Paper 3 Proposal

For my third paper, I would like to discover the social forms of both The House of the Seven Gables and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Similarly, both these pieces reflect Gothic literature at its finest, but they also reflect the mental states of characters in Gothic literature; both show the deterioration of the mind and how that effects plot, and substance of the story. Apart from their different types of literature- one being a novel, and the other being a short story- both of these pieces contrast in social forms. For The House of the Seven Gables, the story portrays a family with old money, who can't seem to get back on their feet again and regain what the family has lost. The Pyncheons in the story struggle with the strange going-ons at the house and what that means for their social and economic welfare. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," there is still the theme of old money and the mental instability of the characters living in the house, but this time, they don't struggle with the fact that they lack money, because it is clear that they still live in a house of grandeur, but they struggle with family history and how it has affected the mental stability of Roderick and Madeline, and why it is that the narrator is needed to visit the family at that particular time. The Pyncheons also struggle with family history and its affects on the family, but there has never been a note made about the struggle with mental diagnosis like there has for the characters of "The House of the Seven Gables."
In my paper I would like to discover how all these things helps create the content of both stories and how they would be different if some of these themes were to be omitted from their content.