A Reinterpretation of Allan Poe’s Horror Tale from Spectral Criticism

HE Meng-qiu

(Foreign Language Department of Yunnan Normal University,Kunming 650092,China)

A Reinterpretation of Allan Poe’s Horror Tale from Spectral Criticism

HE Meng-qiu

(Foreign Language Department of Yunnan Normal University,Kunming 650092,China)

Spectral criticism,as a freshly new literature criticism,serves as an innovative theory to analyze the literature work.This author of the thesis tends to interpret Allen Poe’s horror tale—The Fall of the House Usher,by adopting spectral criticism,aiming at providing a downright new interpretation for the world’s classic gothic novel.

spectral criticism;crypt;foreign body;ambiguity

Introduction

Poe,the most controversial and most understood writer in the literacy history,left us a great deal of literature legacy[1].He is famous for his writing style,literature theory,and his work,among which the horror novels receive great attention from literature field.Intellectuals analyze his horror novels from various perspectives such as psychoanalysis,post colonialism and deconstruction,etc.However,I believe that something supernatural does exists in his gothic novels,which could be interpreted in a totally unique way,something different from the interpretation method mentioned above.It is the spectral criticism that helps us delve more deeply into the fundamental elements which constitute the attractive points of the novel—supernatural power.Iargue that,in some sense,not all phenomenons could be explained on the basis of science.There is a gap between the reality and the illusion.Sometimes that gap opens to cast a magical shadow on the reality.Sometimes that gap closes to make us confused.Fortunately,spectral criticism,a freshly new literature theory,serves as the nearest instrument to what we can use to find some reason for the confusing phenomenon in Poe’s most enduring tale—The Fall of the House Usher.

Subject to the downright new theory,Iwillmake an attempt to brief the outline of the basic principles of spectral criticism.

1.Uncanny nature with scrutiny,anxiety and fear

2.Any involvement with or in literature is inseparable from the phantom,the ghost

3.Ambiguity,no certain centre

4.Foreign body,crypt effect

In this thesis,the author intends to analyze the spectrality in Poe’s most renowned novel--The Fall of the House Usher,and tries to find something haunted by the ghost on the basis of spectral criticism.

1 Haunted House

Most gothic novel shares the common point that the story takes place in a somber,terrible,gloom and large architecture.Poe’s horror tale is no exception.“With the first glimpse of the building,a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”[2]185.At the very beginning,Poe set the fundamental atmosphere with the gray color.Then,the narrator describe those“sorrowful impression”such as“bleak walls”,“vacant eye-like windows”,“a few rank sedges”and“a few whit trunks of decayed trees”.No sooner had the narrator had arrived there than he felt that the House of Usher“hung an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven,but which had reeked up from those dull,sluggish,dark and faintly discernible things”.According to spectral criticism,there exists a crypt where ghosts emerge and vanish without trace,the living could talk to the dead,or the phantom stepson the stage to communicate with the hunted people[2]185.It is this place that presents the uncanny power like the House of Usher.That house is definitely haunted and serves to reveal the return and inauguration of“hautology”In the following pages,Poe concentrates his efforts in presenting us a haunted,terrible and awesome site.

“Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.The discoloration of ages had been great.Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior,hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.Yet all this was apart form any extraordinary dilapidation”[2]186.

All this description contributes to the fact that Poe successfully set up a crypt,a lifeless crypt with the ominous shadow over it.“A barely perceptible fissure,which extending from the roof of the building in front,mad itsway down the wall in a zigzag direction,until it became lost in the waters of the tarn”[2]187.So far there is every reason to believe that something awesome is about to happen.I think that zigzag severs as a symbol of the ghost that ultimately brings fatal death to people living there clandestinely.In my view,this zigzag is something passed from the forbears of the Usher house.In other words,the ancients come out to control their descendents in secret.What I would like to emphasize is that whatever happens in the story is under the control of a series of apparitions in the for m of zigzag,house of Usher,which“represent a present of phantom,albeit a hidden presence,of what will be revealed in the crypt[3].The description next best serves the point that the phantomatic reality is performing everywhere.“I entered the Gothic archway of the hall.A valet,of stealthy step,thence conducted me,in silence,through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of this master.Much that I encountered on the way contributed,I know not how,to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken—while the carvings of the ceilings,the somber tapestries of the walls,the ebonblac kness of the floors,and the phantas magoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode…”[2]190The environment could be seen as one of the roots of the“growing insistence on spectrality”,a sense that“any involvement is inseparable from the phantom,the ghost”[4].House Usher is the heritage from forefathers which represents some kind of spiritual and material persistence that will exert great impact on their children.Living in this house is just like living with the ancestors,as the phantom of ancestors penetrates every facet of life with or without consciousness.Things like“the black oaken floor”,“trellised panes”,“the chamber”,the“vaulted and fretted ceiling”and the“profuse,comfort less,antique,and tattered”furniture,etc best devote to the feeling that haunted ghost is everywhere.Generally speaking,House Usher represents a crypt where the uncanny power hovers.

2 Haunted People

Let’s first have a look at how the narrator feels about the people living in this house.The first person“I”encounter is a physician.“His countenance,I thought,wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity.Heaccosted me withtrepidation and passed on”[2]187.It is just a very single line that successfully portrays character here—strange,cunning and confused.This tends to suggest a strange master in this house.Here is how"I”feels about Roderick,the male master in the house of Usher,at the first sight:“half of pity,half of awe”.“The now pallor of the skin,and the now miraculous luster of the eye,above things startled and even awed me”.“I could not,even with effort,connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity”.Besides,he and his twin-born sister suffer a lot from a constitutional and a family evil,a kind of severe and long-continued malady.There is every reason for us to say Roderick is not a normal person mentally and physically.His appearance and behavior especially when he saw his beloved sister only reminds me of a ghost,“in some struggle with the grim phantasm,FEAR”.In my understanding,what makes him so frightened is the internal phantom,the phantom from the crypt conquering his heart.In some sense,Roderick himself is a semi ghost who struggle between the two conquering power which drive him crazy.Living in a desolate house conquered by the apparition,with his insane twin sister as the only accompany and without other social communication,leads to his insanity and agony.Being a ghost while in insanity,whereas being a painful man while in normal.This is the struggle between reality and illusion,human and ghost.

Madeline,his sole companion,his last and only relative on earth,unfortunately suffered a lot from the disease—a settled apathy,a gradual wasting away of the person,and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character.When“I”fist saw her,“I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread—and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings”.“A sensation of stupor oppressed me,as my eyes followed her retreating steps”[2]190I believe,in a certain sense,that Madeline represents a ghost rather than a real human being.Different from his brother,Roderick,who is a real man,Madeline rarely possess any character marking a real human being.I suppose that Madeline serves as a twin replica,a double phantom,an inert ghost for Roderick.That is the reason why Roderick was so frightened looking at his beloved sister and ever buried her when she was still alive.In my view,Madeline is the ghost that haunted the house of Usher all the time.She represents the“foreign body”of Roderick to make him alienated from who he is.This foreign body exists in a crypt--House Usher and extends to his master--Roderick.The phantom,with some kind of uncanny power,controls him and tortures him.Whereas Roderick represents himself,a man struggles to defend the effects of his sister,the ghost.This is a painful process to resist the foreign body.So Roderick finally put her sister in coffin while she was still alive.Contrary to most analysis on this,I believe is was this moment when he buries her sister that he is a real human being who seeks to bury his foreign body,to escape from the ghost and to be a real man.However,we can not dispel the ghost or even destroy it.Madeline,the ghost,who serves as the replica for her brother,came back with the same desire to conquer him.When the twins met again at the end of the story,it achieves the final ambiguity be tween the reality and the illusion,be tween the living and the dead ghost.However,after the transience of ambiguity,Roderick is ultimately conquered by the powerful ghost and change himself into a ghost.Finally,a crypt in which ghosts live corrupted after the termination of the twins’life united as one.The house of Usher becomes a crypt for spectra and its corruption achieves a new round of ambiguity be tween the reality and the opposite.

Conclusion

Poe’s gothic novel serves as the best example to illustrate the spectral criticism[5].The uncanny power lives everywhere which intellectuals give it different names as ghost,phantom,spectra and apparition,etc.It is impossible for us to defend that supernatural power.Whatwe should do is to find a way to level the playing field to achieve a harmonious ambiguity.In fact,this kind of ambiguity will not and should not impede human being’s correct understanding of life.

[1] Kevin J Hayes.The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe[M].Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2004:85.

[2] Kenneth Silverman.Edgar Allan Poe[M].New York:The Macmillan Company,1993.

[3] Peter Bush,Andrew Scott.Ghosts:Deconstruction,Psychoanalysis and History[M].London:Macmillan Press Ltd.,1999:259.

[4] Wolfreys,Julian.Introducing Criticism at the 21st Century[C].Qingdao:China Ocean University Press(1),2006:260.

[5] 朱振武,王子红.爱伦·坡哥特小说源流及其审美契合[J].上海:上海大学学报,2007.(5):92-96.

I14

A

1008-9128(2010)01-0084-03

2009-12-20

何孟秋(1983-),女(满族),辽宁铁岭人,在读硕士。研究方向:英语语言文学。

对爱伦坡恐怖小说的幽灵批评式解读

何孟秋

(云南师范大学外国语学院昆明650092)

近年来,幽灵批评理论为文学批评提供了全新的视角。文章采用幽灵批评理论来分析爱伦·坡的经典恐怖小说—厄舍里古屋的倒塌,旨在深入探讨世界经典恐怖小说。

幽灵批评;洞穴作用;异体;模糊性

[责任编辑 张灿邦]