SOURCE: Kot, Paula. “Painful Erasures: Excising the Wild Eye from ‘The Oval Portrait.’” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 28, nos. 1-2 (June-December 1995): 1-6.

In the following essay, Kot considers the function of the dying woman in “The Oval Portrait.”

In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe does more than declare the poetical nature of dying women. He also takes the public behind the scenes to watch the writer at work. Though writers “prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy,” Poe details the “cautious selections and rejections—… the painful erasures and interpolations” that a writer makes.¹ Poe had made such cautious selections and painful erasures when he trimmed down “Life in Death” (a tale he might have padded for economic reasons) in order to republish it in The Broadway Journal as “The Oval Portrait” (26 April 1845).² In “The Oval Portrait,” the brevity and unity achieved by torturous...