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3.1 Aesthetic Effects of Architecture
3.1.1 External Characteristics
True to the romantic feeling for the past, the most conspicuous aspect of his buildings is their age. This is true in all the various groups of tales, and usually in the poems. If a building is characterized in a single word, the reference is to antiquity. The following illustrations of this emphasis on age may be noted:
The Gold-Bug: “An old family . which, time out of mind had held possession of an ancient manor house.” The Tell-Tale Heart: “The dreadful silence of that old house.” Hans Pfaall: “The little square brick building . My ancestors have also resided therein time out of mind.” William Wilson: “A large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where . all the houses were excessively ancient.” The Fall of the House of Usher: “Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.” Berenice: “There are no towers in the land more time honored than my . hereditary halls.” Ligeia: “The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building . the many melancholy and time-honored memories .” The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether: “A fantastic chateau . scarcely tenantable through age and neglect.” This excessive age, of course, is accompanied by dilapidation: That greyish green that Nature loves the best Beauty’s grave, lurked in each cornice, rounded in each architrave.
3.1.2 Internal Characteristics
Turning now to interiors, one at once finds that Poe’s greater interest lies here, since the interiors of buildings, with the possibilities which they offer in the way of decoration and lighting, are better adapted than exteriors to the creation of the atmosphere which he seeks to produce. In The Philosophy of Composition he says: It has always appeared to me that a close circumspection of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident: it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentration, and, of course, must not be confounded with mere unity of place.
In accordance with this idea, the scene is often laid in some intimate room of the house: a study, a library or a bedroom; some place, at least, where the owner’s personal taste in decoration predominates. The room is very large and lofty, with dark floors and a carved and vaulted ceiling, and is lighted dimly or in some eccentric fashion. In such a room, usually, no fireplace is mentioned. Fireplaces had no grotesque or romantic associations for Poe. They were too familiar. Wherever he mentions them, they signify comfort and cheerfulness, except in the chamber in The Raven, where there is a dying fire. Warmth is never mentioned in such a place as the House of Usher.
3.1.3 Location of the Scene
The scene of the story is also frequently found in a distant part of the building, difficult of access because of extreme height or depth: the topmost room of a tower, reached by interminable stairs and intricate series of passages, or a vault far underground. The use of long winding staircases produces an effect of uncertainty as to the exact location in the building; and to pass through an archway indicates entrance upon a particularly depressing scene. The visitor on entering the Gothic archway of the hall in the House of Usher feels a heightening of the sentiments of gloom with which the exterior of the house had affected him. The burial vault in the same building is reached through a long archway. “A range of low arches” leads to the Montresor vaults in The Cask of Amontillado.
The tower rooms are high, remote and secluded. Poe likes to call them turrets; and this is one example of his choosing in architectural description the word that had more imaginative appeal in preference to the more accurate word. A turret, actually, would be a small tower or large pinnacle, used to carry bells or a clock, or perhaps containing a spiral staircase. It would certainly not be large enough to enclose a room of any considerable size. Yet the chamber described in Ligeia “lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.” The apartment in The Oval Portrait “lay in a remote turret”; and the inference is that Usher’s studio was similarly situated.