At the beginning of the story, the narrator describes Mr. Grancy by detailing his relationship with Mrs. Grancy and the devastating effects of his prior marriage. Wharton writes an extended simile about Mr. Grancy during his first marriage:
We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. [...] Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who was to become his second wife—his one real wife, as his friends reckoned—the whole man burst into flower.
In this early simile, the narrator describes Mr. Grancy “like a swimmer in a drowning clutch” while he was with his previous wife. However, Mr. Grancy is characterized as resilient: he always “come[s] to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore.” Wharton also characterizes Mr. Grancy with another simile, writing: “Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped.” While the characters admire Mr. Grancy, it is evident from this simile that he is heavily dependent on his wife. However, he is resilient and “burst into a flower” when he finds his new wife. This simile is significant because it characterizes him as a dependent person, yet one that the narrator and his friends (initially) admire.
The narrator’s admiration of Mr. Grancy is important because it makes Mr. Grancy’s decline more shocking to readers. Furthermore, this simile foreshadows Mr. Grancy’s complex and flawed character. Written in Wharton’s style of elegant and elaborate prose, this simile establishes the theme of grief and loneliness early in the story by beginning with a description of Mr. Grancy’s grief and his inability to flourish without his wife.
In Part III, Mr. Grancy chronicles his experience after his wife died, telling the narrator about how he comes to believe that the portrait of his wife is effectively conscious. After returning from five years in Rome, Mr. Grancy comes face to face with the portrait and immediately feels isolated from the painting he once adored. He declares that the portrait must be keeping his wife’s spirit trapped. Wharton writes this realization with a complicated simile and metaphor that convey Mr. Grancy’s beliefs about the portrait:
So the idea came to me: ‘It’s the picture that stands between us; the picture that is dead, and not my wife. To sit in this room is to keep watch beside a corpse.’ As this feeling grew on me the portrait became like a beautiful mausoleum in which she had been buried alive: I could hear her beating against the painted walls and crying to me faintly for help [...].
Recounting his realization, Grancy first uses a simile, saying that “to sit in this room is to keep watch beside a corpse” and that “the portrait became like a beautiful mausoleum.” These are both similes that compare the unaltered portrait to a “corpse” and a “mausoleum” that keep his wife imprisoned. However, these similes do keep a distance between the actual, dead Mrs. Grancy and the life-like portrait.
However, in the next sentence, Wharton employs metaphors to take this a step further, demonstrating that Grancy truly believes that his wife lives on in the portrait. He says “I could hear her beating against the painted walls and crying to me faintly for help.” This is no longer just a simile: the portrait is not just “like” a mausoleum—Grancy perceives it to be a painted prison for his wife. This evolution from simile to metaphor demonstrates the symbolic nature of the portrait and how Mr. Grancy’s grief twists his perception, focusing on the portrait as his sole tether to life.
