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A review by taun
The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
4.0
When Oscar Wilde had been convicted of ‘crimes of indecency’, aka his homosexual relationship, (using his work The Picture of Dorian Gray propped up as evidence during his trial), he was sentenced to two years hard labor. One of these stints was served at Reading Gaol. (Hence the name of the poem, published under his prisoner identification C.3-3)
The stanzas of the poem are written from his prisoner’s viewpoint of the condemned, with the execution of Thomas Wooldridge at it’s core, the poem is built of realism, but in the most gothic sense. In his last notable work, it’s painfully apparent that Oscar Wilde is a deeply wounded, nigh unto irreparable soul. His bravery to bring forward the reality of the prison system, treatment of the incarcerated, the private executions, the tortured people, and the reform he called for in turn meant that he had forced himself to relive over & over his time spent over those two years at the hands of a justice system that often failed its primary goal.
All this to say that, to understand where the author is writing from is truly key to feeling the severity of this poem. Wilde would never recover, & Reading Gaol is likely the hand that dealt him an early death.
The stanzas of the poem are written from his prisoner’s viewpoint of the condemned, with the execution of Thomas Wooldridge at it’s core, the poem is built of realism, but in the most gothic sense. In his last notable work, it’s painfully apparent that Oscar Wilde is a deeply wounded, nigh unto irreparable soul. His bravery to bring forward the reality of the prison system, treatment of the incarcerated, the private executions, the tortured people, and the reform he called for in turn meant that he had forced himself to relive over & over his time spent over those two years at the hands of a justice system that often failed its primary goal.
All this to say that, to understand where the author is writing from is truly key to feeling the severity of this poem. Wilde would never recover, & Reading Gaol is likely the hand that dealt him an early death.