"The Oval Portrait" by Edgar Allan Poe - Summary

The narrator and his valet break into an abandoned castle after the narrator is wounded. The narrator settles in bed to contemplate the many pictures on the wall and read about them in a book he has found. He suddenly notices the portrait of a young girl. Something about it makes him shut his eyes at the sight of it; tentatively he opens them again and is startled alert. He describes the style of the painting and its frame, but states that it was not these which startled him, but rather the lifelikeness of the painting. The narrator views the portrait at length and is "confused, subdued and appalled" by it. He turns to the book on the paintings he had been reading. The book describes the subject of the painting: a woman full of joy and love for all but art, which is the profession in which her husband, a painter, is entirely engrossed. The painter goes on to paint his reluctant wife, who humors his passion while pining for him. As the painter becomes more engrossed in his work, his wife grows weaker and weaker, blind to the painting draining the life of his wife (literally or figuratively?). The painter applies the final brushstroke, cries about the painting "this is indeed life itself!" and the next moment his wife is dead.