Themes In The Oval Portrait By Edgar Allan Poe

The Oval Portrait was written by Edgar Allan Poe and published in April, 1842. The title of the first edition of the short story was “Life in Death”, but then Poe decided to change the title and edit the story, so the version we know and read today was born. In this short story of his, Poe briefly tells the story of a young woman and her artist husband, through a third narrator. Story begins with a wounded man and his valet finding a chateau to spend the night in Apennines, Italy. They settle into one of the rooms which has lots of portraits on the walls.

One of the portraits takes attention of the narrator of the story, the wounded man, and he searches the book which is about portraits, to find an explanation for the young woman’s realistically painting on the wall. She was the wife of a young artist and he was passionate about his art. One day he started to draw portrait of his wife. She was consumed by the painting he was making, but he didn’t realized it. In the end, when the painting was finished, he thought that he found the life itself in the painting, but when he looked at his wife, she was dead. The Oval Portrait is a horror themed story which actually deals with themes like obsession, fatal love or submissiveness. These themes of choice fit very well with that period’s cultural norms. And also in this short story of Edgar Allan Poe’s, he strengthens the story by using three important opposite idea pairs together, such as, art vs. reality, family vs.