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Author’s “Ego” in “The Ballad of the Reading Gaol”

Marika Tonyan
Yerevan State University

Abstract

Oscar Wilde’s poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” contains various narrative per-
spectives which convey the author’s and the protagonist’s points of view. In this work the
roles of the author and the narrator are not differentiated, they are integrated in the sub-
ject of consciousness who manifests his “ego” in different modes: as the participant of
the events, as their observer, as the transmitter of the main and secondary characters’
experiences and feelings, etc.

The actualization of the existing standpoints becomes possible by means of pragmat-
ic analysis of the text, and at the same time is, naturally, closely connected with the read-
er’s knowledge of the author’s background. By revealing the narrator’s meanings, the
contextual implications, and by finding out the spacial characteristics of the text, an
attempt is made at discovering the author’s subjectivity to a hopefully full extent.  

Key words: subject of consciousness, narrator, point of view, first-person narration,
third-person perspective.

Introduction

The problem of the author’s personality is a critical issue not only in literary criticism,
but also in linguistics. The way the narrator presents the world of the literary work is
closely connected with the question of narrative modes and to a great extent determines
its structure and dynamics. The situation becomes still more interesting when the con-
cepts of “narrator” and “author” coincide, as is the case under consideration.

In the present article we will try to reveal the author’s point of view within Part One
of “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” having in mind that this poem is a profound investiga-
tion of one’s self in a situation of loss of freedom. Both in this poem and in “De
Profundis”, Oscar Wilde goes through his recreation of Dante’s Inferno, describing the
acceptance and rejection of sin, and looking at the world through his own subjectivity.

About the Poem 

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was written by Oscar Wilde in exile in France, after
his release from Reading Gaol in 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading, after
being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years’ hard labour
in prison. During his imprisonment, on 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. The 30-year-
old Charles Thomas Wooldridge, who had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was
convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near
Windsor. Wilde, it is sometimes said, made use of the proletarian ballad form, and sug-
gested it be published in Reynold’s Magazine, because, as he said, “it circulates widely
among the criminal classes – to which I now belong – for once I will be read by my peers
– a new experience for me” (Kiberd 2000:336).

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The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers in 1898 under the name
“C.3.3”, which stood for “cell block C, landing 3, cell 3”. This ensured that Wilde’s name
– by then notorious – did not appear on the poem’s front cover. It was not commonly
known, until the 7th printing in June 1899, that “C.3.3.” was actually Wilde. It was a
commercial success, going through seven editions in less than two years, only after
which “Oscar Wilde” was added to the title page, though many in literary circles had
known Wilde to be the author. 

The poem has a dedication, which from the very start gives the protagonist a definite
background:

“In Memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of the Royal Horse Guards”.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896

Point of View and Space in Fiction

A composition device, according to Yu. Lotman, becomes meaningfully distinctive, if
it is incorporated into an opposition with a contrasting system. The point of view develops
into an explicit element of the literary structure if there is a possibility of its change within
the framework of the narrative (or of a projection of the text upon another text, from a dif-
ferent point of view) (Lotman 1998:181).

Yu. Lotman also argues that a work of fiction reveals the interrelation between the
individual and the world, and thus is of a subject-object character. For example, in the
literary tradition of classicism the subject-object relations expressed in the text charac-
teristically converged in a single focus. The focus was removed from the author’s per-
sonality, combining with the notion of truth, and the literary text developed from this
angle. Such fixed and definite relations corresponded to the perception of eternity, the
universality and stability of truth. In romantic poetry the literary points of view also con-
verged in one fixed centre, but this centre (or, in other words, the subject of the poetical
text) coincided with the individuality of the author and became the counterpart of the
poet’s personality.

However, as Yu. Lotman remarks, another textual structure is possible: in this text the
points of view do not meet in one centre, rather they construct a dispersed subject, con-
taining distinct centres, the relations between which create additional meanings. Instead
of a single focal point, there is an area including different points of view (Lotman
1998:182).

Space in a work of literature is created through the perceiver’s perspective; hence the
problems of the subject of consciousness and space are closely interrelated. The classi-
cal concepts of literary space (M.Bakhtin, M.Lotman, D.Likhachev, V.Toporov,
B.Uspenskiy) define it as follows: space in fiction and real space are different categories
– a text can be regarded as a “possible world”, whose structure to some extent replicates
the structure of the real world. The spacial characteristics of the text are often described

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in terms of “locus” (from Latin locus) and “topos” (from Greek τόπος), and philologists
sometimes distinguish between a closed image of space, “locus”, and an open one,
“topos”.

As far as space in a work of fiction is concerned, it is possible to bring out those fea-
tures which can be detected visually, trying to determine from whose point of view these
features are observed. In a first-person text it is obvious that the events, people and
objects are perceived and described by the subject of consciousness who, at the same
time, is the narrator. However, in a third-person narration there are other, indirect means
which can reveal the perceiver’s “ego”. Actually, in this type of narration the linguistic
means of indicating the narrator are not as straightforward as the pronoun “I”. 

According to Ye. Paducheva, several egocentric words and word combinations,
owing to their meaning, presuppose the existence of the subject of speech and/or the sub-
ject of consciousness. In a canonical situation of speech (for example, in conversation),
we find the explicitly expressed speaker. In a narrative text, where the speaker is some-
times hidden, the narrator can be actualized in an indirect way, by the use of certain lin-
guistic means, some of which are as follows: metatextual elements, predicates of emo-
tional and mental states, indicators of identification, generalizing insertions, words with
evaluative meaning (Paducheva 1996:276).

First- and Third-Person Perspectives

The first stanza of the poem is considered by some philologists to be an objective
story-telling, an impersonal recount of events: 

(1) He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

However, linguistic analysis shows that we can speak about the narrator’s implicit
presence. Thus, the existential presupposition of the phrase “his scarlet coat” can mean
“[I know that] he had a scarlet coat”. And if we remember the dedication of the poem,
we will reconstruct the pragmatic bond between the speaker/narrator and the hearer/read-
er: the author has previously informed us about Wooldridge’s occupation and now he
makes a reference to it.

It is obvious that the colour of the coat has a direct bearing on the fact that Wooldridge
was covered with blood and wine. It is known that Wilde made a mistake by using the
word “scarlet” because, in fact, the Horse Guards wore blue uniforms. He made the
choice of the colour term consciously, in order to construct a dramatic setting for the
scene: “I remember once at dinner a friend of his [Wilde’s] who had formerly been in the
“Blues”, pointing out that in the open stanza of “The Ballad of the Reading Jail” he had
made a mistake in speaking of the “scarlet coat” of the man who was hanged; he was, as

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the dedication of the poem says, a private in the “Blues”, and his coat would therefore
naturally not be scarlet. …“Well, what could I do,” said Oscar Wilde plaintively, “I
couldn’t very well say, “He didn’t wear his Azure coat”, could I?” (Dossick 2013).

The second and third lines are generic statements, and since a generalization requires
a subject of consciousness in order to make it, we have another case of reference to the
narrator’s “ego”. The rest of the first stanza is written in an objective tone: the use of the
indefinite pronoun “they”, which is I-exclusive, implies that the author is detaching him-
self from the scene. The employment of “they” in this case is opposed to the use of the
generic “one”, which later in the text will indicate the narrator’s sympathetic attitude to
the sufferings of Wooldridge.

(2) He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

(3) I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

(4) I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
“That fellow’s got to swing.”

In the first three lines of the second stanza the narrator describes the character objec-
tively, without reference to his own experience. After this the perspective of the text
switches to that of I-narration. The line “And his step seemed light and gay”, by means
of the verb “seemed”, suggests the existence of the subject of consciousness. The evalu-
ative adjective “shabby (grey)”, conveys subjective evaluation; besides “scarlet” and
“grey” symbolize a contrast between passion and miserable prison life, and it is evident
that a symbolic representation should be connected with the narrator’s “ego”.

In general, the settings around the narrator are quite explicit in stanzas (2) to (4), and
we can now envisage the locus of the scene. The poetic lines might be paraphrased by
means of the following propositions. The prisoners can see only a little piece of the sky
above: “the little tent of blue” and “the sky above my head”. The part of the sky that they

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can see is confined by the high prison walls: it may be inferred that the walls are high
because the prisoners can see only the sky, while the landscape is not to be seen. The
prisoners go round in circles, one after another: “a voice behind me…” (A. Stokes notes
that the prisoners walked in what was according to the prison rules, clockwise). Though
all the prisoners look at the sky sadly, Wooldridge watches the sky even more wistfully
(he is the one to part with life very soon). Another thing connected with “drifting” and
“sails” is the theme of freedom (symbolized by the implied image of the sea) which is
contrasted to the closed space of the prison. We can find an excellent illustration to this
dramatic scene in V. van Gogh’s famous work “The Prison Courtyard”, in which not only
the whole atmosphere is close to the tone of the poem but so are the details of the setting.

Naturally, a poem is not a technical description, but it is our belief that even if we take
into account the “poetic abstraction” of the text, we can see that Wilde puts into his
imagery – and therefore into the philosophy of the poem – all he wants to convey, the
whole message of the work. Hence, a pragmatic “deciphering” of the image does not
“kill” poetry, it adds meanings. The phrase “with sails of silver” again makes reference
to the narrator, this time, specifically, to the artist’s self, because stylistic devices
(metaphor, alliteration, etc.) reveal a poet, who on perceiving the situation transforms his
impressions into complex verbal images.

(5) Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

The exclamation “Dear Christ!” indicates a diegetic narrator, that is, an actual par-
ticipant of the situation, and shows his feelings at the time of watching the man in the
prison courtyard. We can imagine the narrator by locating him in terms of specific
dimensions. Thus, the “up” dimension is the sky, while his surrounding space is con-
fined by the prison walls. “Scorching steel”, in addition, has the connotation of punish-
ment, and the “casque above his head” suggests a closed coffin. Apparently, through this
imagery Wilde suggests that the forthcoming execution is being vividly visualized by
both the protagonist and the narrator. Hence, we can speak about a convergence of
points of view. 

(6) I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

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Here again the point of view is subjective: the mental predicate “knew”, the evalua-
tive adjectives “garish”, and “wistful” set the focus inside the subject of consciousness.
The modal verb “had to”, however, shifts the point of view towards law, penalty, and
“so” indicates the inevitability of punishment. Accordingly, there is an opposition
between the subjective depiction of the protagonist’s sufferings, as well as of the narra-
tor’s feeling of empathy, on the one hand and reference to brutal, inevitable justice, on
the other hand.

Generic Statements

The next stanzas are generalizations:

(7) Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
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!

(8) Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

(9) Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

As mentioned, a generalization has a definite source – the subject of conscious-
ness, who must by all means be the subject of speech as well. The subjectivity of the
writer’s reflections, and of his images becomes obvious if we consider the oppositions
in these two stanzas. Some of them are lexical (“a coward” vs “a brave man”, “young”
vs “old”, reversive antonyms “sell” vs “buy”), others are contextual (“a bitter look”
vs “a flattering word”, “a kiss” vs “a sword”, “the hands of Lust” vs “the hands of
Gold”, “with many tears” vs “without a sigh”). If we take into consideration the
events in Wilde’s biography, we can see that many of these lines have a direct bear-
ing on his own life. 

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Multiple Perspectives

(10) He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.

(11) He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

(12) He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

(13) He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

(14) He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

(15) He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

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(16) He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

In stanzas (10) to (16) that follow, Wilde describes what happens and is going to hap-
pen to Wooldridge, paradoxically, by negating all these happenings. In fact, on the sur-
face he is speaking about a construct, a certain “man” who kills his love but does not have
to be executed. Actually, these statements are made from the point of view of the author
himself, and if the reader is aware of Wilde’s relations with Alfred Douglas, he will be
able to read between the lines. Otherwise, the ideas in these generalizations may be inter-
preted on a metaphysical level. 

A wonderful interplay of perspectives and implications can be found in this part of
the poem. If we drop the negatives, we will see: 1. the diegetic narrator’s recounting of
what happened and was going to happen to Wooldridge, 2. the narrator’s reflections on
what a person sentenced to death usually goes through, 3. the description of the convict-
ed man’s emotions and states of mind, 4. the presentation of other prisoners’, the
Chaplain’s, the Sheriff’s, the Governor’s, the Doctor’s, the hangman’s, the Burial
Office’s actions and feelings.  

The generic pronoun “one” used in stanza (14), owing to its semantics, combines
three perspectives: the narrator’s, the protagonist’s and the reader’s points of view. The
reader is invited to empathize with the convict and mentally go through the experience
and sensations of someone who is being executed.

Conclusion

To sum up, the analysis of the perspectives within the text opens numerous interpreta-
tions of “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” which would be concealed from the reader if we did
not relate the event and its evaluation to a specific subject of consciousness, that is, to the
author’s “ego”. The poem abounds in a variety of “voices”, of which even the narrator’s
viewpoints are diversified. Other standpoints belong to the protagonist and to the secondary
characters, but as we have seen, their points of view are also represented through the narra-
tor’s eyes. So we can conclude that various perspectives in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”
converge in one centre, the narrator’s focus (though they are identifiable as to their source).
The result of the interaction of the diversified perspectives with a single focal point is the
creation of one of the most highly subjective and insightful works in great literature. 

References:

1. Dossick, Ph. (2013) Oscar Wilde: Sodomy and Heresy. [Kindle Edition] Available at:
<http://books.google.am/books> [Accessed March 2014]

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2. Kiberd, D. (2000) Irish Classics. London: Granta.
3. Lotman, Yu. (1998) Struktura Khudozhestvennogo Teksta. // Ob Iskusstve. Sankt

Peterburg: Iskusstvo – SPB.
4. Paducheva, Ye. (1996) Semanticheskie Issledovaniya. Moskva: Yazyki Russkoy

Kul’tury.
5. Stokes, A. (2007) Pit of Shame: The Real Ballad of Reading Gaol. Available at:

<http://books.google.am/books> [Accessed January 2014]

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Àâòîðñêîå “ÿ” â “Áàëëàäå Ðåäèíãñêîé òþðüìû”

 ïîý ìå Î. Óàéëü äà, â ïðå äå ëàx åäè íî ãî íàð ðà òè âà, îä íîâ ðå ìåí íî ñî ñó ùåñò âóþò
ðàç ëè÷ íûå òî÷ êè çðå íèÿ: àâ òî ðà, ïðî òà ãî íèñòà è âòî ðîñòå ïåí íûx ïåð ñî íà æåé. “ß”
àâ òî ðà ìà íè ôåñòè ðóåò ñÿ â òåêñòå ÿâ íûì îá ðà çîì è èìï ëè öèò íî. Ïðàã ìà òè ÷åñ êèé àíà -
ëèç ïðîèç âå äå íèÿ, öåëü êî òî ðî ãî âûÿ âèòü ñêðû òîå àâ òîðñ êîå “ÿ”, îä íîâ ðå ìåí íî îï -
ðå äå ëÿÿ òî xóäî æåñò âåí íîå ïðîñò ðàíñò âî, â êî òî ðîì îíî ñó ùåñò âóåò, ïîç âî ëÿåò â
ìíî ãî ãî ëî ñèè òåêñòà íåèç ìåí íî “ñëû øàòü” ãî ëîñ àâ òî ðà.

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