Gothic Imagery & Settings in 2 Short Stories
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This study will compare and contrast the uses of Gothic imagery and settings in two short stories, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." While the two stories feature Gothic imagery and settings, Poe's story is completely immersed in the Gothic, while Gilman's story limits Gothic elements to the imagination of the protagonist. In Poe's story the Gothic setting actually exists in the Usher house and its surroundings, whereas in Gilman the Gothic setting exists entirely inside the mind of the protagonist. In both stories the Gothic is used to show the growing madness which is the subject of the stories. However, again, in Poe the madness envelops all characters, while in Gilman the only victim of the Gothic is the protagonist. Gilman's story is more effective because it blends elements of realism and the Gothic, while Poe's story is utterly fantastic and does not develop the interior state of the characters as Gilman's does. Gothic fiction is marked by imagery and settings which create a sense of gloom, mystery, horror, the supernatural, the irrational, and horror. These elements are intended to create in the reader a feeling that the veil of ordinary life has been torn back to reveal the darker aspects of life. Both stories adhere to this Gothic standard. In addition, the Gothic also focuses on extraordinary psychological states which often suggest madness, a feature also at the heart of the two stories.
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and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!" (Gilman 463).
In Poe, the house and its lake and surroundings comprise a Gothic setting filled with Gothic images which leave the reader no breathing room, no chance to identify with any person in the story who is not mad, or half-mad, or outside the influence of the Gothic realm. Almost every sentence is dense with Gothic images which accumulate to form both the physical and the psychological Gothic setting:
Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes. . . . The eye . . . struggled in vain to reach the remotest angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. dark draperies hung upon the wall. . . . I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all (Poe 86).
Again, the literally wall-to-wall nature of Poe's Gothic setting seems today almost comic rather than horrifying, especially because the narrator himself appears to be mad or half-mad at the very beginning of the story.
In Gilman's story, the woman's room and its yellow wallpaper comprise the Gothic elements. The room is a powerful symbol of the entrapment of the woman in a
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Approximate Word count = 2128
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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