Edgar Allan Poe
"The Oval Portrait"

Contents

The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Apennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary--in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room--since it was already night--to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed--and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.

Long--long I read--and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.

But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought--to make sure that my vision had not deceived me--to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.

That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me at once into waking life.

The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the background of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filagreed in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea--must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and appalled me. With deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:

"She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles, and frolicksome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastlily in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who had high renown,) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast and crying with a loud voice, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved:--She was dead!"
1842
 

Return to Top

Anspach, Silvia Simone. "Poe's Pictoric Writing." Estudos Anglo-Americanos 9-11 (1985-1987): 17-28.

In this essay, Anspach reports that Poe's "The Oval Portrait" is "saturated with elements which refer to the sensorial world . . . . [and] nonverbal signs . . ." that are important in an analysis of the tale (17). Anspach explains how these components are essential to unlocking the meaning of the story. According to Anspach's contextual criticism, Poe reveals the tense interaction between symbols, images, and words. Pictorial elements are "more vivid and powerful than words so that the latter fail to capture the former's communicative value and only manage to translate them into feebler and more restrictive signs . . ." (17). She discusses the relevancy of the verbs Poe chose to include in "The Oval Portrait" as well as the sensorial information he incorporated into the story. By constructing the story with these particular elements, Anspach feels that Poe wanted to reveal that perception is manipulated by the object that is seen, as well as by what is seen in relation to it.

Caws reveals that in "The Oval Portrait," Poe and Baudelaire, with his successive translation, have actually "murdered" the model of the portrait more than once by telling and then retelling the tale of her initial demise. In the story, the model’s artist-husband possesses her life by painting its essence onto his canvas; the model-wife allows herself to become dispossessed of her life apparently without protest. Caws suggests that this is her first expiration. Later Poe's narrator possesses the portrait's viability by using it as the inspiration for his story which reduces the painting's visual impact and further dispossesses the model of her own existence. Caws then reveals that Baudelaire translated the story which dispossesses Poe's story of its life and destroys the essence of the painting and the model's life additionally. According to Caws, each time the death of the model is re-presented, she is dispossessed of her life all over again, and each time the essence of the painting is put into words, its image loses its power.

In this article, Mollinger and Mollinger put forth the idea that Poe, the narrator, the artist, the artist's wife, Poe's mother, and Poe's wife are all inter-connected to the tale of "The Oval Portrait." According to the authors, these parts of Poe come together and create the whole which is revealed in "The Oval Portrait." They suggest that Poe's tale describes his own an artistic dilemma, that art imitates life and that artists are destroyers as well as creators: "Artistic creation is, in a sense, murder" (152). The critics are convinced that without the deaths of his mother and wife, Poe could not have produced his artistic creations, for these two women are coupled to Poe due to the nature of their relationships, and when they died, a part of Poe died as well. Despite the deaths of those he loved, in fact, because of their deaths, Poe lived on and continued to create just as the artist in his tale did. Mollinger reports that this inescapable fusion of life, death, and creation is what Poe depicts in his tale.

Richards uses Tzvetan Todorov's definition of the term "fantastic" to describe the literary genre in which "The Oval Portrait" was written. Of "The Oval Portrait," she writes:
As described in the volume that the narrator is reading, Art is no longer just an enterprise or a perception, but it becomes an actual woman who will rival with the young woman who serves as model for the affection of the painter. Along with the personification of Art, there occurs a de-personification of the woman . . . . The copy becomes the reality, thereby achieving the ultimate of man's ego fantasies: the need to preserve himself, and that which he loves, against the ravages of time, to create a stasis, but at the same time to enclose and capture the ephemeral beauty of life. (309-10)
Thus the inanimate painting gains life from the living model through the efforts of the artist who is responsible for the model's expiration. Richards then compares this transference of life with vampirism.

Rothberg interprets "The Oval Portrait" and gives examples from works of Baudelaire and Godard that show how Poe's story has influenced their works. According to Rothberg, "The Oval Portrait" dramatizes:
the crisis in representation induced by technical apparatuses such as the panorama and the nascent art of photography . . . . The paradox which the story embodies is that the perfect portrait destroys (the individuality of) its object by raising the possibility of infinite replication. (3-4)
Rothberg explores three themes which he believes are contained within Poe's tale: "representation and mechanical reproduction, representation and the city, and representation and sexual difference" (5). Rothberg feels that "The Oval Portrait" is an allegory which reveals how the public sphere operates on representation of the individual which takes autonomy away from the individual and leads to negation or death. In particular, Rothberg notes that women in Poe's time were barred from the public sphere altogether and were thus denied power and identity. Rothberg shows how Baudelaire and Godard expand on these themes in their works. Specifically, he cites a Godard film Vivre Sa Vie in which men exploit women in order to profit in the marketplace while women have no control over their exploitation and allow themselves to be drained of their own life so that men may prosper. Even the body of the woman-as in Poe's story--becomes public domain in the selling of it as art.

In this article, Thompson compares Poe's first and second versions of "The Oval Portrait" (the original version was titled "Life in Death"). Thompson reports that in the first version of the story, a lengthy introduction described the narrator's confession that he ate opium to offset painful injuries sustained from an attack. In the second version, this introduction is eliminated, and the narrator only admits he is suffering from a fever, not,from drugs. Thus the perceptions of the narrator in the second version seem more grounded in reality than they would be if he were under the influence of a narcotic. Thompson declares:
The fact that Poe's first intention . . . was to paint a portrait of a disturbed imagination does not, however, necessarily lead to the view that because Poe reduced the obviousness of his narrator's imbalance of mind he had shifted his intent from the psychological to the occult. 'The Oval Portrait' may be read, just as it stands, as an ironic, fully dramatized, psychological portrait. (108)
Thus Thompson states that regardless of its revision, "The Oval Portrait" is a psychological tale that depicts the, imbalance between reason and madness.

This article compares Poe's structure of "The Oval Portrait" to a Mandala. Scheick reveals how Poe's story begins with a large oval, the turret of the chateau, and ends with the small oval eyes of the woman in the portrait in which the light of life is contained. Scheick concludes:
Similar to a mandala or yantra, the story's structure covertly depicts to the wary concentric stages of gradual awareness, an inward progression away from ignorance and toward a nearly-glimpsed trance-inducing ultimate reality or 'spiritual' center symbolizing the source of the phenomenal layers characteristic of existence. (7)
Scheick demonstrates how Poe's tale leads readers to contemplate and realize a higher consciousness as they progress from one oval to another.

Twitchell interprets "The Oval Portrait" as being a story that uses vampirism as a motif. Twitchell feels Poe used a variation of the vampire theme to demonstrate how artists take life from the animate object and transfer it to an inanimate object. According to Twitchell, "The paradox the artist doesn't recognize is that the vitality of his art drains the very life-strength of the people he loves . . . . The vampire myth was an ideal paradigm for love that is too demanding or, in the case of 'The Oval Portrait,' art that is too life-consuming" (388). Thus artists, troped here as vampires, must kill in order to renew life. Twitchell cites the original title of the story, "Life in Death," as proof that Poe was writing of vampirism, because a vampire's life depends upon the death of another: "Instead art is the love, art itself is involved in the transfer of vitality; the process of creation is vampiric" (393).

Return to Top

Return to Top