Analysis of “The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allen Poe Essay

Art is a jealous mistress. Ralph Waldo Emersons quote easily summarizes The Oval Portrait, written by Edgar Allen Poe. It is a cooling tale, describing the two different passions of a married couple. The husband, a painter, requests that the wife permit him paint her personation, and in obeying him, she meets her doom. As the photograph matured, her health and spirits declined and to that extent she remained and, without objection, she continued to sit for him. His passions increase and after many weeks, as the painting nears completion, each stroke of the brush strips her of her beauty, and final examly, upon the conclusion of the painting, it robs her of her smell. This is a bewitching write up of passion, murder, vampirism, and murder.Poes story is an un coffin nailny analysis of two passions art and romance. It is a given that the artificer do its his wife, but he seems to sh be a practically deeper bond with his art. It is unfortunate for the wife to support fallen in love with a painter who was passionate, studious, austere and having already a bride in his art. As she was young and happy, she seemed to have a love of all things, and yet she came to nauseate his art and to despise his brushes and the other tools of his passion. All the way through the story, it is make very clear that art is non simply his occupation, but it be cums an existent woman who rivals with the wife for the painters affection. As the wife shrink away, the portrait comes to life, thus the painter achieves any artists supreme fantasy the preservation of his true love and passion (whether it be the wife or the painting) against the total destruction of time.It is well known that the women in Poes time were banned from the public sphere and stripped of power and identity. victorious this into consideration, it is safe to say that the artist may have wanted her to die. though the story never indicates it, the wife could have been very outspoken, and because of this, it is likely that the painter could be tremendously ashamed of her. The painter, knowing that she would do anything for him, could have asked her to be the model of his portrait. Then, he would be likely to take as grand as he needed to paint this portrait of her. His only compensate for her death would be that she love him enough to sit that long, and he loved art enough to get that carried away with it.Art itself is involved in the transfer of vitality the process of creation is vampiric. In Poes tale, it is diaphanous that as the painting comes to life, the wife gets closer to death. The way that the inanimate portrait gains life from the living is comparable to vampirism. The vampire myth itself is an ideal icon for love that is too demanding, or art that is too life consuming. The artist in this story, who can be depicted as a vampire, seems tohave to kill in order to renew life. by means ofout the entire life of the painting, the wifes cheeks lose color and she grows wea ker, so it would seem distract to say that he could be painting with her blood. The artist transfers the life centre of the wife into his painting of her draining her with each sitting until she dies at the atomic number 42 he completes his work. Poe investigates the nature of human relationships, including love and lust and develops his theme to point out the vampiric qualities inherent in the creative or artistic process. Therefore, Poe manages to subtly display that a vampires life depends upon the death of another.There is emphatically a sense of mystery in this narrative. From what an audience can gather, no one else was in the room with the painter and his wife. Whoever wrote the history of the painting could not have known what happened to the wife, unless the painter himself wrote it. Anything could have occurred in that room. From what the commentator can tell, it is a good possibility that the painter strangled his wife himself and multi-coloured her dead body. It is nearly impossible to tell what exactly happened. Poe also leave the audience hanging at the end of the story.Nowhere in the final paragraph does Poe state or even infer that the painter had come to blame himself for his wifes death. In fact, the tale ends precisely where the readers questions should have been answered and the conflict resolved. Some may like to desire that the painter was at least capable of grieving for his bride, but it is futureless to even assume that there is a real answer. It is basically remaining up to the reader to make up his or her own heading about what happened afterwards.To put it briefly, The Oval Portrait is a very mysterious, dark, and creepy-crawly story. The life that the young painter takes from his wife illuminates the painting. But in the end, she bears the tragical consequences of her husbands love for his art and her own love for him. Through this story it becomes obvious that love triangles are dangerous to life, as are vampires and society itself. This story is a prime example of the hazards of loving person that already loves another.