The trope of the vampire is a commonplace of Gothic fiction. Though it stereotypically involves the drinking of blood by the fang-y undead and the subsequent siring of new immortals, these are only its outward attributes. In essence, vampires are individuals who drain or absorb people’s vital energies in order to revitalize themselves—gore, the supernatural, and dodgy Transylvanian accents are optional extras.
As might be expected from Poe’s trademark style, the vampirism in “The Oval Portrait” is abstract and subtle: instead of fangs and black capes, Poe imbues his story with a creeping feeling of dread and the slow sapping of energy—something one might call psychic vampirism. And instead of a vampire drinking actual blood, Poe presents readers with an artist’s painting his subject. The artist’s wife, the model for this portrait, has her life force essentially drawn out of her (literally and figuratively) and into the painter and his canvas, upon which her image is immortalized for posterity, and she becomes a husk of her former self as a result of this “blood loss.” Through the elements of vampirism present in the inner story about this husband and wife, Poe seems to make two implicit assessments, one social and historically specific, the other more broadly philosophical. The former is that marriage in a patriarchal society may well result in a lopsided power dynamic: the wife gives, the husband takes, and there is no reciprocity. The latter is that artistic creation inevitably brings about its opposite: destruction.
Marrying the painter has catastrophic consequences for the girl. Immediately after marrying her husband, she is described as being “full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn.” But she begins to decline, physically as well as psychologically, as soon as her husband embarks on her portrait, her “health and spirits” withered by “the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret.” The husband, in contrast, “grow[s] wild with the ardor of his work.” This is psychic vampirism in action: the girl is progressively being sucked of her innocent youth and her health, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for the destructive consequences of marriage in a society that restricts women.
Poe’s most explicit hint that his story is dealing with a transfusion of vital energies comes when the guide book asserts that “the tints which [the painter] spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.” This assertion makes it unambiguous that the wife’s well-being is inversely related to the degree of the portrait’s completion. In other words, the longer she spends in this state of married entrapment, the more enfeebled and powerless she becomes.
It’s also clear, however, that Poe’s treatment of vampirism in “The Oval Portrait” is specifically bound up with questions of artistic representation—the story is as much about models and artists as it is about wives and husbands, and it seems to insist that creative acts are also—at least inadvertently—simultaneously destructive ones. If, as the guide book makes clear, the painter’s “real” bride is “Art,” personified by dint of the capital “A,” the model herself is de-personified as the life-draining process of depiction proceeds. The process of depiction may be regarded as one which transforms the living girl into an object that is possessable, in both the economic and sexual senses of the word. (It is significant that she’s described as “just ripening into womanhood”—in other words, on the verge of sexual maturity.) As a vampire’s victim is literally immortalized, so too is the girl is immortalized on the canvas—reduced to the status of a viewable commodity—but only at the expense of her existence as a fluid, living subject.
It’s evident, then, that the presentation of vampirism of “The Oval Portrait” differs significantly from vampirism as it tends to be understood in popular culture. In fact, the narrative is so utterly devoid of vampiric clichés that casual readers may easily overlook the presence of this theme in Poe’s story. Nonetheless, Poe uses the theme to explore power dynamics within marriage, but he also uses it to comment on the ambiguous nature of artistic representation, which seems to entail destruction as well as creation.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Vampirism ThemeTracker
Vampirism Quotes in The Oval Portrait
She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray 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.
[…] [T]he painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him
And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved: She was dead!
