“The Oval Portrait” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe he is one of the most famous writers in Gothic Literature. It has some characteristics, such as the ominous setting, dark tones, gloomy tones, hopelessness, defeat, and themes of death.
During the story, the reader can see criticism of Americans materialism - the wife of the main character perishes due to the obsession of the main character with the painting -.
The way the main character treats his wife and the way she portrays herself enduring some behaviors, this describes the young lady’s role in society and how women were subservient in American society.
The Oval Portrait reflects the overall cultural, literary, political, ideological, scientific, and moral climate of eighteenth-century America because the story develops the most common problems of the era. That, persons in the eighteenth century undervalued personal relationships to focus on certain objectives. We still do that in modernity, but in that era, women were more repressed and couldn't say any complaint, due to social pressure.
Explanation:
The Oval Portrait is a story of Edgar Allan Poe that talks about a painter and his wife. He convinces her to pose as a model for one of his works, then weeks passed and her health decayed. She became ill and he never realized she was in bad healths conditions because she never expressed any pain and he also never asked for her status. Finally, when he finishes the painting he discovers his wife died. It resembled how women would suffer the undervaluing of women, and how people would not care for their closest ones because of their ambition to achieve an objective.
