...And Speaking of Constructs*
The Deconstruction of Paper Houses
A man builds a house. He imbues it with life, and pride, and like its builder, it too is doomed to die. All things pass. But houses seem to resent this fact, more so than their builders. Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Flannery O'Connor have each written of this phenomenon: houses that absorb sickness and resent the deaths that chase them down the long years. One is a house entire, bent on the destruction of a family line. The next is an upper room, like a lump of tumor spreading its disease, and driving its prisoner insane. The last is a house of clay-- of flesh --brimming with hatred, and a desire to destroy anyone unworthy of the life they own. Each house was designed to destroy, and each imbued by its author with desire, and power enough to its purpose, yet their methods, as well as the forms they were given, are worlds apart.
In The Fall of the House of Usher, Mr. Poe describes a house so filled with bitterness over its neglect, that it actively pursues the deaths of Roderick and Madeline, the last of the Usher's. It is Roderick, more so than Madeline, who has allowed the tarn to grow and fester, thereby sealing the house's doom. It is sinking into stagnation, bereft of its previous glory, and it wears its wounds visibly. Ushers visitor sees the "barely perceptible fissure which [runs] from the roof of the building in front…to the sullen waters of the tarn." The very sight of the house so worked upon its visitor’s imagination, as to allow him a glimpse of its pain and the atmosphere that surrounded it-- the reek of decaying trees, the gray wall and the pestilence of the tarn itself.
The sickness that afflicts the house of Usher afflicts the House of Usher as well-- Madeline more so than Roderick. The house has poured out its sickness, and tied its fate to the thread that ties Madeline to the land of the living, and Roderick’s life is connected to Madeline’s. This theme is borne out with Poe’s conclusion. It is impossible that Roderick should survive his sister. Her false death and premature burial is seen not only in the house’s state and condition, but in the hysteria that encompasses Roderick. He knows he has buried her alive, that she has only "succumbed to the prostrating power of the destroyer" yet again. And it’s this same power that kills him dead, "borne to the floor a corpse". And with its task fulfilled the house of Usher crumbles and sinks into "the sullen waters of the tarn." Gilman’s upper room is less brutal but no less insidious in its desire to destroy, and O’Connor’s Misfit is entirely indiscriminate.
The Yellow Wallpaper’s upper room, however, is not consigned to the desolation of a specific family. It’s not as powerful as Poe's house of Usher, or as conscious of its purpose as O'Connor's Misfit. Whereas Poe’s construct worked its task by weakening the spirits of its occupants, Charlotte Gilman’s upper room required a victim already weakened; whose mind was already primed for the room’s garish and insidious wallpaper. While the entire of Poe’s construct was diseased and neglected, this house is subtler in its destruction. The house itself is beautiful-- only the upper room has anything of madness in it. It is the carcass of a dead dog on a fresh cut lawn, and only the room's prisoner can see or sense it.
Prolonged exposure to its corrosive interior wouldn’t lend this impression to just anyone however, this room preys on the sick. The prisoner, a new mother suffering from postpartum depression, or something much deeper, cannot escape the upper room. She is given nothing to do but watch the patterns and shapes within the wallpaper coalesce and separate themselves from the confusing pattern. In time she begins to see the ghosts of women-- perhaps those that have come before her --creeping along the baseboards, and in time sees herself in the pattern. In this, the upper room offers the narrator an escape, by showing her what’s in store for her if she stays. But rather than simply refusing to be confined in the room any longer, she chooses to strip the wallpaper from the walls in an attempt to free herself. "I've got out at last," [she says in the end], "...and I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back in." The upper room had fulfilled its purpose at last. One cancerous cell within the body of the house, reeking of insanity, has passed its madness on to another. Like the house of Usher, its capacity for destruction is now gone, collapsed in tattered strips of "unclean yellow" and "lurid orange". But Flannery O’Connor’s monster is not so easily laid to rest.
The Misfit-- the house that society built --seeks the how and why of his being, more than the death of innocents. But fictional characters being what they are-- constructs of ink and page, and controlled by the pen that shapes them --must fulfill their author’s purpose, and Flannery O'Connor has shaped The Misfit for murder. A Good Man Is Hard To Find is not the story of a traditional house, as are Poe and Gilman's constructs, but its form embodies the soul of a destroyer nonetheless. The first two houses are forced to await their deaths, hoping age, neglect, or natural disaster might quicken the process. The Misfit, however, isn't content to wait. He is hunted, and his demise actively pursued by outside forces. And so he fights back, hoping to preserve himself long enough to find his answers, perhaps shaking a fist at his creator and screaming, "Why have you made me this way!" But the author is strangely silent as to why The Misfit is as he is.
The house of Usher and the upper room have no such luxury of voice. The groanings of a house crumbling, and a skulking phantasm within the two-dimensional confines of a room’s wallpaper are all the voice they have. For these two houses the task of destruction is easier, in that their victims are unsuspecting to the very end. Also, while the first two houses are capable of nothing more than the powers penned into their construction-- houses behaving as houses, rooms as rooms --The Misfit does not require its victims to come to him; he is quite capable of hunting them out-- flesh behaving as flesh. If The Misfit could be said to identify with anyone in these three stories it would be that of Madeline Usher. "I was buried alive," he says, buried in the confines of a cell, and clawing his way out, much like she had done. But The Misfit is not content to die upon gaining his freedom, so he runs, trying to escape the corner O’Connor has penned him into. Seeing he cannot escape her, he gives in to the compulsion penned into his construction; resigned to murder, yet fleeing his own demise.
Stephen King once asked in his novel, Salem’s Lot, whether a house might absorb the things that were done within its walls. Could a house, in time, become evil, if evil filled its rooms? Poe, Gilman, and O’Connor all seem to think so, as evidenced by their constructs. As to why houses become what they do, it’s impossible to know with any certainty, but it’s clear, whether one cares to admit it or not, that some houses give off feelings of foreboding, and some radiate peace. A house’s construction does not stop with the last daub of paint or the final picture hung... The things one chooses with which to fill its rooms continually shapes it-- be it love, indifference, or murder.
ELAshley
May 6, 2006
----
*"...But Jesus was neither Liberal nor Conservative; which are merely constructs of fallen man."
A man builds a house. He imbues it with life, and pride, and like its builder, it too is doomed to die. All things pass. But houses seem to resent this fact, more so than their builders. Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Flannery O'Connor have each written of this phenomenon: houses that absorb sickness and resent the deaths that chase them down the long years. One is a house entire, bent on the destruction of a family line. The next is an upper room, like a lump of tumor spreading its disease, and driving its prisoner insane. The last is a house of clay-- of flesh --brimming with hatred, and a desire to destroy anyone unworthy of the life they own. Each house was designed to destroy, and each imbued by its author with desire, and power enough to its purpose, yet their methods, as well as the forms they were given, are worlds apart.
In The Fall of the House of Usher, Mr. Poe describes a house so filled with bitterness over its neglect, that it actively pursues the deaths of Roderick and Madeline, the last of the Usher's. It is Roderick, more so than Madeline, who has allowed the tarn to grow and fester, thereby sealing the house's doom. It is sinking into stagnation, bereft of its previous glory, and it wears its wounds visibly. Ushers visitor sees the "barely perceptible fissure which [runs] from the roof of the building in front…to the sullen waters of the tarn." The very sight of the house so worked upon its visitor’s imagination, as to allow him a glimpse of its pain and the atmosphere that surrounded it-- the reek of decaying trees, the gray wall and the pestilence of the tarn itself.
The sickness that afflicts the house of Usher afflicts the House of Usher as well-- Madeline more so than Roderick. The house has poured out its sickness, and tied its fate to the thread that ties Madeline to the land of the living, and Roderick’s life is connected to Madeline’s. This theme is borne out with Poe’s conclusion. It is impossible that Roderick should survive his sister. Her false death and premature burial is seen not only in the house’s state and condition, but in the hysteria that encompasses Roderick. He knows he has buried her alive, that she has only "succumbed to the prostrating power of the destroyer" yet again. And it’s this same power that kills him dead, "borne to the floor a corpse". And with its task fulfilled the house of Usher crumbles and sinks into "the sullen waters of the tarn." Gilman’s upper room is less brutal but no less insidious in its desire to destroy, and O’Connor’s Misfit is entirely indiscriminate.
The Yellow Wallpaper’s upper room, however, is not consigned to the desolation of a specific family. It’s not as powerful as Poe's house of Usher, or as conscious of its purpose as O'Connor's Misfit. Whereas Poe’s construct worked its task by weakening the spirits of its occupants, Charlotte Gilman’s upper room required a victim already weakened; whose mind was already primed for the room’s garish and insidious wallpaper. While the entire of Poe’s construct was diseased and neglected, this house is subtler in its destruction. The house itself is beautiful-- only the upper room has anything of madness in it. It is the carcass of a dead dog on a fresh cut lawn, and only the room's prisoner can see or sense it.
Prolonged exposure to its corrosive interior wouldn’t lend this impression to just anyone however, this room preys on the sick. The prisoner, a new mother suffering from postpartum depression, or something much deeper, cannot escape the upper room. She is given nothing to do but watch the patterns and shapes within the wallpaper coalesce and separate themselves from the confusing pattern. In time she begins to see the ghosts of women-- perhaps those that have come before her --creeping along the baseboards, and in time sees herself in the pattern. In this, the upper room offers the narrator an escape, by showing her what’s in store for her if she stays. But rather than simply refusing to be confined in the room any longer, she chooses to strip the wallpaper from the walls in an attempt to free herself. "I've got out at last," [she says in the end], "...and I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back in." The upper room had fulfilled its purpose at last. One cancerous cell within the body of the house, reeking of insanity, has passed its madness on to another. Like the house of Usher, its capacity for destruction is now gone, collapsed in tattered strips of "unclean yellow" and "lurid orange". But Flannery O’Connor’s monster is not so easily laid to rest.
The Misfit-- the house that society built --seeks the how and why of his being, more than the death of innocents. But fictional characters being what they are-- constructs of ink and page, and controlled by the pen that shapes them --must fulfill their author’s purpose, and Flannery O'Connor has shaped The Misfit for murder. A Good Man Is Hard To Find is not the story of a traditional house, as are Poe and Gilman's constructs, but its form embodies the soul of a destroyer nonetheless. The first two houses are forced to await their deaths, hoping age, neglect, or natural disaster might quicken the process. The Misfit, however, isn't content to wait. He is hunted, and his demise actively pursued by outside forces. And so he fights back, hoping to preserve himself long enough to find his answers, perhaps shaking a fist at his creator and screaming, "Why have you made me this way!" But the author is strangely silent as to why The Misfit is as he is.
The house of Usher and the upper room have no such luxury of voice. The groanings of a house crumbling, and a skulking phantasm within the two-dimensional confines of a room’s wallpaper are all the voice they have. For these two houses the task of destruction is easier, in that their victims are unsuspecting to the very end. Also, while the first two houses are capable of nothing more than the powers penned into their construction-- houses behaving as houses, rooms as rooms --The Misfit does not require its victims to come to him; he is quite capable of hunting them out-- flesh behaving as flesh. If The Misfit could be said to identify with anyone in these three stories it would be that of Madeline Usher. "I was buried alive," he says, buried in the confines of a cell, and clawing his way out, much like she had done. But The Misfit is not content to die upon gaining his freedom, so he runs, trying to escape the corner O’Connor has penned him into. Seeing he cannot escape her, he gives in to the compulsion penned into his construction; resigned to murder, yet fleeing his own demise.
Stephen King once asked in his novel, Salem’s Lot, whether a house might absorb the things that were done within its walls. Could a house, in time, become evil, if evil filled its rooms? Poe, Gilman, and O’Connor all seem to think so, as evidenced by their constructs. As to why houses become what they do, it’s impossible to know with any certainty, but it’s clear, whether one cares to admit it or not, that some houses give off feelings of foreboding, and some radiate peace. A house’s construction does not stop with the last daub of paint or the final picture hung... The things one chooses with which to fill its rooms continually shapes it-- be it love, indifference, or murder.
ELAshley
May 6, 2006
----
*"...But Jesus was neither Liberal nor Conservative; which are merely constructs of fallen man."
from the mind of... Eric | 11:38 PM
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