An aristocratic family appears to be its own world. The idea in which wealth and status run through the blood. The determination of superiority comes down to who you were born to. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick Usher and his sister are the last pieces remaining to their bloodline. They live within the horrors of isolation, which is in part due to their status. Pressured to preserve the remaining memories of his family, Roderick confines himself to only the world of his family. Paranoia and anxiety control his life. He shows no indications of outside relationships, though at any point he could have pursued one. Almost as if he and his sister are confined to a preternatural force which prevents them from venturing out of their world. Aristocracy fuels an environment of isolation which cannot stand the test of time.
The Usher’s were unsuccessful in keeping their image. The narrator recalls a time where the Usher’s presented the prestige of a high class family. They had been known displaying themselves “in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity,” (Poe 178). The Usher’s former days play into the illusion of greatness which aristocracy puts forward. Hereditary ruling becomes inconsistent overtime, with generational leaders changing. One era may be filled with prosperity, but the next in line could completely change the story. Though children born into aristocracy are given the access to the highest forms of education, there lies a complete disconnect between the ever changing society and the isolated family of nobles insistent on keeping their blood pure. In the case of the Usher family, it seems they were stuck in the past. The people outside of the Usher grounds continued to grow. The people labeled inferior to them in the aristocratic system are not catastrophically ended when the house falls. Yet from within the story, the death of Roderick and Madeline appears apocalyptic.
The visual of a crumbling mansion described in the beginning of the story presents the perfect picture of decaying aristocracy. A mansion usually will show all the signs of wealth. Bigger than other homes, it boasts its status to its community. The Usher estate however, gave a different impression at the end of its life. The narrator recounts “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,” (Poe 179). The mansion was filled with anxiety and decay just as its inhabitants spiraled into the end of their life, along with the end of their family. Limiting wealth to hereditary status led Roderick and Madeline to their grim fate. The Usher home ended with the same dramatic fate as the remaining siblings. Madeline brutally escaped being entombed hanging onto the last string of her life to then go and collapse upon her brother killing him. The house experiences the same collapse ending only to be left in fragments at the feet of the narrator.
Madeline and Roderick represent the scraps of aristocracy. The Usher family once proved noble, but generations passing and the pressure to have a line of direct descent led to their demise. The Usher’s fell victim to isolation. They were the isolated wealthy class, who lived in their own world within their mansion. The world around them developed, but they were too distant to keep up. Roderick and Madeline were left to live a life of paranoia and disease, confined to their family's legacy in the name of status, tradition and purity. Aristocracy in this story represents more than just background information of characters, it is villainous. The root of the Usher family's success eventually turned on them when put against the test of time.
