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“The Oval Portrait” is one of the shortest stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Not all texts are suitable for application of all critical theories. Applying the right theories to a text is a very important choice. Deconstructive criticism is one of those approaches which can be applied to specific kinds of texts and the text should lend itself to this critical theory. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait could be read through the lenses of various critical theories such as psychoanalytic criticism, feminism, structuralism and deconstructive criticism.
The main device we have for telling stories is language.
The father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, used two terms to describe language. The first one is langue and it refers to “the rules that comprise a language or the structure of a language that is mastered and shared by all its speakers”. Parole is the other linguistic term used by Saussure which refers to “ an individual’s actual speech utterances” and it is opposed to langue.
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Individuals can create endless numbers of parole. Literary texts also act like utterances and are counted as parole.
Deconstructive criticism believes that “language is not the reliable tool of communication we believe it to be, but rather a fluid, ambiguous domain of complex experience”. It means that the language people use every day is more slippery and elusive than what they think and this is the reason why Derrida says “center is not the center” , and the structures based on language are unstable.
Every story is a board game and the marbles on this board are the signifiers and the signifieds.
Our concept of every signifier, “the mental imprint of a linguistic sound”, is called signified. This concept is an accumulation of all our experiences in life, so this signified is “really always a chain of signifiers” . Deconstruction says that “language is nonreferential because it refers neither to things in the world nor to our concepts of things but only to the play of signifiers of which language itself consists”. Derrida coined the term differance, by which he meant both postponement of meaning of the signifiers and the fact that meaning is created through difference. Signs never stand in one spot on the chain of signifiers, that is why there is no definite and unique meaning at the end. Jacques Derrida coined the term binary oppositions in his theories borrowing the polar opposites from structuralism. Binary oppositions “represent the conceptual oppositions on which he believes western metaphysics is based”.
Finding binary opposition is a critical step in every deconstructive reading. In “The Oval Portrait”, these binary oppositions are what create meaning. The first and very obvious binary opposition that attracts attention in the story is the opposition between art and life: Art/Life. Art is highly celebrated in the story and seems to be in direct opposition with life, that is, the story implies that art and life cannot exist at the same time. Life does not lasts long but art never dies. This for example is correct about the artist’s wife: She either lives or becomes the dead immortal painting. Also the painter’s wife’s life is going to an end because of a peace of art he is painting.
But this opposition and duality is not too strong. In the first part of the story when the narrator was looking at the painting, he was not sure whether the woman was alive or it was just a painting. Another example is the end of the story, when the painter finishes his painting, we face his declaration: “This is indeed Life itself !”.Life and art are not in a strong contrast with each other, but rather life becomes significant and this is the reason why L is capitalized in Life. So, in this case the text itself and nothing else deconstructs itself.
Art is also engaged in another duality: The opposition between art and hallucination. The narrator was very badly and desperately injured, but he had forgotten his pain when he was looking at the painting. In addition, he was looking for the story behind the portrait in the book he found to satisfy his curiosity about it. Therefore, the conclusion that comes to mind is that this narrator is not reliable and the accuracy of what he said is to be doubted. There is no way that we can make sure that the painting or the book ever existed in the real world, that is, it could all be hallucinations of a wounded man. There are three proofs for this in the text, first one is where the narrator admits he was an “incipient delirium” state, the second one is when he says that “the dreamy stupor … was stealing over his senses”, and the last one is that when the narrator faced the painting, he shut his lids because he wanted to have enough time “to make sure that [his] vision had not deceived [him]”. So, the whole story he says about the painting, the painter, his wife and what happened to her could be created by his own imagination and the book he was reading may have never existed. If this assumption is true we will not be surprised when everything becomes so illogical and contradictory.
One of the main binary oppositions governing the story is the opposition between male / female. As every binary opposition is a small hierarchy and the left side is known to be privileged, first I will give priority to art.
The notebook which the unnamed narrator reads starts with a description of the woman whose portrait is on the wall. In the second sentence we read that the “ evil [Italic is mine] was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter”. The painter has called his wife “a bride in his art”, meaning that her wife, whom he describes to be very beautiful, is just a model for his paintings, not his beloved partner. But his wife, other way around, loves the painter. The painter uses his wife’s “rarest beauty” as a bridge to transfer his sexual desire to his work of art. And, “ It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day”.
This part of the story shows very obviously how the man, the painter, is using his wife like an object and he is privileged to her. Her reactions are the behaviors that an oppressed person shows.
Summary: The Shortest Story Written By Edgar Allan Poe. (2024, Feb 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/summary-the-shortest-story-written-by-edgar-allan-poe-essay
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