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The setting of “The Oval Portrait” is important because it establishes the story’s mood, mirrors the narrator’s psyche, and drives the plot forward. The opening paragraph sets the stage for a gloomy and contemplative tale by describing the strange chateau where the narrator and his valet have come to spend the night. By describing the chateau as a pile of “commingled gloom and grandeur which [has] so long frowned among the Apennines,” the narrator presents an important paradox about the setting. The chateau is at once a ruin and an imposing structure; it is both foreboding and inspiring. In this way, the chateau represents the narrator’s own unusual mind. Both the architecture of the chateau and the architecture of the narrator’s psyche are impressive, moribund, inspiring, bizarre, and complex. The narrator’s choice to pass the night in a remote turret that is bedecked with strange armorial trophies and modern paintings represents his metaphorical journey into the depths of his own mind. In addition, the bedroom setting sets up the conflict between the narrator’s need to rest and his obsession with art, and thereby advances the plot. 

When the narrator begins to read the origins of the oval portrait, the setting shifts to a different room in a turret of another building, where the young lady sits for her portrait. The similarity of the two settings is significant because it highlights the uncomfortable similarity between the artist and the narrator. Both feverishly devote their energies to art at great cost. While the artist ignores the failing health of his wife in order to create art, the narrator ignores his own failing health in order to appreciate it. Upon the story’s conclusion, the two men’s secluded settings become metaphors for each man’s self-imposed psychological isolation and disconnection from humanity.

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