THE+BALLAD+OF+READING+GAOL

home In ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ Oscar Wilde digests his experiences in prison. The factual background is the execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge who had murdered his wife. His execution took place in Reading Gaol during the time of Wilde’s imprisonment. But for the ballad this background is of no great importance since Wilde does not concentrate on Wooldridge’s last thoughts before the execution but rather on the way his fellow prisoners feel about it. Besides, there is a lot of criticism of the prison system at that time. __ 3.1 The creation of the poem __ ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ is a poem that just had to be written, which derives from its precise biographical context, and was completed relatively quickly. It is, as Page notes, “the product of a specific moment: the first days of his freedom, embittered by the realisation that his family life [...] had very possibly been destroyed for ever”. On 19 May 1897 Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Jail and within less than two weeks, after he had moved to France, he was already at work on ‘The Ballad’. The first draft was written quickly, but revision and expansion took longer. Changes introduced after the first draft for Page seem to have been designed to “strengthen the didacticism rather than to heighten the narrative and dramatic effects”. In late August he sent it to his publisher, saying it was still unrevised, and only in October he was able to claim that it was “finished at last”. __ 3.2 The structure of ‘The Ballad’ __ Oscar Wilde’s ballad consists of 109 stanzas which are grouped into six parts, which is indicated by numbers. Asterisks refer to a further subdivision within the parts. Let us try to characterise the different sections and to find out how they are connected in terms of writing techniques and references. The poem starts off with Part I, consisting of 16 stanzas, which tells of a prisoner who murdered the woman he loved and was sentenced to death for that crime. There is a subdivision after the first six stanzas. Part Ia only focuses on the prisoner concerned; Part Ib, on the other hand, takes a far wider perspective, reflecting about men in general, who all kill “the thing they love” but who do not all have to die. A description about the horrible conditions of prison rounds off that part. Part II consists of 13 verses and is built up similarly to Part I. The first six stanzas, Part IIa, come back to the condemned man; the remaining seven verses, Part IIb, are focusing on a larger group, in this case the whole of the prisoners and their life-and-death fears. The fate hanging over the condemned man seems to be a threat to all of them. Additionally, the life “outside”, where free persons live, love and dance, is contrasted to the life “inside” the prison walls where prisoners sit out their sentence indifferently and pass each other without signing or speaking. Part III is the longest one with 37 stanzas. Part IIIa, the first twelve verses, describes how the prisoners see the condemned man for the last time noting the “yellow hole” (III, 61), the grave which is already waiting for the corpse of the man. Part IIIb, consisting of only six stanzas, focuses on the evening and gradual fall of the night. The whole section climaxes in the 19 verses of Part IIIc with the fellow prisoners’ complete identification with Wooldridge during the night preceding his execution. In this “night of erotic horrors” the inmates have terrible dreams as if they themselves had been condemned to death. Here, for the first time, the reader can feel some of the common humanity, of the solidarity of the inmates, which Wilde experienced in prison. Part IIIc closes with a vision of the execution. Part IV, with ist 23 verses, shows in detail how the dead man’s punishment is extended even after death. Part IVa, consisting of six stanzas, features the man’s fellow prisoners on the next morning who are united by now looking themselves “so wistfully” (IV, 18), a feature by which in Part Ia only Wooldridge was characterised. Part IVb, two verses, is a short reference to the last night in Part IIIc and is opposed by Part IVc which focuses on the warders and the grave of burning lime. In the last 12 stanzas making up Part IVd, the corpse is buried in a great hurry without a final prayer or a cross to mark the place. The destruction of the prisoner, continuing even after his death, clearly shows the inhumanity of man to man. Yet, notes, the body of Wooldridge is now “protected by the bodies of the inmates surrounding it”; such a terrible incident only strengthens their solidarity. Part V is concerned with the abstract problem of collective human and social guilt and starts off with a critic remark concerning incarceration. In the first four stanzas, Part Va, the image of the ideal and united community of prisoners is counterposed with the recognition that real life can only happen outside and that the “social goal of rehabilitation with respect to the inmates is a joke”. Prison only intensifies the inmates’ isolation and aggression, as Part Vb, and Part Vc, each consisting of four verses, show. Part Vd, with its two stanzas, and Part Ve, with its three stanzas, introduce the religious dimension of execution and criticise the power some “m[e]n in red” (V, 91) have over the life and death of people. Part VI, finally, concludes the ballad in its three verses by once more taking up the theme that “each man kills the thing he loves” (I, 37), repeating almost word for word the relevant verse in Part Ib. It combines the narrative base of the poem, the execution of the prisoner, and its philosophical centre, the problem of guilt and the responsibility of those who pass judgement.
 * __Analysis of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ __**