The Cult of True Womanhood: “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Part 2

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This episode is the long-promised part two of our exploration of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe was doing his thing In 19th-century America, at a time middle- and upper-class white women were being encouraged to join the "Cult of True Womanhood", which idealised women as pious, pure, submissive, and domestic, confining them to the private sphere while men dominated public life. It’s all very tradwife.

Tonight on the podcast, we’ll examine how this cultural ideal influenced Poe's portrayal of women in his stories, often reducing them to beautiful, passive reflections of male characters. Madeline Usher from "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a prime example of this characterisation.

This is particularly ironic because while Poe's fictional women were often two-dimensional, he was surrounded by and attracted to strong, independent women in real life. Make it make sense!

I’ve got bad news for the tradwives who aren’t allowed to listen to this blasphemous podcast: The constraints of True Womanhood paradoxically led to the rise of the “New Woman” and first-wave feminism.

Unfortunately, if you think female characters being used as set decoration for male characters isn’t still happening, you haven’t watched television, seen a movie or read a book recently.

We’ll wrap up tonight’s chat with a conversation about the ways women are still often used as plot devices or mirrors for male characters in contemporary horror and other genres.

Key moments:

• Recap of "The Fall of the House of Usher"
• Roderick as the brain, Madeline as the body
• Was Madeline Usher pregnant?
• The Cult of True Womanhood
• True Women, New Women, Suffragettes and "The Feminine Mystique"
• Contemporary examples of refrigerator women like Madeline Usher

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Chapters

1. Content warning (00:00:00)

2. "Annabel Lee", by Edgar Allan Poe (00:00:55)

3. Welcome to the party! (00:03:10)

4. Recap of "The Fall of the House of Usher" (00:03:59)

5. Reflections as a motif in "The Fall of the House of Usher" (00:06:30)

6. Roderick as the brain, Madeline as the body (00:07:21)

7. Was Madeline Usher pregnant? (00:10:15)

8. The Cult of True Womanhood (00:11:47)

9. Wait a minute, isn't this just tradwives? (00:15:18)

10. Poe and True Womanhood (00:16:15)

11. True Women, New Women, Suffragettes and "The Feminine Mystique" (00:21:10)

12. Women as reflections of men (00:23:18)

13. Contemporary examples of refrigerator women like Madeline Usher (00:24:45)

14. Poe's influence on the portrayal of women in the horror genre (00:27:16)

15. Outro (00:28:31)