Definition of Foreshadowing
In the narrator’s description of the portrait of a young woman which he finds inside the abandoned chateau, his language foreshadows later revelations in the short story concerning the fate of the painting’s subject. As he examines the painting, he states that:
As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea—must have prevented even its momentary entertainment.