A Literary Essay on "The Moving Finger"

After reading the short story of "The Moving Finger" in literature, the teacher told us to write a literary essay connecting the three themes of the story: Love, obsession and control/lack of control. Here is mine.

A Literary Essay on “The Moving Finger”

“The Moving Finger”, written by Edith Wharton, is a short story which represents the sad tale of Mr Grancy, an old widower who could not cope with the death of his last wife. Throughout the story we can infer that all his life and his health stability depended on the conditions of the portrait of his last wife, Mrs Grancy. The portrait suffers different changes throughout the story which reflect on Mr Grancy´s health, and leads to his unfortunate death. In this essay, I am going to connect some ideas which appear in the story; Love, Obsession and Control/Lack of Control, with the relationships between the characters.

To start with, we get to know from the beginning of the story that Mr Grancy really loved Mrs Grancy, she was totally the opposite from his previous wife, this one was kind to him, sweet and it also says that she fitted perfectly into Mr Grancy´s life and at the same time, he fitted perfectly into hers “Mrs Grancy niche was her husband´s life”. As the story continues, this powerful love that he had for her, turns into an unhealthy obsession “You are my prisoner now – I shall never lose you”. This quote is something that Mr Grancy says which was a joke that they did all the time. “You are my prisoner now”, shows us a sense of obsession and control that he had over her, and “I shall never lose you” refers to this powerful love that Mr Grancy had for Mrs Grancy. When she dies, her figure remains immortal in the portrait that Claydon, a friend of Mr Grancy, had made. He continued loving her, as if she was alive, so he made Claydon modify the portrait so that Mrs Grancy would age with him since, when he came back from Europe, he saw a stranger hanging there on the wall, not his wife who he insanely loved. By knowing this, we can infer that when he said that she was his prisoner now, he meant that she would be in the portrait with him forever.

This love that Mr Grancy had for the portrait also grew into an obsession. Ten years after the first change, he made Claydon modify the portrait so that she looked exactly how he imagines that she would look in that moment, as if she was still alive. Mr Grancy still loved her so much and felt her presence through the portrait, . He is not the only one to feel her presence through the portrait, when the narrator visits Grancy, he says “I had never known how completely the dead may survive”, referring to the fact that the portrait really represented Mrs Grancy as if she was there, still alive. Mr Grancy just wanted to be with her by feeling she was there, that is why he asked Claydon to modify it. This actions from Mr Grancy can be also taken as a sense of obsession that he had for Mrs Grancy´s portrait.

The conflict here is that Claydon, had fallen in love with his masterpiece when he painted her, and consequently, he fell in love with the actual woman after he got to know her. One may suspect that´s why, in the last call from Mr Grancy to him so as to change the portrait again, he painted “the face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying”. Claydon knew that Mr Grancy´s health and well-being depended on the portrait, so we assume that he did this cruel thing so as to get rid of him and keep the portrait. The love that he had for Mrs Grancy grew and turned into an obsession so big that concluded in him killing his old friend. Moreover, the book gives us a sense that they had an affair and that’s when Claydon fell in love with the real woman, when Mr Grancy says “When Claydon painted her he caught just the look she used to lift to mine when I came in”, meaning that Claydon painted Mrs Grancy just the way that Mr Grancy looked at her, so we can infer that Claydon was in love with Mrs Grancy as well, or that Mrs Grancy was in love with him.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that love, obsession, and control or lack of control, are the themes of this story, or that they can be counted  as one, since love is expressed  through obsession and control all throughout the story. Personally speaking, I believe this story shows how love can make  you (to) do really crazy things.