The Accursed House by Émile Gaboriau

Emile Gaboriau, best known for his remarkable detective stories, was born at Sanson in 1853, and died at Paris in 1873. He was for a time private secretary of Paul Feval, the novelist, and published a great variety of work. In 1866 appeared in the paper called "Le Pays" his first great detective story, "L'Affaire Lerouge," which the author dramatised in collaboration with Hostein in 1872. Like all of the great series, "L'Affaire Lerouge," "Monsieur Lecoq," "Les Esclaves de Paris," etc., are written in an easy flowing style, and are full of exciting moments.

Introduction : 

"The Accursed House" is a darkly comedic short story by French writer Emile Gaboriau, first published in 1891. It satirizes the pettiness of the French bourgeoisie and their materialistic obsession with wealth and status. Through an exaggerated farcical plot, Gaboriau exposes the greed, gossip, and paranoia that can fester in urban apartment buildings when societal norms are violated. 

The story centers on the chaos that ensues when a kindly but misunderstood landlord decides to lower the rents of his Parisian tenants by one-third out of a sense of social conscience. Instead of being grateful, the tenants are consumed by unfounded suspicions about his motivations, leading to widespread panic and the abandonment of the building. 

Gaboriau uses dramatic irony to highlight the tenants' absurd assumptions and inconsistent logic as they spiral into mass hysteria. With both satirical humor and biting social commentary, "The Accursed House" exposes the fragility of human reason in the face of ingrained class prejudices.

Plot Summary : 

The story opens by introducing the wealthy Vicomte de B______, the new and benevolent landlord of a well-to-do apartment building in Paris. Wishing to be a humble philanthropist and moderate the high rent charged by his miser uncle, the Vicomte instructs the concierge Bernard to inform all the tenants that he is lowering their rents by one-third. This unheard-of act is met with utter disbelief, dread, and confusion by Bernard, his family, and the tenants themselves. Rumors begin swirling about nefarious motives behind the rent reduction - a coming disaster, bankruptcy, or the landlord's criminal guilt.

Despite the Vicomte's reassurances, a climate of rampant suspicion and fear takes over as increasingly outlandish theories are concocted by the paranoid tenants, from the building being structurally unsound to the presence of counterfeiters or spies. Tales of ghosts and strange noises proliferate. One by one, the tenants all give notice to vacate, deserting the building in a mass exodus driven by unhinged speculation. Only the terrified concierge Bernard remains as the once-vibrant apartment sits hauntingly vacant, branded by the neighborhood as the "Accursed House."

Themes : 

Class Prejudices and Social Norms : 

The tenants cannot comprehend the Vicomte's simple kindness because it defies their ingrained prejudices about the behavior of wealthy aristocratic landlords. Their automatic assumption is that his motivations must be sinister since he is violating norms of landlord greed they have come to unquestioningly accept. Gaboriau satirizes the pettiness and suspicious nature of the Parisian bourgeois class.

Gossip, Paranoia and Mass Hysteria  :

The story demonstrates how quickly idle gossip can spiral into full-blown paranoia and group hysteria when people seek nefarious explanations for events outside societal conventions. Gaboriau depicts the absurd contagion of escalating fear and assumptions in the absence of facts once unsubstantiated rumors take hold in an echo chamber.

Reason vs. Irrationality : 

Gaboriau uses dramatic irony to contrast the landlord's simple, rational motivations with the increasingly deranged conspiracy theories and superstitions that take over the minds of the tenants. Their complete abandonment of reason highlights the fragility of human logic in the face of ingrained class assumptions.

Symbols and Literary Techniques : 

The Rents - The catalyzing decision to lower rents symbolizes the violation of an unspoken economic and social contract between tenant and landlord. It shatters the status quo the bourgeois tenants have come to blindly accept.

The Building - Once a symbol of urban domesticity, the apartment devolves into an "Accursed House" representing the absurd fears and supernatural suspicions of the tenants run amok. Its vacancy emphasizes their willful self-delusion.

Foreshadowing - Gaboriau uses foreshadowing through details like the "fever of fear" impacting the concierge and "lugubrious howlings" he hears at night to portray the mounting paranoia before the mass exodus.

Irony - Dramatic irony is employed when Bernard tells prospective tenants "things have happened!" that he is unable to understand or articulate, capturing the irrational but deeply held fears of the tenants. 

Satire - Gaboriau's exaggerated characters and over-the-top situations serve as satire, mocking the silly prejudices and hysterical groupthink of the Parisian middle-class.

Significant Quotes : 

"People who, for forty years had lived on the same floor, and never honored each other with so much as a tip of the hat, now clustered together and chatted eagerly."

This quote demonstrates how the violation of a social norm immediately causes a rift in the reserved decorum between tenants who previously co-existed peacefully. 

"An intelligent man, a man of good sense, would never deprive himself of good fat revenues, well secured, for the simple pleasure of depriving himself." 

This line articulates the deeply-held bourgeois prejudice that the wealthy landlord must be acting against his own economic interests due to ulterior, likely nefarious motives.

"Dust thickens upon the closed slats, grass grows in the court. No tenant ever presents himself now; and in the quarter, where stands this Accursed House, so funereal is its reputation that even the neighbouring houses on either side of it have also depreciated in value."

This closing description provides haunting visual imagery of the once-lively building now shunned and decrepit due to the unreasoning fears of the tenants who labelled it "Accursed."

Conclusion : 

Through satirical humor and insightful socioeconomic commentary, Emile Gaboriau's "The Accursed House" exposes the fragile boundaries between reason and rampant paranoia in the bourgeois social order. What begins as a simple act of kindness quickly devolves into a darkly comedic fiasco as ingrained class prejudices and assumptions cause the tenants to spin wildly irrational theories about their landlord's motivations. Gaboriau captures the contagion of idle gossip metastasizing into mass hysteria and superstition when societal conventions are disrupted. 

The farcical descent into irrationality reveals the petty biases simmering under the surface of the prim bourgeois facade. By so vividly portraying their descent into unfounded speculation and fear, Gaboriau satirizes human nature's tendency to quickly abandon logic for self-delusion and groupthink when social, cultural and economic "rules" are violated. Ultimately, "The Accursed House" stands as both a comedic romp and incisive social critique of the early stirrings of the suspicion, mania and mass irrationality that can take root when the bourgeois class feels its presumed prerogatives and prejudices are threatened.