Like many of Edgar Allen Poe’s other short stories, “The Oval Portrait'' is a classic example of Gothic literature, a genre that emerged in the late 18th century as a response to the rationalism and scientific advancements of the Enlightenment period. Like other Gothic works, Poe’s short story is characterized by an eerie atmosphere, a melodramatic plot, and emphasis on the mysterious, supernatural, and macabre. Poe’s description of the chateau where his unnamed Narrator takes shelter reflects many of the conventions of Gothic literature:
Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings [...] my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room—since it was already night,—to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed, and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself.
Despite its grandeur, the chateau is an eerie and mysterious place, closer to a haunted house than a warm and inviting home. Poe conjures a sense of both great age but also of decay and dilapidation in his description of this “tattered” Gothic setting, with its sets of medieval armor, strange paintings, and black velvet curtains. The narrator is undaunted by this dark and foreboding home and, in a state of “delirium,” he seeks out the secrets of the chateau.
