31 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Oval Portrait
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1842A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Relationship Between Art and Life
“The Oval Portrait” draws attention to life’s fleeting nature and to the paradox of trying to preserve life through art. It suggests that no matter how “perfect” an image of life is, the image is still a mere illusion that cannot substitute for actual life. Ultimately, life’s beauty simply cannot be pinned and preserved through art.
In the frame narrator’s report of his thought process after first encountering the painting, he says that his shock is neither due to “the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance” (482). The diction of this comment foreshadows the action of the story-within-the-story that will soon follow, because the artist’s work is, indeed, an “execution” of “immortal beauty.”
The painter’s wife is a woman of “rarest beauty” and “all light” (483). Because of the story’s use of light symbolism, the identification of the painter’s wife with light also identifies her with life, and her radiance can be seen as the beauty of life itself. Light is explicitly identified with the “flame” of her life near the story’s end (483). It is the spark of that light that the painter is trying to capture in the final stroke of paint on the portrait’s eye; when he makes this final stroke, he is aghast at what he has created. Looking at his painting, he cries out that “[t]his is indeed Life itself!” (484). Once this light—this life—has been committed to the canvas, the woman herself dies. It is clear that when the painter tries to commit his wife’s image to the canvas, he is in some measure trying to capture life with his art.
When the frame narrator first moves the candelabrum and reveals the portrait of the painter’s wife, he is so startled that his first reaction is to shut his eyes. As he tries to come to grips with what is so unnerving about the painting, he stresses two key points: Although the woman’s image has an “absolute life-likeliness of expression,” it is also true that the painting is very obviously a painting, not a living woman (482). Before he sees the painting, the frame narrator is in a “dreamy stupor,” and the instant the painting is touched by the candlelight, he is “[startled] at once into waking life” (482). The light of the candle combined with the lifelike expression in the portrait’s face is enough to raise an answering flame of life within the frame narrator. And yet, his first feelings quickly give way to confusion and dismay: This is only the appearance of life, an artistic imitation that is ultimately more upsetting and unsettling than beautiful. The painter has traded the life of the woman he loves for an imitation that, however skillful, can never be more than just that—an imitation.
This theme is significant when considered against Poe’s own body of work. Since Poe’s poetry and stories often feature the deaths of beautiful young women, in a sense, these young women “die” in order for Poe’s work to “live.” Furthermore, Poe partially attacks realistic art in this story in order to defend Gothic Romanticism. Poe was strongly opposed to verisimilitude in art. He believed that the job of fiction is not to recreate ordinary life but to create an emotional impact and transport the reader away from the cares of everyday life. From this perspective, it is not all art that diminishes life and beauty—it is, specifically, realistic art.
The Dangers of Obsession
Two characters in “The Oval Portrait” exemplify the dangers of excessive passion: the painter and his wife. The painter’s obsession is with his art, and the wife’s obsession is with her husband. Both characters experience tragedy as a result of their unmoderated and unbalanced passions.
The painter’s wife’s passion for her husband is introduced in the second sentence of the story-within-the-story: “[E]vil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter” (483). The rhythm of this sentence’s polysyndeton creates a feeling of rushing forward from first meeting to marriage. This impression is reinforced by the use of the word “hour,” which—-although not meant literally—hints that their courtship and marriage took place rapidly. The third-person narrator openly offers the judgment that this sequence of events is “evil,” making it clear that the painter’s wife’s excessive love for the painter will lead to terrible consequences.
Because of her excessive passion, she is unable to accept her husband’s devotion to his art. Despite loving him and knowing how important painting is to him, she views the loss of his time and attention as intolerable and grows to hate his art. This is what causes her to feel it as “a terrible thing” when her husband asks her to sit for her portrait (483). Her insistence on seeing his art as her rival means that, for one to win, the other must lose. This idea is reinforced when, as the portrait is being painted, “the tints […] spread upon the canvas [are] drawn from the cheeks of her who [sits] beside him” (483). In the end, the painter’s wife is so diminished by the success of her “rival” that she dies, paying the ultimate price for her unwillingness to give up even a part of the man she loves.
With her death, the painter also pays a heavy price for obsession. His excessive devotion to his art has prevented him from realizing that his wife is dying until it is too late, and he ends up losing the very thing he was trying to “preserve” in his painting. The painter’s obsessive interest in his art is repeatedly conveyed through the story’s details and diction. He is only referred to as “the painter” because everything central to understanding him can be explained by his relationship to art, which the story suggests is his first love when it compares his art to a pre-existing bride. He is twice characterized as “passionate,” and twice as “wild” in his “ardor” for his work (483). He is “lost” in the art and gets a sense of “glory” and “fervid and burning pleasure” from it (483). This emphasis on the extremity of his interest in art explains why he is unable to see what is plain to everyone else: The project of creating the portrait is actually killing his wife. Had his love for art been less obsessive, the painter might have prevented this tragedy.
The Nature of Romantic Relationships
Poe’s story suggests two truths about romantic relationships: They work best when they balance the interests of both parties, and, as difficult as it is to accept, all romantic relationships end—loss is an integral part of loving. In the story’s key romantic relationship—that between the painter and his wife—both partners fail to understand these lessons and suffer greatly for it.
The relationship between the painter and his wife is out of balance: She is far more invested in the relationship than he is. He is, in essence, married to his art, and she feels that she has to compete with his painting for his love and his time. Because she is so eager to please him, she sits for the portrait when she does not want to and continues to sit even as her health and spirit fade. She does not have enough power in the relationship to protect her own best interests, and she dies as a result. Similarly, the painter lacks power in his relationship with art. Although he passionately enjoys painting, this activity is presented as almost beyond his choice. Even though the painter’s conscious intention is to capture and immortalize his wife’s beauty, showing that he does love and appreciate her, he is unable to protect the life of the real woman he claims to love because he is so mesmerized by his art.
The painter and his wife seem unable to accept that relationships are messy and sometimes painful, not orderly and ideal. The wife’s jealous animosity toward her husband’s art contributes to her death; the ending suggests that she would be better off to simply accept that relationships are imperfect instead of pining for an idealized version. Furthermore, the painter’s goal of creating a replica of the wife’s beauty in a perfect, immortal form is an impossible one. Life and beauty are fleeting and cannot be captured with any real truth. The end result of the painter’s attempt—his wife’s death and a portrait that inspires revulsion in its viewer—is a crucial Gothic element of the story’s horror.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
