SOURCE: "The Vampire Motif in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'," in College English, Vol. 24, No. 4, March, 1963, pp. 450-53.

Kendall is an American educator and critic. In the following essay, he views Madeline Usher as a vampire.

The often expressed conventional interpretation of ["The Fall of the House of Usher"] is summarized and expatiated upon in Arthur Robinson's "Order and Sentience in The Fall of the House of Usher.'" My own view of the story, although admittedly whimsical, is that in concentrating upon symbolism, upon psychological aberration, upon its connection with Eureka (first published some years after the story) and with certain aspects of nineteenth-century culture, critics of "The Fall of the House of Usher" have almost universally failed to recognize that it is a Gothic tale, like "Ligeia," and that a completely satisfactory and internally directed interpretation depends on vampirism, the hereditary Usher curse. Madeline...