57). One of the main points of a gothic horror story is the possibility of returning to life after one is dead, and that is be inhabiting one’s own corpse. Poe uses this effect to its very best because the story climaxes with such an incident. So to this purpose Poe created the return of the entombed and living corpse of the Lady Madeline, in which we see a superhuman strength to live even after death. She overcomes the most impossible barriers of the mortal world in order to live and that is to return from her tomb:“It appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo of the very cracking and ripping…Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement-for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound…No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than-as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver-I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous yet apparently muffled reverberation…It was the work of the rushing gust-but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame” (155-1357).Bajaj 4Poe stresses a strong emphasis on the life of the mind after death of the body. This is also true of the stories associated with the Dracula legends, where the focus is upon the continuation of the mind after the body has become a living corpse. Poe’s emphasis in “The Fall of the House of Usher” stresses that one does not yield oneself to death except through a weakness of the will. These are the rea...
