Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Seminar für Englische Philologie

"English Poetry through the Ages"

Literaturwissenschaftliches Proseminar im WS 2006/07

Oscar Wilde

,,The Harlot′s House"

Schriftliche Hausarbeit

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This paper wants to examine Oscar Wilde′s poem "The

Harlot′s House". For that purpose, two steps seem necessary to

me. Initially, the prosodic, metric and rhetorical elements and

figures should be analysed in a sort of "survey" to get a first

approach to the poem. Building on these observations, an

interpretation will be attempted.

Wilde′s poem is composed of 36 lines, which are arranged

in twelve stanzas of equal length, each comprising three lines.

The rhyme pattern is regular, each stanza is made up of a

rhyming couplet and a single line rhyming with its equivalent in

the following stanza (a-a-b c-c-b). All rhymes are true rhymes,

eye-catching exceptions are the couplets "blind"-"wind" (9/12)

and "false"-"waltz" (31/32). The metre is simple and regular as

well, 35 lines are constructed as iambic tetrameters, the final

line is shortened by one metric foot (

catalexis

).

The reader is introduced to a nocturnal setting; a pair of

lovers, the male persona and his beloved, is lingering on a

"moonlit street" (2) and stopping near "the harlot′s house" (3),

which is obviously a brothel. The image of the couple′s

solidarity is underlined by the usage of anaphora on the personal

pronoun "we" (1/2, occuring again in the first position of line 5

and 10).

In the first few lines the acoustic phenomena predominantly

attract the persona′s attention. The couple recognises that a

party is occuring in the brothel by the tumultuos noise, which is

clearly constrasting the romantic moonlit scenery. They can hear

the sound of "dancing feet" (1), as a

pars pro toto

for the

persons dancing inside the house; the

hendiadys

"din and fray"

(4) and the

metonymy

"loud musicians" (5) (actually the music

is loud, not the persons who make it) focus on the acoustic

perception. Ironically, the band inside the brothel plays a waltz

titled "Treues Liebes Herz" (6), a song suggesting true love,

which is just the opposite of what is the custom in such an

establishment.

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Attracted by the noise, the couple ventures a voyeuristic

glimpse through the blinds at the actions that occur in the

"harlot′s house". They watch inhabitants and guests dancing to

the music of the band, but everything which appears is illusion

and shadow, mechanical and grotesque, emotionless and

deathlike. The bizarre scenery is full of lifeless beings:

"shadows" (9), "ghostly dancers" (10), "wire-pulled

automatons" (13) and "slim silhouetted skeletons" (14). Every

attempt to show real human emotions fails; dancing, singing and

laughter can not get beyond mechanical and unemotional action:

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed

A phantom lover to her breast,

Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. (19-21)

Seeing this grotesque scenery, the persona is directly

addressing his beloved and condemning the persons and actions

inside the "harlot′s house". Instead of agreeing with his

statement, "she - - she" (28), the anaphora contrasts the above

mentioned pronoun "we" and clearly dissolves the couple′s

solidarity, leaves her lover behind and enters the house because

she is enchanted by the music. Her entrance, "she" (28)

portrayed as the personification of "love" (30), must have

affected the athmosphere in "the house of lust" (30), for the

band′s "tune went false" (31) and the dancers, "wearied of the

waltz" (32), stop dancing. The dissonance of the music is

reflected in the off-rhyme "false" ­ "waltz" (31/32).

Thereupon, the next morning is already dawning, it appears

personified as a young girl, who shyly passes the scene on

"silver-sandalled feet" (35); besides the persona and his beloved,

the "frightened girl" (36) is the only character described as

having a human face. The contrast of night and dawn is

empasised by the shortened metre of the last line.

The poem is ostentatiously permeated by alliterations, all of

them beginning with consonants: "harlot′s house" (3), "we

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