Poe vs. Hawthorne Dark But Not Necessarily Gothic Essay

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a new literary genre sprung up, the Gothic story. In the United States, the most prominent exponent of Gothic fiction was Edgar Allen Poe, whose â€Å"horror† tales conjure up the dark side that many of us at least half-believe is hidden just beneath the surface of the most conventional lives. In this paper we will discuss the Gothic in light of two of Poe’s stories, â€Å"Ligeia†, and â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher,† and contrast Poe’s story with a somewhat dark tale of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, â€Å"The Minister’s Black Veil.† We will also analyze why Poe’s stories are Gothic’s and Hawthorne’s is not. Critic Mark Edmunson calls Gothic literature â€Å"the art of haunting†, adding that â€Å"Gothic shows that†¦show more content†¦Most Gothic tales feature an exotic locale of some sort, typically an ancient and run-down family estate to which the narrator or protagonist is invited to stay (and in which they often later become trapped). Here is Poe’s description of the Usher estate in â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher†: â€Å"With the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. . . I looked upon the scene before me . . . upon the bleak walls -- upon the vacant eye-like windows -- upon a few rank sedges -- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees -- with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium . . . There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart -- an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime† (Poe, 95). He adds that the entire house seemed to be surrounded by â€Å"an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn -- a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued† (Poe, 97). Most Gothic tales also feature a heroine. Gothic heroines are invariably pale of complexion and somehow doomed; they either die at the end or are barely rescued. Poe’s Ligeia is â€Å"tall of stature, somewhat slender, and in her latter days, even emaciated.† She has the