What is the parallelism between the house and the family in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
When Poe speaks of the "house of Usher" in "The Fall of the House of Usher," he refers to both the physical home Roderick and Madeline live in and the Usher's genealogical lineage: the house of Usher also means the family line that goes back many generations. As the narrator notes as he approaches the house, the words "house of Usher"
seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
A problem, however, has occurred to the family lineage: at this point, Roderick and Madeline, brother and sister, are the last alive in the Usher family line. As Madeline is dying and Roderick seems far too afflicted with a nervous disorder to think about marrying and having children, it looks as if the Usher family will end with their deaths.
In highly convoluted language, the narrator suggests that...
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this identification of house and family as one is due to no "branch" in the family tree: a family normally has more than one child, and the second, third, fourth, and fifth children (and so on) marry and start alternate family "branches" that break off from the patriarchal descent of eldest son to eldest son. The younger children usually would leave the ancestral home and live elsewhere. In this family, however, the parents seem to have always had either only one child, a son who inherits the estate from the father—or if there is a daughter, the implication is that she perhaps marries her brother. That there is incest is not altogether clear, but the family line seems to be vitiated and unhealthy—as if there were too much inbreeding. In any case the narrator explains that the lack of family "branches" has meant all of the Usher family has always lived in the Usher house, which is why the two are so closely associated.
The story adds a twist to the identification of the house with the family. When Madeline and Roderick die at the end of the story, ending the Usher family line, the physical house "dies" too, fissuring and collapsing into the tarn, as if its existence supernaturally depended on the existence of the family.
What are some parallels in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"?
As befitting a gothic tale, Poe uses many parallels to construct this masterful story of horror and dread. However, two of the most striking that, to me, are central to the story and its impact are the parallel between the House of Usher and its inhabitants, and the parallel between Roderick and his twin-sister, Madeline.
When we are first presented with the House of Usher, the description immediately establishes a link between the setting and the people within it. The House is described as follows:
Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discolouration of ages had been great... In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance form the breath of the external air.
Images of rotting and disintegration abound, just as in the description of the house's owner, Roderick Usher, who is described as being half-dead, with a "ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye." Both house and owner are in a dilapidated, half-dead, rotting state.
Note too how another parallel is established between Roderick and Madeline concerning their description. For Madeline, too, is described in terms that present her as half-dead/half-alive, which ironically leads to the confusion (or deliberate mistake) of her entombment whilst still alive.
The joint death of these twins therefore, seems to be fitting, as does the destruction of the House of Usher at the end of the tale as the narrator flees the site of such terror. It appears that a bond united the ancestors of the House of Usher with the House itself so that they shared a similar fate - in life and in death.