The Oval Portrait

- time: chronological, narration time shorter than narrated time (events stretch out over several hours)

- mode: narrative, internal focalisation

- voice: first person narrator, homodiegetic; It is debatable whether the narrator is reliable or unreliable. On the one hand it is said in the text that the narrator was in a "desperately wounded condition" and in an "incipient delirium" which would be clues for considering the narrator unreliable, but on the other hand, there is strong evidence that Poe did not want this particular narrator to be unreliable. Poe changed the original version of the story (published under the title Life in Death) where the narrator was under the influence of opium and simply cut out this claim.

- synopsis: The narrator, who is in a "desperately wounded condition", and his valet break into an abandoned castle to spend there the night. Though abandoned, the castle is still lavishly furnished and full of exquisit paintings that capture the narrators attention. He is sitting on his bed with the candelabrum in his hands and suddenly the light falls into a niche of the room where he discovers another painting he has not yet laid his eyes upon. He is at once startled by the "absolute life- likeliness" of this picture. It is a "mere head and shoulders" and shows a beautiful young girl in an oval frame. For some time he cannot avert his gaze from the picture and when he finally manages to to do so, he looks up the picture in an old volume claiming to describe the pictures of this room and their history. There the narrator finds the story of a young artist who wanted to make a painting of his young wife, but became so obsessed with it that he didn't realize his wife falling ill in the process. Eventually, when the picture was finished, he cried out "This is indeed Life itself" but, ironically, his wife was dead.

- attempt of an analysis: The Oval Portrait seems to have an interesting autobiographical background. The narrator claims that the portrait was made "much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully". Thomas Sully was an American painter who had made a portrait of Frances Allan, Poe's foster mother. This painting looked very similar to the picture depicted in the story, so one could interprete the young woman there as Frances Allan. The artist who cared so little for his wife's health could than be her husband John Allan whom Poe made partially responsible for the early demise of his foster mother.
Another interpretation of the story could be that it is about art so great that it surpasses the realness of the original and surviving its distruction. This interpretation, however, in my opinion is to positive and therefore falls short of the tragedy involved in the tale. A third possibility that comes to mind is that the tale is about obsession, detructive obsession. A man who cannot cope with the shortcomings and (slight) mistakes of reality and who therefore is obsessed with creating something (here a work of art) which is in accordance with his own ideals, but thereby destroys what really matters, the wife who loved him. Last but not least, I have read- but not understood- that the story is about the "vampiristic" aspect of art sucking the life out of the object it depicts. Does anyone have an idea what this is supposed to mean?

Like a lot of Poe stories this leaves me unimpressed. It's basically a situation that never is fully developed and he pastes a conclusion to it.

The Oval Portrait is not my favourite Poe story and yes this tale- and also some others that I've read- might not be as well conceived as his masterpieces (I think for some of his stories this term is appropriate). Yet, you always have to take into account that Poe wrote these stories to make money of them and how many of them he wrote during his short life. Considering this, I would claim that- at least judging from the tales I have read- most of his short stories still have a comparatively high artistic quality. Of course you might still have a different opinion and I respect it. It's a matter of taste after all...

By the way: Nice to meet a fellow Roman here ;-)