English · Chapter 9
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
"The Oval Portrait" is one of the shortest tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1809 to 1849), the American poet, critic and master of the Gothic short story. It first appeared in 1842 in Graham's Magazine under the title "Life in Death" and was published in its shorter, revised form in the Broadway Journal in 1845. Like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia", it treats Poe's favourite subject, the death of a beautiful young woman, but here the killer is art itself. In a few pages Poe builds a story within a story about a painter whose devotion to his work drains the life from his bride.
The narrator, wounded and feverish, is travelling through the Apennines with his valet, Pedro. Rather than let his master spend the night in the open, Pedro forces an entry into an abandoned chateau, a gloomy pile of the kind the narrator associates with Mrs Radcliffe's novels. They settle in a small, remote apartment in a turret. Its decaying decorations include tapestries, trophies of arms and a great many modern paintings in gold arabesque frames.
Already in a state of incipient delirium, the narrator is fascinated by the paintings. He has Pedro light the tall candelabrum by the bed so that he may gaze at the pictures and read a small volume, found on the pillow, that describes them. Around midnight he shifts the candelabrum to throw more light on the book. The new position sends light into a niche which a bedpost had kept in deep shade, and he suddenly sees a portrait he had not noticed before.
It shows a young girl just ripening into womanhood, painted as a vignette in the manner of Sully, only the head and shoulders, melting into the shadowy background. The frame is oval, richly gilded and filigreed in Moresque. He closes his eyes to test his senses, then looks again. What startles him is an absolute lifelikeness of expression, which first confounds, then subdues and finally appals him. After an hour of study he moves the candelabrum back, hiding the portrait, and turns to the book for its story.
The book relates that she was a maiden of rarest beauty, full of glee, all light and smiles, frolicsome as a young fawn. She was evil only in the hour when she married the painter. He was passionate, studious and austere, and already had a bride in his Art. She hated only that Art, her rival, and dreaded hearing him speak of painting even his young bride. Yet she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret chamber, where light dripped upon the canvas only from overhead. The painter, wild and moody, would not see that the light was withering the health and spirits of his bride, who wasted visibly to everyone but him. She kept smiling, because she saw his fervid pleasure in the task.
As the work neared its close, no one was admitted to the turret, and the painter rarely turned his eyes from the canvas, even to look at his wife's face. He would not see that the tints he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of the woman beside him. When only one brush stroke on the mouth and one tint on the eye remained, the spirit of the lady flickered up like the flame within a lamp. The brush was given and the tint placed. The painter stood entranced, then, trembling and pallid, cried aloud, "This is indeed Life itself!" He turned suddenly to regard his beloved. She was dead.