From Victim to Ethical Agent: Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol as Post-Traumatic Writing
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 33122
From Victim to Ethical Agent: Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol as Post-Traumatic Writing

Authors: Mona Salah El-Din Hassanein

Abstract:

Faced with a sudden, unexpected, and overwhelming event, the individual's normal cognitive processing may cease to function, trapping the psyche in "speechless terror", while images, feelings and sensations are experienced with emotional intensity. Unable to master such situation, the individual becomes a trauma victim who will be susceptible to traumatic recollections like intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and repetitive re-living of the primal event in a way that blurs the distinction between past and present, and forecloses the future. Trauma is timeless, repetitious, and contagious; a trauma observer could fall prey to "secondary victimhood". Central to the process of healing the psychic wounds in the aftermath of trauma is verbalizing the traumatic experience (i.e., putting it into words) – an act which provides a chance for assimilation, testimony, and reevaluation. In light of this paradigm, this paper proposes a reading of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written shortly after his release from prison, as a post-traumatic text which traces the disruptive effects of the traumatic experience of Wilde's imprisonment for homosexual offences and the ensuing reversal of fortune he endured. Post-traumatic writing demonstrates the process of "working through" a trauma which may lead to the possibility of ethical agency in the form of a "survivor mission". This paper draws on fundamental concepts and key insights in literary trauma theory which is characterized by interdisciplinarity, combining the perspectives of different fields like critical theory, psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, history, and social studies. Of particular relevance to this paper are the concepts of "vicarious traumatization" and "survivor mission", as The Ballad of Reading Gaol was written in response to Wilde's own prison trauma and the indirect traumatization he experienced as a result of witnessing the execution of a fellow prisoner whose story forms the narrative base of the poem. The Ballad displays Wilde's sense of mission which leads him to recognize the social as well as ethical implications of personal tragedy. Through a close textual analysis of The Ballad of Reading Gaol within the framework of literary trauma theory, the paper aims to: (a) demonstrate how the poem's thematic concerns, structure and rhetorical figures reflect the structure of trauma; (b) highlight Wilde's attempts to come to terms with the effects of the cataclysmic experience which transformed him into a social outcast; and (c) show how Wilde manages to transcend the victim status and assumes the role of ethical agent to voice a critique of the Victorian penal system and the standards of morality underlying the cruelties practiced against wrong doers and to solicit social action.

Keywords: Ballad of Reading Gaol, post-traumatic writing, trauma theory, Wilde.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1132475

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1445

References:


[1] Peter Stoneley. "‘Looking at the others’: Oscar Wilde and the Reading Gaol Archive." Journal of Victorian Culture, 19:4 (2014), pp. 457 – 480.
[2] Oscar Wilde. De Profundis. New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1905. http://www.archive.org/details/deprofundisowild00wildiala#pages/n15/mode/2up.
[3] Roger Luckhurst. Introduction. In The Trauma Question. London and New York: Routledge, 2008, pp.1- 15.
[4] Sandra L. Bloom. "Trauma Theory Abbreviated." Community Works, 1999. www.sanctuaryweb.com.
[5] Gregory Castle. Trauma Studies. In The Literary Theory Handbook. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2013, pp. 209 – 217.
[6] Olu Jenzen. "Haunting Poetry: Trauma, Otherness and Textuality in Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days." Otherness: Essays and Studies. 1. 1 (October 2010), pp.1- 22.
[7] Cathy Caruth. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
[8] Laurie Vickroy. "Representing Trauma." In Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottes Vile: University of Virginia press, 2002, pp. 1 – 35.
[9] Michelle Balaev. "Literary Trauma Theory Reconsidered." In Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. Ed. M. Balaev. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 1- 14.
[10] Judith Herman. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
[11] Dominick LaCapra. "An Interview with Professor Dominick LaCapra." Cornell University, June 9, 1998, Jerusalem. Interviewer: Amos Goldberg. Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies. www. yadvashem.org. 1- 33.
[12] Oscar Wilde. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." In The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde. London: Bounty Books, 2004, pp. 840 – 855.
[13] Kristian Williams. "A Criminal with a Noble Face": Oscar Wilde's Encounters with the Victorian Gaol. Perspectives (2009). http://anarchiststudies.mayfirst.org/node/335.
[14] M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 4th ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
[15] Stephen Greenblatt. Ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.
[16] Brad McCoy. "Chiasmus: An Important Structural Device Commonly Found in Biblical Literature." CTS (Chafer Theological Seminary) journal 9, (2003). www.chafer.edu/journal/back _issues/Vol%209-2%20ar2.pdf.
[17] John W. Welch. "Criteria for Identifying and Evaluating the Presence of Chiasmus" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies: Vol. 4:No. 2, Article 1 (1995). http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol4/iss2/1.