A connection I made was between “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, by Oscar Wilde and Wuthering Heights. The lines “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.

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.”

remind me of the love battle between Catherine, Heathcliff and Linton. In the end, everybody kills the things they love in different ways. The poem could be used as a representation of how Catherine killed her love for all of the men in her life and in turn ended up killing herself and Heathcliff too. There is a repetition of love killing the people involved.

On this week of “David connects this class with his other Revolutions of the 19th Century class,” David will once again connect this class with his other Revolutions of the 19th Century class! After my discussion about The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was written about five years before his imprisonment, it’s a bit eerie to read Wilde as being so deeply religious and spiritual in “De Profundis”, as Dorian Gray what was a fairly sardonic and cynical novel. As a gay man, no doubt he frequently contended with the notion of his homosexuality and of how it affected his status in nigh-puritanical Victorian England. I wonder then to what extent Wilde’s newfound spirituality was merely a result of severe emotional and physical repression during his imprisonment. With nothing else to turn to, it’s easy to surmise that he was desperate enough to turn to the same God that allegedly hated those like him in order to perhaps ease the suffering he felt. It makes me a little sad, is all.

Between these two texts, there is the notion that to love something is to necessitate a killing of that something. And in both cases, I cannot help but wonder if the love causing death is because the love is always unattainable. Heathcliff is not the direct cause of his love’s death, but he does take part in it, and in especial attention to his lament whence he finds her dead, it seems his love originates, and the death of his love, allows him to turn Catherine into his ideal. He can now say (since she is dead and voiceless) that she was his cure, and he will never be adequately contradicted on this notion. Likewise, the subject of Wilde’s poem kills his wife, whom Wilde repeatedly stated he loved, in what to me seems the interest of preservation. Love is a labor, and Wilde notes this, and it is far easier to kill a love, to keep it safe and idealized, than to recognize that whole and wholly yielding love is but a fantasy. This interpretation for Wilde’s poem is reaffirmed by the continual reference to Christian imagery, and with that reference, Wilde is juxtaposing human love (which is weak and flawed) with God’s love or the love of God (which is full and perfect). However, I do not read this as Wilde supporting Christianity, but rather using that Christian conceptualization of love as a cultural touchpoint for the grander message he is attempting to convey.

In Oscar Wilde’s letter “De Profundis,” Wilde writes that some of the things he was accused of and sent to prison for were correct but some were not true at all. His letter, at least to me, seemed a little regretful as he expressed some of his misgivings and wrongdoings. However, he does say that the laws he has been convicted under are wrong and unjust laws. He goes on to say, “But, somehow, I have got to make both of these things just and right to me” (23). He realizes he won’t get any justice from the prison or those who make the laws, but he can create his own sense of justice after he is free. This reminds me of Abel Magwitch from Great Expectations who tells Pip about his life of crime and imprisonment. He wants to make Pip a gentleman and live vicariously through him in order to get justice for the things that have been done to him.

In The Ballad of Reading Gaol, the lines “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.” Reminds me quite a bit of Wuthering Heights. I feel as though it connects to how Cathy dies first, and Heathcliff and Edgar outlive her for some time. Meanwhile having a child, ultimately an act of love between Cathy and Edgar killed her. On the other hand, it also connects a bit more metaphorically in the sense that her relationship with Heathcliff livened, but also killed her spirit, in the grand scheme of things. Overall, I thought these two connected in the expression of the man metaphorically killing his loved one.

In The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde, the horrible prison conditions described really reminded me of how Newgate Prison was depicted in Great Expectations. In chapter 32 of the novel the prison is described as being disorganized and suffers from serious neglect both to the building and the prisoners who are held inside. The prison has no formal regulations and left prisoners to do as they pleased. When Pip visits Newgate Prison he describes it as being very depressing. This is the same in The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde wonders how a person could be put in such a horrible, depressing place such as the one described in the text. Prisons were quiet horrible during these times and often had multiple prisoners placed together in one cell so that they would barely walk around freely. Both of these depictions of prison life paint a very dreary picture in the readers mind. However, over the course of many years, thankfully there have been numerous improvements of prison facilities and also with the treatment of the inmates.

In reading Oscar Wilde’s letter “De Profundis,” I noticed some striking similarities to the poem “In Memoriam” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Both works talk of suffering, and Wilde mentions the death of his mother, paralleling Tennyson’s entire poem being about the death of a friend. Wilde states in his letter that “Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.” I understand this to mean that sorrow is in some ways a pact with God, something to be experienced in holy repose, but also has the potential to bring good. After all, we would not have “De Profundis” if Wilde had not befallen upon poor circumstances and if life had not played out in such a way to make him experience so much sorrow. The same could be said of Tennyson, who often meditates on faith and the afterlife in his poem.

While reading Wilde’s account of prison I could not help but think of Catherine in Withering Heights. I made the connection based on each persons head-space and how they felt about their surroundings. Catherine was a free women technically in the eyes of the law, but once she married Linton she was doomed to live forever in a marriage that reminds me of the prison Wilde describes. For women of that time marriage was a type of prison. They often did not get a large selection of suitable men to marry and one they were legally married the rights of the women were hard to come by. Even if she got out of a bad or unhappy marriage inevitable social and finical consequences existed that lasted a lifetime. the reader sees this in Withering heights where this prison of marriage eventually kills Catherine. Each account is filled with despair and a calling for a different life and circumstance, for example, in Wilde’s account in “De Profundis” he says, “Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering.” when reading those lines i can picture Catherine looking out the widow of her home wishing for her beloved and the life she could have outside the prison she inhabits.

Throughout the course of the semester, we have read numerous novels that depict love as something that is both fleeting and dangerous. We see this in Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and Dickens’ Great Expectations, and here I find myself stumbling across it again in Oscar Wilde’s poem, “The Ballad of Reading Goal.” Primarily because of the stanzas:  “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! …. Some love too little, some love too long” (1.37-1.42, 1.49). 
After reading this stanza, I immediately thought of Catherine Earnshaw because at various points in the novel, Catherine seeks to murder the thing she loves most in the world, Heathcliff.  It’s also interesting to note that time after time, Heathcliff refers to Catherine as his murderer, and the idea of killing “with a kiss” is apparent in their reunion in Chapter 15. Specifically when Nelly contends that Catherine “had kissed him first, and I plainly saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look into her face!  The same conviction had stricken him as me, from the instant he beheld her, that there was no prospect of ultimate recovery there—she was fated, sure to die” (CHPXV). Catherine’s death inevitably leads to Heathcliff’s demise, to which he asks her: “‘Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours!  How can I?’ (CHP XV). Heathcliff’s plea to be kissed and to hide from her gaze speaks to the lines in Wildes’ poem: “Some do it with a bitter look/ The coward does with a kiss.” 
I also found Wilde’s line: “Some love too little, some love too long” reminiscent of the romantic obsession between Heathcliff and Catherine, in which Catherine escapes the grasps of Heathcliff’s love through death, and Heathcliff is still left pining over his murderer 18 years after her death. 

In De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde offers commentary on his time in prison. While both are significant, I am more interested in the latter. The Ballad of Reading Gaol describes events that Wilde experienced, particularly the hanging of a fellow inmate, but more importantly, it presents a call for reform of the penal and prison systems of the era. Not only was the legal system incredibly flawed, but the prisons were inhumanely brutal. Health concerns were countless, work was destructive, and guards seemingly took pleasure in punishing inmates for the smallest of infractions. Wilde himself was sentenced to two years hard labor for “gross indecency.” Reading Gaol appears to comment on the reformative hypocrisy of prison, that it ravishes the minds, bodies, and souls of the very individuals it seeks to reform. More generally, Wilde also focuses on the depressing and hopeless conditions. The poem effectively communicates the perpetual terror and dread the prisoners feel as a result of their environment. Finally, the piece can be read, among many other things, as a criticism of the death penalty, thus rounding out Wilde’s cry for change.

I could not help but be reminded of Great Expectations‘ Newgate Prison while reading both of Wilde’s pieces. I feel that they give important context in understanding the conditions, and make Pip’s visit to Newgate that much more effective. Of course, Pip critically comments on what he observes himself, but Reading Gaol allows us to perhaps better understand Magwitch’s character and his desperation to escape the prison. This is because Wilde’s pieces have the “benefit” of being told by someone who experienced these very hardships. The similarities in Wilde’s and Dickens’ work and criticisms of the prison systems should come as no surprise, as Dickens was a prominent social reformation activist of the Victorian era. While the theme is much less pronounced in Great Expectations, both it and Wilde’s De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol serve as important criticisms of the penal system of the 19th century.