The Oval Portrait

“The Oval Portrait” is in many ways typical of Gothic Romanticism. Its premise—that a narrator with mysterious injuries is exploring a room in an abandoned chateau and happens upon a portrait that has an unearthly effect on him—is inherently Gothic and Romantic. The story’s setting, too, is Gothic. It is a deserted mountain chateau of “commingled gloom and grandeur” that the narrator describes as having “bizarre architecture” and decor that, while elaborate and opulent, is falling into ruin (481). The primary location of the story’s action is a turret room in this chateau. This is an isolated and fantastical location within an already isolated and fantastical environment. Throughout, diction, imagery, and detail reinforce the story’s Gothic atmosphere. The turret is “remote” (481), the bed is bordered by “fringed curtains of black velvet” (481), the narrator first sees the oval portrait in “the deep midnight” (481), the painter’s personality is “austere” (483), and the light by which the painter creates the portrait is “ghastly” (483). The story’s plot is also an appropriately morbid one, featuring the untimely and unintentional death of an innocent young woman due to her husband’s obsession with his art.

Significantly, the plot of “The Oval Portrait” is part of a larger narrative and shortened to this very brief short story. The brevity of the text and the lack of solidified information—the narrator’s name, his injuries, and his mental state, for example—create suspense in the ominous lack of detail. This is a strategic approach in that it creates a fear of the unknown. In this story, as with some other stories by Poe, the author creates horror by omitting information, creating a vagueness that forces the reader to attempt to imagine the unimaginable.  

Although “The Oval Portrait” is, on its surface, simply a horror story about a man seeing a strange picture and learning the tragic story of its creation, at a deeper level, the story addresses the nature of relationships, and eventually within the story of the portrait, The Nature of Romantic Relationships. Concerning relationships at a fundamental level, the character of Pedro is unique in the story because of his detachment from the plot development. His presence, though linked to the longer version of this short story, serves little purpose in advancing the plot or character development. In fact, in horror stories, frightening things tend to happen when characters are alone—Pedro’s presence in the room removes the sense of eerie loneliness that would otherwise be present as the narrator emotionally spirals.

It is Pedro who makes the decision to break into the house, because he is concerned that the injured narrator will be endangered by spending the night out of doors in the elements. Pedro is unnecessary to the story aside from this display of loyalty and concern—the narrator might break in alone, find the candelabrum, and get himself into bed. However, it would certainly not be as easy for him to do so, and including Pedro in the story introduces the idea of relationships and their value. Pedro’s presence also suggests that the story is part of a larger narrative and that this moment is but a slice of the story. Even without the knowledge that “The Oval Portrait” was originally a longer story, the detail of Pedro’s presence creates the sense that the reader is stepping into a fully fleshed-out universe.

In the relationship of the painter and his wife, the painter is not as heavily invested as his wife, and he has nearly all of the power in their marriage. These factors impact the wife’s ability to make self-protective decisions and the painter’s ability to attend to her as fully as necessary, providing a commentary on romantic relationships as Poe sees them—a balancing act that sometimes results in tragedy. In the painter’s relationship to his art, he is the less powerful party, as he is captivated by art and consequently unable to take proper care of other facets of his life. When the frame narrator looks at the portrait of the painter’s wife and reads the story of its creation, he learns about The Relationship Between Art and Life, namely, that art cannot be a substitute for life. The upsetting quality of the portrait is explained by the story of its creation: In the case of this particular painting, the relationship between life and art is out of balance, and art has effectively consumed life itself. The story suggests that if art becomes too lifelike, to the extent of representing life itself, the result is an uncanny, discomforting image at the expense of reality. This commentary on realism and Poe’s fondness for the macabre and dramatic is made starkly clear to the reader with knowledge of Poe’s role in the larger scheme of art and literature.

Concerning the balancing act of relationships, Poe conveys that a relationship has two sides and explores what happens when one side exerts too powerful a pull on the other side, as well as what happens when a relationship is constructed so that one side can only succeed as the other fails. The story advocates for a healthy balance between the interests of two parties. The story’s structure represents this idea, particularly through the relationship between containers and the contained. Structurally, the larger story contains a frame narrative, which then contains an inner story. The frame narrative and inner story each have their own conflict, turning point, and resolution, emphasizing their equality in the overall meaning of “The Oval Portrait.” The frame story’s conflict centers on what the frame narrator will discover at the chateau: When he moves the candelabrum and reveals the oval portrait, this conflict’s outcome is determined, and afterward the action of this narrative falls and resolves as he contemplates the portrait and discovers its meaning. The inner story’s conflict centers on the tension between the artist’s and his wife’s desires. Its climax comes when the painter makes his final brush strokes and it is too late to save the wife he loves. The story’s final line resolves the inner story’s conflict, with the discovery of the wife’s death and the thematic reveal of The Dangers of Obsession. The use of a frame narrative that is balanced in importance with the story-within-the-story reflects the text’s overall idea of the need for balance.

The frame narrative orients the reader toward the importance of the story’s other “frames” and what they contain. Inside the frame story are two symbolic objects, one of which contains the other: the eponymous “oval” portrait and its golden frame. The frame narrator himself and the small book—which contains the story of the painting’s creation—are both contained within the “frame” of the curtained-off bed, which is contained within the oval of the turret, which is contained within the larger structure of the chateau. The text carefully depicts a story that decreases in expansivity with each frame. First, the reader is introduced to the location of the chateau, then, the room, and then, the bed. As the narrator looks into the painting itself, it is shockingly detailed, and cannot be taken in until the narrator has the composure to mentally assemble it piece by piece—just as Poe assembled the details of the story.  

The story’s focus and action move in and out of these various layers of containment. What is critical is not which item contains which other item but rather the idea of containment itself, and the way that containers both limit and lend meaning to that which is contained. Because the story’s title and the narrator’s interest both focus on the portrait itself, it would be easy to discount the importance of the “frame”: the narrator and the way his experiences give meaning to the portrait. “The Oval Portrait” seeks to communicate a message about the importance of relationships and the ways they are constructed. Ultimately, the lesson contained in the portrait—and in the story Poe has written about it—has no meaning without its audience.