Since the computers at work have been only intermittently functional, I've been doing web-based research on Poe and esp. his story "The Fall of the House of Usher" since I am working on an adaptation of it for the stage. The story is very dark, hinting (well, maybe more than hinting) at incest, necrophilia, madness, twisted sexuality--and ther's some bizarre stuff too.
Just doing the research i came across bits and pieces of info and probable apocrypha that intrigued me. For example, in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the late 1830s-early 1840s there was a man-made attraction called Sybils Cave. There was a well, from which glasses of water were sold to people for a penny. People came to Hoboken from New York and more urban parts of New Jersey by boat to walk along the river, for relief from the urban pace and stress. My, how times have changed.
In 1841 the unclothed body of a young woman, a 20-year old from Manhattan, was found floating in the river in Hoboken. She had not only been murdered, it was announced that she'd been sexually assaulted. There was a hue and cry, for she had worked in a tobacco shop in the newspaper district, and was familiar with writers and reporters from most of the tabloids and other newspapers. The news coverage and the outrage of her family made the search for her murderer quite a cause celebre.
Her fiancee commited suicide in front of Sibyl's Cave by drinking poison. The murderer was not found until it was revealed that the young woman (Mary, if I recall correctly) had come to Hoboken and met a woman who ran a tavern/boarding house in order to get a referral for an abortion. The abortion went horribly wrong, and the murder staged, with the body tossed in the river and Mary's clothes scattered elsewhere.
The publicity about the botched abortion led to stringent laws in New York State and then elsewhere that would remain in effect, clamping down on abortion for about 130 years. Apparently, prior to this incident, if I read correctly, abortion was done on the q.t.
Poe used this incident as the basis for his story Marie Roget, which he set in Paris.
I was also wonderfully enthralled by learning of Poe's interest in cryptography and his part in the great literary hoax (?) The Beale Papers. More on that at some other time.
Greeted the morning sun today from the hills above Portland--6AM and a ball or orange fire majestically emerged from behind the Cascade Mountains. I begin to believe that the ancient Egyptians were correct in worshipping the sun.
As for House of Usher, I believe it is a story whose undertones concern two people who love each other too much, who are too close, whose love and desire for each other put them outside the moral boundaries of society. Roderick and Madeline are lovers, or were lovers. They are bound but torn--I postulate Madeline wants to be with her brother for ever (and finally is) but Roderick is torn by bothe his love for his sister, and his lust for his old boyhood friend, the narrator. He condemns himself--I note that Poe married his 13-year old cousin, who was presented to the preacher performing the ceremony as 16.
Dark, rich, nasty stuff.
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