Gothic Romanticism Questions

1)  Before I answer the question please note that while I see where the idea comes from I do not agree with it nor would I find it in the reading if I was not looking for it. 
          Mr. Usher sent for his childhood friend because he was beset with a kind of depression and ill in mind.  The narrator upon arriving sees that indeed his poor friend does seem afflicted with an illness of the mind, and that the illness seems to be revolving around his sister Ms. Usher.  Ms. Usher is afflicted with, as the story says,

"A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character"(Poe).

One then can imagine that Ms. Usher did look remarkable similar to a vampire and through Mr. Usher's admission that they were twins, we can believe that Mr. Usher cared for her a great deal.  Even so to the point that when she died he persevered her "corpse" for  a fortnight. After putting her body in a temporary tomb located in a locked cellar where, presumably, no one could get out or in Mr. Usher became very nervous.  The Narrator comments that,

"There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage"(Poe).

 

 

 Mr. Usher seemed to be an the verge of telling his friend something dreadfully important but it takes a fearful storm to drag it out of him.  A week after Ms. Usher's entombment Mr. Usher came into his friend's room where his friend, seeing that he was unwell, proceeded to read to him in an effort to calm him down.  He did not get a chance to finish the book.  Soon Mr. Usher rose from his chair and pointed saying, 

 

"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!....

there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of

the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame" (Poe).

 

There, in front of their faces, stood the woman they had buried a week ago.  A woman who by the doctor's accounts was, and should be, dead.  But there she is, alive, moaning and not at all dead.  It is at this point that she falls upon her brother who in turn falls upon the floor, dead.

 This supernatural appearance, very much real and in-the-flesh, gives rise to, " Oh my gosh, She must be vampire!"  However to get to this assumption you have to skip over a great many details.

2)  Authors criticize human nature in their choose of characters.  They use a character that is greedy, abusive, wanting and/or insane and give them a counter-part who is perfectly sane, aware of the first person's faults and unable to do anything about it.  This is how authors mock human inability and stubbornness's. The first character is completely convinced that he/she is right and everyone else is wrong, in the way, or irrelevant right up until death where the realize in a final, or in some cases first,  moment of sanity that what they did was wrong.  After realizing that they tell everyone that they did it, then shortly after they die.  This mocks human frailty and our moral sense of rightness by allowing the person's consciousness to realize he/she is wrong at the moment of death rather than before they committed to their actions.  The criticisms are relayed to the reader primarily through the sane character in the story.   Most Gothic authors have the same ideas about human nature.  Their opinions relayed through the story are part of the criteria for the gothic genre.  The story "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"  mocks the human mind by allowing the characters to believe they are young, which they aren't, and then taking the illusion away from them and watching their reactions of sadness, horror, and resolution.  In "The Masque of the Red Death" Poe mocks the human mind by having all his characters hide from the Red Death only to for the characters to find out that no place is truly safe from death despite their personal beliefs( note they found that out in their graves after everyone at the party died).