Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous and celebrated American writers whose short stories inspired numerous other authors. The Oval Portrait, initially titled Life in Death, is a revised and shorter version that was published in the Broadway Journal in 1845.
Although being one of his shortest stories, Poe is able to establish in The Oval Portrait a haunting atmosphere of terror. The fate of the beautiful, young woman fascinates the narrator who is entirely taken by the enigmatic painting and the inscrutable circumstances of the lady's death. It is in this way that the author is able to create simultaneously a sense of both mystery and tragedy, and this essay will examine in greater detail how
these two elements are combined in order to make up the Gothic mood typical for Poe's writings.
Firstly, I will have a look at the author and his background before providing some general information about this short story. In this case, a biographical approach to The Oval Portrait is very enriching and is able to shed light on some aspects, as we will see later on. Secondly, I will concentrate on the appearance of the mysterious atmosphere in the work, such as the narrator's equivocal reliability, the mansion and its relation to the Gothic, the role of light and darkness, and the open questions. My third point of analysis will be the tragic: how is Poe able to
make both the story's narrator and his readers be captivated by such a sad woman's death within
less than four pages? To begin with, I will focus on the painter and his obsession with his art, as
well as the dilemma whether the latter is inevitably irreconcilable with life. Then the woman's
outward appearance, that is her surpassing loveliness, will be linked to what Poe himself says
about the role of beauty and horror in his work Philosophy of Composition.
Furthermore, James Twitchell's interpretation of The Oval Portrait will be taken into account.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous and celebrated American writers whose short stories inspired numerous other authors. The Oval Portrait, initially titled Life in Death, is a revised and shorter version that was published in the Broadway Journal in 1845. Although being one of his shortest stories, Poe is able to establish in The Oval Portrait a haunting atmosphere of terror. The fate of the beautiful, young woman fascinates the narrator who is entirely taken by the enigmatic painting and the inscrutable circumstances of the lady’s death. It is in this way that the author is able to create simultaneously a sense of both mystery and tragedy, and this essay will examine in greater detail how these two elements are combined in order to make up the Gothic mood typical for Poe’s writings.
Firstly, I will have a look at the author and his background before providing some general information about this short story. In this case, a biographical approach to The Oval Portrait is very enriching and is able to shed light on some aspects, as we will see later on.
Secondly, I will concentrate on the appearance of the mysterious atmosphere in the work, such as the narrator’s equivocal reliability, the mansion and its relation to the Gothic, the role of light and darkness, and the open questions. My third point of analysis will be the tragic: how is Poe able to make both the story’s narrator and his readers be captivated by such a sad woman’s death within less than four pages? To begin with, I will focus on the painter and his obsession with his art, as well as the dilemma whether the latter is inevitably irreconcilable with life. Then the woman’s outward appearance, that is her surpassing loveliness, will be linked to what Poe himself says about the role ofbeauty and horror in his work Philosophy of Composition.
Furthermore, James Twitchell’s interpretation of The Oval Portrait will be taken into account.
Eventually, in the conclusion, it will become clear that even after having read the short story, a reader still remains with the feeling that there is more behind it, yet he or she cannot exactly tell what it is: the ineffable comes into play, showing that Poe's writings represent the apogee of the tales of the macabre in the nineteenth century, and that he deserves to be called 'the master of Gothic fiction'.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809; his parents have been actors of the Powell's Company, and they died few years later. Thus, he was sent to John Allan, a rich merchant, and his wife Frances, who affectionately accommodated him, treating him like their own son while their own marriage remained childless. In the 1820s, he attended private schools and the University of Virginia before starting a career as a writer. In May 1836, his foster parents have already died, Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. His wife played a decisive role in his poems and stories, and she also heavily influenced the writing of The Oval Portrait. Given the fact that Virginia was in ill health and suffered from tuberculosis that finally caused her death in 1847, we can see that the hardships, sorrows and deaths which Poe had to endure in his life, sometimes reappear in his works. The loss of his wife could be connected to the death of the beautiful lady in the story, with the author drawing attention to the omnipresent and inescapable death that robbed him ofhis young bride.
However, it is not only the female character whose tragic fate is explored; so one should not neglect the difficulties that Poe himself encountered during his life. Of course, the loss of his loved ones were significant incidents which must have troubled him a lot, and he never had enough stability or financial security. He often changed his editorial positions, being first employed at the Southern Literary Messenger, then at Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and eventually the Broadway Journal until 1846 (cf Zumbach).
Moreover, Poe tried to found new literaryjournals several times, for instance The Penn and The Stylus, yet he has never been successful. During the rest ofhis life, he was addicted to drugs and to alcohol, with this probably being the reason for having protagonists who are mentally unstable or suffer from other mental illnesses and problems. In The Oval Portrait, it is the narrator who is severely wounded, feeling that he is almost in a delirium.
Another connection to Poe's biographical background is the description of the vignette “much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully” (Poe 251). Thomas Sully, a well-known American painter who lived from 1783 to 1872, has made a portrait both of Frances and of John Allen. The picture of Poe's foster mother may have served as a model for the portrait of the woman in the short story.
After his wife’s death, the author was engaged twice, but none of these relationships have been long-lasting. Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849 under mysterious circumstances, allegedly from alcoholism, in Baltimore. Although he died at a very young age, he played an influential role in the development of the short story and the invention of the detective story. Thanks to him, the genre of Gothic fiction, to which also belongs The Oval Portrait, became famous.
This short story is divided into two parts: it begins with an injured narrator who, together with his valet, wants to pass the night in an untenanted chateau in the Apennines. The latter contemplates attentively the portraits hanging on the walls, and all of a sudden, he discovers another painting that fascinates him because of its “absolute life-likeliness of expression” (251). As he is eager to find out more about the beautiful young lady, he consults a book that he has found on the pillow ofhis bed.
The second part, the ’story in the story’, is a direct quotation from this book which explains that the lady was the wife of a well-known painter. He was very talented and insisted on making a portrait ofhis wife who actually did not want to sit for him at all. Despite her initial refusal, she decides to do him the favour, and her husband begins with his work. However, he gets more and more obsessed with his portrait so that he does not notice that his wife begins to waste away in the dark turret. When he finishes the painting which resembles the woman so much that he cries: “’This is indeed Life itself!’” (253), he turns around and realizes that she is dead.
In this last half of the short story, the narrator completely fades into the background. Yet it is him who establishes the mysterious mood at the beginning. The first important thing to notice is that the reader never gets to know where the narrator’s wound comes from. He remains a dubious character on whose account we have to rely. The question of his trustworthiness is a controversial one: on the one hand, the text says that he is in a “desperately wounded condition” (250) and almost in a semi-delirious state, which could be an indication of an impaired judgement and memory. Furthermore, he is a first person narrator and involved in the story, which is a cause for distrust, too.
On the other hand, when comparing this version to the earlier one, one gets the impression that Poe rather intended to make his narrator more reliable. In Life in Death, the reader gets to know that the narrator has taken opium because ofhis wound that he got during a fight with bandits. By leaving this paragraph out, the author can both envelop the narrator’s story in mystery, and make the reader less suspicious, as having to do with outlaws also casts a damning light on the narrator himself. What is more, opium could indicate that the story is not entirely trustworthy. In The Oval Portrait, the narrator delivers comparatively long and detailed descriptions of the chateau and the portrait, by means of which his account seems to be an objective one.
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- Arbeit zitieren
- Manü Mohr (Autor:in), 2012, About "The Oval Portrait" of Edgar Allan Poe, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/231878
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