When the narrator first visits Mr. Grancy at his home after his wife dies, Wharton writes with vivid figurative imagery to describe the library and the altered portrait. This imagery builds tension by comparing the happiness and light previously associated with the library to its new depressing, foreboding setting after the portrait’s alteration.
Initially, the narrator recalls his happy memories in the Grancys’ library:
Grancy led the way to the library, where at this hour his wife had always welcomed us back to a bright fire and a cup of tea. The room faced the west and held a clear light of its own after the rest of the house had grown dark. I remembered how young she had looked in this pale gold light, which irradiated her eyes and hair, or silhouetted her girlish outline as she passed before the windows.
Wharton describes the library with clear imagery to evoke feelings of peace and joy. The narrator details the “bright fire,” the “clear light” in the room and how Mrs. Grancy looked young and beautiful in the “pale gold light, which irradiated her eyes and hair.” This description creates the image of an angelic, beautiful Mrs. Grancy inhabiting the library. However, as the passage continues, the tone shifts:
Then, all in a moment, as Grancy opened the door, the feeling vanished, and a kind of resistance met me on the threshold. [...] My feet sank into the same deep-piled Daghestan; the book-shelves took the firelight on the same rows of rich subdued bindings; her arm-chair stood in its old place near the tea-table; and from the opposite wall her face confronted me.
When the narrator enters the library, an oppressive difference is immediately evident. The narrator describes how his feet “sank into the same deep-piled” rug and the books reflected the firelight just as before, but Mrs. Grancy’s new portrait confronts him and sours his happy memories. The fact that her portrait now looks much older completely changes the whole room. The room once held happy, sunny memories. Yet, as emphasized by the imagery here, it is now terrifying and oppressive to the narrator.
