of idealism is here made quite explicit. But idealism is often accompanied by sets of exclusions; that is, by the setting up of certain people as "other." In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," I would suggest that the Orang-Outang from Borneo functions as one of these "others"-mainly the oriental. (What do you think of this particular reading of the Orang-Outang?) As well, of course, the Orang-Outang could be read as the "pure" body unrestrained by cultural influence and the destructive effects of this lack of restraint.

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"The Purloined Letter"

"The Purloined Letter" takes up Poe's privileging of the ideal over the material in an even more sustained way than "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." If you have read "The Purloined Letter" you will know already that it centres on the theft of a compromising letter from the French Queen's bedchamber and the attempts (again futile ones) of the police to recover this letter.

Dupin again castigates the police for the pedestrian nature of their investigation techniques:
"[T]he Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently . . . by ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much-that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when urged by some unusual emergency-by some extraordinary reward-they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching their principles." (340-341)
In this instance Poe, it might be argued, brings a further dimension into the "argument"-the opposition of the artist (the genius inspired by the ideal) to the masses. (This concern will become of prime importance when we come to consider "The Fall of the House of Usher.")

In taking this position Poe is appealing, again, to Romantic notions of an essentialist, idealist realm which overarches and overrules the worlds of "mere" reason and science. In "The Purloined Letter" this appeal is stressed very strongly in the following:
"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertise, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress." (344-345)
In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" and "The Purloined Letter," then, Poe can be argued to be opposing the worlds of optimism and science with the notion of the gifted artist.

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"The Fall of the House of Usher"

"The Fall of the House of Usher" may be read as exploring the darker side of the gifted artist-another salient Romantic preoccupation. Like "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Fall of the House of Usher" has been made into a horror movie. There are, perhaps, several such film versions but the one I am thinking of stars the late Vincent Price. In keeping with the "Rue Morgue" film, "The House of Usher" film is equally sensationalist-depending primarily for its effect on the Gothic atmosphere it echoes.

The story version, however, is much more complex and interesting. If you have read the story you will know that it is told in the first person by a man paying a visit to an old school friend, Roderick Usher. He finds Usher greatly changed and in a state of profound agitation which intensifies as the story progresses. The decaying Usher family home is shelter also for the ghostly figure of Roderick's sister, the lady Madeline. The action of the story follows Madeline's decline, death and burial in a crypt deep in the House of Usher's foundations, the climax being reached with her return from the dead to claim her brother's life.

The story is a very well constructed one with the action both pre-empted and parallelled by a six stanza poem and descriptions of various paintings and with the descriptions of setting serving to mirror the psychological states of the characters. At one level, all these elements operate to convey an account of the demise of an enfeebled aristocratic family, symbolised by the crack which, "extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn" (141).

At a deeper level the story may be read as radically transgressive, exploring the explosion of forbidden sexual passion, specifically that between Roderick and his sister. This particular reading of the story is summed up very well by Rosemary Jackson in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion:
"What he [the narrator] encounters is a place where transgression and taboo are permitted: Madeline and Usher have an incestuous relationship, Madeline is buried alive and returns from her grave to bring death to Usher" (109). As I noted above, this exploration of the "dark" side of the artist is almost a commonplace in Romantic art.

In Poe it can be seen to exceed, perhaps, the limits of the Romantic exploration, taking his rejection of scientific optimism and faith in progress into the realm of the radically irrational-a key preoccupation of much contemporary literature and theory. Again, Rosemary Jackson sums this up very well indeed:
Poe's "phantasy-pieces" re-work a Gothic topography of enclosures, wastelands, vaults, dark spaces, to express psychic terrors, and primal desires. Like Sade, Poe defies mortal limits, dissolving death through exerting a human will. Transcendence gives way to transgression in Poe's tales of incest and of death's entrance into life. (108)

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Last updated August 1996
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