that "Poe was not a drug addict," and supports his argument with an account of an alleged suicide attempt by Poe in 1848 (Wagenknecht 43; Quinn 693). Poe is professed to have taken an ounce of a drug, which was rejected by his stomach. Quinn asserts that if Poe was a drug addict, he would have correctly calculated the proper lethal dosage (694). Quinn also notes the fact that opium was "frequently given in small doses for pain, and Poe may well have taken it in that form" (694). Yet, another area of Poe’s life scrutinized by critics and readers was his psychological and emotional wellbeing, which also may have been influential in the writing of "The Fall of the House of Usher." Wagenknecht contends that "if [Poe] was mad, his whole generation was mad with him. Fascination with death was typical of the Romantic movement; so was the attraction of incest; so was the association of death with love" (57). Therefore, the historical context in which Poe published his work must be taken into consideration. Scott Peeples argues that Poe’s works were "written to appeal to popular tastes, and some elements that seem bizarre and grotesque to modern readers were in fact conventional" (77). They were written "for a mid-nineteenth-century American audience, whose frames of reference were in many respects different from those of late-twentieth-century readers" (77). Wagenknect then contends that in addition to the cultural understanding of Poe’s subject matter, an exploration of the methods by which Poe presents this material must also be considered (57). Poe’s material and subject matter may have often been aberrant, but his methods were not according to Wagenknect (57). "His heroes analyze their obsessions in a sane, perfectly logical way, and he presents the analysis in terms of a highly finished style" (57). Therefore, Poe’s work is less a reflection of his psychological state and more a reflection of his "immersion in...
