The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

The poem’s first-person narrator is typically assumed to be Wilde himself, who was imprisoned at Reading Gaol in 1896 and 1897. At the center of the poem is a fellow incarcerated man convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to be hanged. Though this man is never named in the poem, he is almost certainly the real historical figure Charles Thomas Wooldridge, to whom Wilde dedicated the poem as “C.T.W.” Wooldridge murdered his wife in an argument and was sent to Reading Gaol to await execution.

Wilde describes Wooldridge’s crime—taking ample creative license—at the very beginning of the poem. He imagines him with “blood and wine [...] on his hands / When they found him with the dead” (1.3-4), a vivid tableau that heralds the dark gothic realism that saturates the poem. The reference to wine suggests that the man was drunk when he killed his wife and that his crime was thus a crime of passion. This seems to have really been the case, as historical records attest that Wooldridge instantly regretted murdering his wife; indeed, Wooldridge turned himself in soon after committing the crime. However, Wilde also alters the facts to suit his poem, for example when he writes that the man murdered his wife “in her bed” (1.6), even though Wooldridge killed his wife in the street outside of their house. The change makes the murder more gruesomely intimate, occurring in the place the couple shared their most private moments.

Most of the poem explores the psychological and spiritual experiences of the condemned man and the other inmates (including the narrator) who interact with him at Reading Gaol. When he first sees the condemned man, the narrator wonders whether he has done “a great or little thing” (1.22), a dichotomy that the poem soon shatters: For though the man has committed a terrible crime, his experiences following his arrest—as the poem shows—elevate him above his crime and even above the common aspects of humanity. Part of what is so arresting about the man is his paradoxical behavior: Though sentenced “to swing” (1.24), the man is “light and gay” (1.10); instead of weeping and wringing his hands,

He only looked upon the sun

And drank the morning air.

………………………………

With open mouth he drank the sun

As though it had been wine! (2.17-24)

The condemned man has accepted his guilt and, with it, his punishment: “The man had killed the thing he loved / And so he had to die” (1.35-36). The narrator notes that even in the days leading up to his execution,

His soul was resolute, and held

No hiding-place for fear;

He often said that he was glad

The hangman’s hands were near (3.21-24).

The man’s resignation endows him with a distinctive and somewhat otherworldly pensiveness that the narrator repeatedly notes throughout the poem: “I never saw a man who looked / So wistfully at the day” (1.11-12, 2.5-6). Later, he again comments,

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky (1.13-16, 2.7-10).

The narrator and the other incarcerated men are fascinated by the condemned man. It is “strange” (2.31, 2.33, 2.35) for them to watch his behavior, which suggests that he is at peace. At the same time, they also see themselves in him, wondering if they too “[w]ould end the self-same way” (2.58) and increasingly identifying with the man’s experiences and his fate: The narrator compares the connection between the condemned man and himself to “two doomed ships that pass in storm” (2.67). After all, as the narrator suggests, the man is not ultimately so different from any other person. For just as the man had killed the thing he loved, so too “each man kills the thing he loves” (1.37, 1.53). This refrain is probably the most famous line from the poem. In the narrator’s view, everybody fatally harms what they love in some way, whether by causing emotional pain, through betrayal, or—as in Wooldridge’s case—by actual murder:

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword! (1.39-42, 6.15-18).

Though Wooldridge’s crime cannot be justified—and the narrator never attempts to do so—there is still something to be admired in the way the condemned man takes responsibility for what he has done. So many others are cowards who destroy what they love with deceit or escape punishment for their actions. A coward like this, as the narrator elaborates at the end of the first part, may not experience the horrors of conviction and the penal system, but he also thus does not experience the spiritual elevation that comes from this form of suffering. Indeed, the peaceful calm of the condemned man and the composure with which he endures his suffering suggests that he has transcended his humanity. At several points in the poem, the narrator even identifies the man with Jesus Christ (for instance, in his reference to “[t]he kiss of Caiaphas” at 1.96).

As the execution of the condemned man approaches, the narrator and the other inmates begin to take on more and more of his burden, even as the man himself does not flag in his resolution. For instance, the night before he is to be hanged, the man sleeps peacefully while the other inmates await the morning anxiously and pray. As the narrator notes, “it is a fearful thing / To feel another’s guilt!” (3.91-92). Though each incarcerated man occupies his own “separate Hell” (4.12, 5.58), they are united specifically by their shared experiences in prison. The prison officials, who do not share this experience, are thus unable to understand why the inmates feel such strong sympathy for the condemned man. The night before the execution, when the imprisoned men cannot sleep,

The Warders with their shoes of felt

Crept by each padlocked door,

And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,

Grey figures on the floor,

And wondered why men knelt to pray

Who never prayed before (3.97-102).

Later, after the man is hanged, the prison officials mock his corpse while the inmates all reverently mourn him. Their shared suffering has given them a more spiritual outlook on death than those who have not lived their experiences (the doctor, for example, can see death only as “[a] scientific fact” [3.16]).

The theme of suffering and redemption—especially the suffering and redemption of the condemned man—is highlighted throughout the poem through religious references and imagery. The poem makes many references to sin, in particular the state of sin that unites all the imprisoned men. But sinners can be redeemed, an idea symbolized by “that blessed Cross / That Christ for sinners gave” (4.129-30). Indeed, even the condemned man, despite his clear guilt, was “one of those / Whom Christ came down to save” (4.131-32). And in the poem, at least, the condemned man does achieve a measure of redemption. Though the plot of land where his body is buried will not be sown for three years lest his “murderer’s heart would taint / Each simple seed they sow” (4.79-80), the narrator declares that “God’s kindly earth / Is kindlier than men know” (4.81-82). He even imagines a red rose growing out of the dead man’s mouth and a white rose growing out of his heart, with the red rose symbolizing the man’s sin of murder while the white rose symbolizes his redemption. After the man’s execution, the narrator thus reflects that, “He is at peace—this wretched man— / At peace, or will be soon” (4.109-10).

Throughout the poem, the narrator reflects on the nature of the laws and the penal system. At the beginning of the fifth part, for example, he says:

I know not whether Laws be right,

Or whether Laws be wrong;

All that we know who lie in gaol

Is that the wall is strong;

And that each day is like a year,

A year whose days are long (5.1-6).

The hard labor forced on the prisoners is also described vividly, for instance at the beginning of the third part. In Victorian Britain, convicts sentenced to hard labor (as Wilde was) would spend their days forced to complete pointless, grueling tasks such as breaking rocks or running on treadmills. These punishments were supposed to rehabilitate the prisoners through physical exhaustion; however, in the poem, it is not these punishments that offer true redemption to “sinners” like the narrator and the condemned man—rather, they are spiritually elevated by their inner suffering. The narrator thus concludes his poem by repeating his famous refrain, reminding the reader that we all kill the thing we love in one way or another, and that what sets the brave man from the coward is his willingness to take responsibility.