The Oval Portrait

Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic horror story “The Oval Portrait” is among his shortest narratives. As it recounts the story of the death of a painter’s young wife, it addresses the themes The Relationship Between Art and Life, The Dangers of Obsession, and The Nature of Romantic Relationships. “The Oval Portrait” is actually the 1845 revision of a longer story, “Life in Death,” which Poe wrote in 1842, shortly after his beloved young wife, Virginia, first fell ill with the tuberculosis that would kill her five years later. Poe was terrified at the prospect of losing Virginia, and the death of beautiful young women was a frequent topic in his work at this time. In his 1846 essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” he even called this the most poetic of all subjects.

This study guide refers to the electronic version of the text hosted by the Library of America, excerpted from their 1984 publication Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry & Tales (LOA, 1984), pp. 481-84. Note that several nonstandard spellings in Poe’s story are reproduced in quoted material without the notation “[sic],” as these spellings would have been allowed in Poe’s time.