"The Oval Portrait"

Author	Edgar Allan Poe
Original title	"Life in Death"
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Publisher	Graham's Magazine
Media type	Print (periodical)
Publication date	April 1842

"The Oval Portrait" is short story by Edgar Allan Poe involving the disturbing circumstances surrounding a portrait in a chateau. It is one of his shortest stories, filling only two pages in its initial publication in 1842

Plot summary

The tale begins with an injured narrator seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion in the Apennines, with no explanation for his wound. He spends his time admiring the works of art decorating the strangely-shaped room and perusing a volume which "purported to criticize and describe" the paintings.

He eventually discovers a painting which shocks him with its extreme realism, which he refers to as "absolute life-likeliness of expression." He spends a moment ("for an hour, perhaps," the reader is told) in silent awe of it until he cannot bear to look any more, then consults the book for an explanation.

The remainder of the story is a selection from this book discussing how the painting was created — a story within a story. The book explains that the picture was painted by an eccentric artist depicting his young wife, but that he grew obsessed with the painting to the point that he neglected the woman he was painting. When he finishes the painting he is appalled at his own work, and exclaims, "This is indeed Life itself!" Then he turns to see his bride, and discovers that she has died.

Analysis

The central idea of the story resides in the confusing relationship between art and life. In "The Oval Portrait," art and the addiction to it are ultimately depicted as killers, responsible for the young bride's death. In this context, one can synonymously equate art with death, whereas the relationship between art and life is consequently considered as a rivalry.

The creative process leads, throughout its completion, into a state of death in life even of the spectator (the narrator), who is extremely appalled when noticing the lifelike quality of the portrait. The irritating effect of the tale lies in the fact that Poe makes the reader aware of the ambiguity of art and the paradoxical coherence of death and life in the aesthetic process of art.

Poe may have been inspired to write this story either by his friend Thomas Sully's painting of a girl holding in her hand a locket that hung on a ribbon about her bare neck, or perhaps by Tintoretto (1518-1594), who painted a portrait of his dead daughter. Another inspiration is the novel The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, whom Poe mentions in the (post-"Life in Death") opening to the story. The plot of Poe's story shares some resemblance to one of the subplots of Radcliffe's novel, though Poe's version is considerably more compact.

Major themes

• Monomania - see also "Berenice," "The Man of the Crowd"
• The death of a beautiful woman - see also "Ligeia," "Morella"

The thematic device of a husband creating a perfect work of art based on his wife is also used in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1846 tale "The Birth-Mark."

Publication history

"The Oval Portrait" was first published as a longer version titled "Life in Death" in Graham's Magazine in 1842. "Life in Death" included a few introductory paragraphs explaining how the narrator had been wounded, and that he had eaten opium to relieve the pain. Poe probably excised this introduction because it was not particularly relevant, and it also gave the impression that the story was nothing more than a hallucination. The shorter version, renamed "The Oval Portrait" was published in the April 26, 1845 edition of The Broadway Journal.

External links

• Full text on PoeStories.com with hyperlinked vocabulary words.

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Poems
Poetry (1824) • O, Tempora! O, Mores! (1825) • Song (1827) • Imitation (1827) • Spirits of the Dead (1827) • A Dream (1827) • Stanzas" (1827) (1827) • Tamerlane (1827) • The Lake (1827) • Evening Star (1827) • A Dream (1827) • To Margaret (1827) • The Happiest Day (1827) • To The River —— (1828) • Romance (1829) • Fairy-Land (1829) • To Science (1829) • To Isaac Lea (1829) • Al Aaraaf (1829) • An Acrostic (1829) • Elizabeth (1829) • To Helen (1831) • A Paean (1831) • The Sleeper (1831) • The City in the Sea (1831) • The Valley of Unrest (1831) • Israfel (1831) • The Coliseum (1833) • Enigma (1833) • Fanny (1833) • Serenade (1833) • Song of Triumph from Epimanes (1833) • Latin Hymn (1833) • To One in Paradise (1833) • Hymn (1835) • Politician (1835) • May Queen Ode (1836) • Spiritual Song (1836) • Bridal Ballad (1837) • To Zante (1837) • The Haunted Palace (1839) • Silence, a Sonnet (1839) • Lines on Joe Locke (1843) • The Conqueror Worm (1843) • Lenore (1843) • Eulalie (1843) • A Campaign Song (1844) • Dream-Land (1844) • Impromptu. To Kate Carol (1845) • To Frances (1845) • The Divine Right of Kings (1845) • Epigram for Wall Street (1845) • The Raven (1845) • A Valentine (1846) • Beloved Physician (1847) • An Enigma (1847) • Deep in Earth (1847) • Ulalume (1847) • Lines on Ale (1848) • To Marie Louise (1848) • Evangeline (1848) • A Dream Within A Dream (1849) • Eldorado (1849) • For Annie (1849) • The Bells (1849) • Annabel Lee (1849) • Alone (1875)
Metzengerstein (1832) • The Duc De L'Omelette (1832) • A Tale of Jerusalem (1832) • Loss of Breath (1832) • Bon-Bon (1832) • MS. Found in a Bottle (1833) • The Assignation (1834) • Berenice (1835) • Morella (1835) • Lionizing (1835) • The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835) • King Pest (1835) • Shadow - A Parable (1835) • Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard (1836) • Mystification (1837) • Silence - A Fable (1837) • Ligeia (1838) • How to Write a Blackwood Article (1838) • A Predicament (1838) • The Devil in the Belfry (1839) • The Man That Was Used Up (1839) • The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) • William Wilson (1839) • The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839) • Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling (1840) • The Business Man (1840) • The Man of the Crowd (1840) • The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) • A Descent into the Maelstrm (1841) • The Island of the Fay (1841) • The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841) • Never Bet the Devil Your Head (1841) • Eleonora (1841) • Three Sundays in a Week (1841) • The Oval Portrait (1842) • The Masque of the Red Death (1842) • The Landscape Garden (1842) • The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) • The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) • The Gold-Bug (1843) • The Black Cat (1843) • Diddling (1843) • The Spectacles (1844) • A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844) • The Premature Burial (1844) • Mesmeric Revelation (1844) • The Oblong Box (1844) • The Angel of the Odd (1844) • Thou Art the Man (1844) • The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1844) • The Purloined Letter (1844) • The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845) • Some Words with a Mummy (1845) • The Power of Words (1845) • The Imp of the Perverse (1845) • The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845) • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) • The Sphinx (1846) • The Cask of Amontillado (1846) • The Domain of Arnheim (1847) • Mellonta Tauta (1849) • Hop-Frog (1849) • Von Kempelen and His Discovery (1849) • X-ing a Paragrab (1849) • Landor's Cottage (1849)
Other works
Essays: Maelzel's Chess Player (1836) • The Daguerreotype (1840) • The Philosophy of Furniture (1840) • A Few Words on Secret Writing (1841) • The Rationale of Verse (1843) • Morning on the Wissahiccon (1844) • Old English Poetry (1845) • The Philosophy of Composition (1846) • The Poetic Principle (1846) • Eureka (1848) Hoaxes: • The Balloon-Hoax (1844) Novels: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837) • The Journal of Julius Rodman (1840) Plays: Scenes From 'Politian' (1835) Other: The Conchologist's First Book (1839) • The Light-House (1849)