Ruined Houses Through the Lens of Architecture

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Excerpt

“Ruined houses” are a mythical symbol I have encountered a lot in stories. They are eerie, dilapidated, and often overpowered by the hand of nature. Yet they remain extremely entrancing to the readers as well as writers who have spent pages describing them with care and passion. When thinking about these ruined houses, the first three that comes to mind are the “melancholy House of Usher”1 in “The Fall of the House of Usher”; Healthcliff’s house in Wuthering Heights; and the Brideshead Castle in Brideshead Revisited. In this essay, I will closely examine the architecture of these “ruined houses” and compare them to each other to shed light on the significance of their roles in portraying the characters, foreshadowing the plots and illustrating the themes.

Edgar Allan Poe treats the house of Usher like a person: her mood melancholic, her eyes vacant, and her body engulfed in a “pestilent and mystic vapor.”2 The individual stones have crumbled but the whole building stays well put together. A nearly imperceptible fissure divides the house in two. To grasp the whole picture of the house, one must immerse oneself in the landscape around it: the silent, reflective tarn, the sullen tree trunks, and the sparse sedge. They are the close shots. Zooming out, the pervading atmosphere around the house serves as a camera filter for the lens of the reader’s eyes, hiding and revealing only parts of the house. Light, fog, and natural landscape together create a mysterious mood surrounding this excessively antique building. The architectural style is considered Gothic with a “Gothic archway of the hall”3 and high extending turrets.

Natural elements are also prominent in Emily Brontë’s depiction of Healthcliff’s house. Heathcliff, the complex anti-hero of Wuthering Heights, lives in the house where Mr. Earnshaw, who adopted him as a child, once resided. The house is situated close to the moor, and thus is also surrounded by vapor. It is on the hilltop where stormy winds have a strong presence most of the time. The front is lavishly decorated with grotesque carvings and displays of “crumbling griffins” and “shameless little boys.”4 Despite its unwelcoming air, the house is viewed as the second most grandiose building in the neighborhood aside from Thrushcross Grange. The sixteenth-century farmhouse style is considered by many people inspired by Top Withens, High Sunderland Hall, and Ponden Hall. When Lockwood, the new tenant at Thrushcross Grange and the novel’s narrator, first pays his visit to Heathcliff’s home, he notices the moody interior, represented by its “narrow windows” set deep in the wall and its black chairs “lurking in the shade.”5

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