Several authors contributed to the greatness of American literature, but Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe made a significant impact on their own. They often explored how the conscience and subconscious influence behavior, revolutionizing typical storytelling standards. Their works have set a remarkable template that most modern writers aspire to imitate (Southam and Crowley 432). This piece compares and contrasts two of their prominent works: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter.
The tale of The Fall of the House of Usher” begins with the narrator arriving at a gloomy castle to answer the call of his friend, Roderick Usher.
Roderick Usher had a sister named Madeline, who was also sick. Along with the house’s innate strangeness, the narrator faced bizarre phenomena. Supposedly, Madeline died and Roderick requested help to lay her body in the house’s vault. However, it turned out that Madeline was not really dead when she was taken to the vault; she was just in a death-like trance and trapped alone and cold in the terrifying vault. Apparently making efforts to free herself, she made unbearable sounds from inside the vaults that drove Roderick so mad he screamed that he knew Madeline was alive and intentionally trapped her inside. When Madeline finally released herself, she fell lifelessly onto her brother and scared him literally to his death. The narrator was so shocked that he hurriedly left the house. As he left, lightning struck continuously until it crumbled into nothingness – leaving no trace of what once symbolized greatness for Usher’s lineage.
The story of The Fall of the House of Usher proposes an idea: crime does not pay because evildoers do not go unpunished; they are sought by a force stronger than violence – their own conscience.
In Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter,” the story begins when the main character, Giovanni Giasconti, moves to Padua. He lives in a gloomy room in an old building overlooking a garden. It does not take long for him to notice Beatrice Rappaccini, the beautiful daughter of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini, a scientist who performs experiments with poisonous plants. Since she has been working in this poisonous garden almost all her life, Beatrice Rappaccini has become immune to them and is herself poisonous.
His professor and mentor, Dr. Baglioni warns Giovanni that Dr. Rappaccini’s work must be abandoned as it will bring no good. However, Giovanni had already fallen in love with the scientist’s daughter and goes to the garden where Beatrice is kept on a tight rein.
Giovanni had to deal with the effects of the plants on him but he was poisoned too. Although Beatrice proves resistant to the plants having inhabited the garden for so long herself, she turns out to have been toxic to him.
He hands her an antidote hoping it will help her live a normal life only for him to die from it.
Both stories deal with unusual health conditions and astonishing deaths. In The Fall of the House of Usher,” the story does not reach a happy ending as both Ushers die miserably. The same goes for “Rappaccinni’s Daughter,” who dies after drinking an antidote to the poisons that were fed to her by her own father. The observable difference in the stories is that Roderick Usher knowingly puts his sister in harm’s way and is willing to kill her only for his own survival – dying himself in doing so; while Beatrice dies because she drinks an antidote given to her by her lover supposedly to cure her from the poison that her own father had been feeding her all of her life.
The stories were set in gloomy and menacing environments. The Fall of the House of Usher” was set in an old and seemingly dying castle, depicting the doomed existence of its inhabitants. Meanwhile, in “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” the young man lived in a high and dismal room in an old building overlooking a magnificent garden with an atmosphere likened to that of the Garden of Eden (Luedtke 173).
In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher,” the story unfolds in a large, old house that resembles a skull. Despite its former grandeur and magnificence, the castle is now overrun with dust, cobwebs, and fungi. The decaying state of the house contributes to the already gloomy atmosphere surrounding the doomed Usher family. The vault where Madeline is imprisoned is dark and inescapable, foreshadowing the fate that awaits both her and her brother.
The story Rappaccini’s Daughter” takes place in Padua. The male character, Giovanni Guasconti, lived in a dark and desolate room in a tall building. It seemed like the room had not been inhabited for a while and was not at all likable. However, it had a view of a beautiful garden filled with various plants and flowers. In the center of the garden was a marble fountain with flowing water that made it look lush and picturesque (Hawthorne 2). The contrast between these environments seemed like an allusion to the inverse conditions their inhabitants have – although Giovanni was not in a beautiful place, he was free; while Beatrice, who was trapped in more ways than one, lived within this magnificent garden.
Through the narrator, Poe directly tells us that the Usher family is an old and wealthy family, isolated in their creepy house. Changes in Roderick’s appearance reflect the ways in which he undergoes emotional transformation. For example, his regression can be traced from the moment the narrator arrives at the mansion to Madeline’s death and ultimately to Roderick’s own death. His eyes and skin seem to be in sync with what is happening within the house.
Moreover, Poe’s main character, Roderick Usher, may be interpreted as a hypochondriac. He consistently claimed to be sick and displayed diminishing enthusiasm and general sluggishness. However, there was no real evidence that he was actually ill. The frightful disease he spoke of does not even have a name. The Ushers were known to have peculiar temperaments, and this seemed to be one of its manifestations (Poe and Marlowe 111).
In Rappaccini’s Daughter, it is suggested that Giovanni Guasconti fell in love with Beatrice because he saw her as a challenging woman (Person pg 59). She was not portrayed as a mere victim in the story; rather, she was depicted as a passionate and determined woman full of life and energy. Young men like Giovanni could not help but admire her (Hawthorne 4).
Edgar Allan Poe undoubtedly had a great command of storytelling. He possessed an extraordinary grasp of language and was able to convey horror, romanticism, and gloomy morale in his works. On the other hand, Nathaniel Hawthorne was known for his keen eye for humanity and exquisite sympathy for the soul (Southam and Crowley 307). He was as romantic as he was intelligent. Both authors were detail-oriented with precise attention to the elements of prose.
Together, they are acknowledged as two of the most profound writers in American Literature.
References
Person, Leland S. The Cambridge Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Cambridge.
University Press, 2007.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Rappaccini’s Daughter. Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Luedtke, Luther S. wrote a book titled Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient” which was published by Indiana University.
Press, 1989.
Poe, Edgar Allan and Stephen Marlowe wrote The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales.
Signet Classic, 1998.
Southam, Brian Charles and Donald Crowley wrote the book Nathaniel Hawthorne” which was published by Routledge in 1997.
