The Life And Work Of Edgar Allen Poe

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Another detail of retrospect can be noted in Poe's "Fall of the House
of Usher". The idea of incest is insinuated here. The character Roderick
Usher has taken his sister for his wife. Poe has not married his sister
but his cousin however the subject of incest still remains. Poe married
his cousin Virginia, who was only 13. Poe's wife in 1843 had begun showing
symptoms of tuberculosis a year after she burst a blood vessel in her
throat. Madeline Usher - the sister to Roderick in Poe's tale, is also
deathly ill. She had a "settled apathy" a gradual decaying of the body.
Madeline later dies (by one interpretation) in this tale as does Virginia
in January.
Virginia's death in 1847 slowed the tempo; during much of that year
Poe was seriously ill himself - perhaps with a brain lesion - and became
very depressed and erratic. Virginia, being young, beautiful, and deceased
was also one of Poe's styles in his writing. One example is in the poem
"The Raven" which ...

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