The Oval Portrait

The Oval Portrait is a short horror story written by Edgar Allan Poe, an American writer (1809-1849). In the story, an artist wants to make a portrait of his young wife, but becomes so obsessed with his work that he doesn’t realize his wife is dying meanwhile. The story features the relationship between art and life through the narrator’s encounter with the oval portrait of a young woman in a chateau (a large building) in the Apennines (a mountain range in Italy).

The narrator appears to be the new owner of the chateau. In a certain room which he makes his bedroom, he lies upon the bed at night and observes the paintings hanging on the wall before him and reads a book that describes the paintings. Around midnight, he shifts the position of the candelabrum to have more light fall upon the book. Suddenly, he happens to see an oval portrait of a young and beautiful girl. The portrait is so life-like that the narrator gets frightened at first. Startled and curious to know about the portrait, he looks into the book and reads about it. The book informs that the portrait is of a young wife painted by her painter husband. The painter was a moody man and obsessed with his own work of art. He wanted to make a portrait of his wife and made her pose before him. As he progressed, he became so much absorbed in his work that he forgot his wife and kept working for weeks losing himself in reveries. The devoted wife didn’t resist for she didn’t want to disturb her husband. Sitting there in pose continuously for weeks, she became tired and weak, and her health began to decline. Finally, the painter used the last stroke of the brush and finished the work. He stepped a little back and observed the portrait – it was not just an imitation of life, but was life itself! He felt satisfied for this perfect work of art. Only then he remembered his wife and looked consciously over the portrait towards his wife. But unfortunately, his wife was already dead.

Frame narrative (a story within a story) has been employed in this story. The narrator’s story forms a frame for the painter’s story.