An Analysis of The Harlots House Essay -- Harlots House Essays

An Analysis of The Harlots House Oscar Wildes The Harlots House was written in 1881, towards the latter part of the Victorian era. This genre is a poem containing 12 stanzas. The point of view in this piece is from the narrators perspective early on, the tarradiddle distance moves further distant in the fourth stanza, zooms in, then taboo again. The narrator is walking down a street and pauses, with his participator, beneath the harlots home (Wilde, Longman p. 2069 1.3). In the next two stanzas Wilde transitions to the inside of the house depicting a partygoers atmosphere in Inside, above the din and fray (2.1) and shadows of the figures inside are projected onto the blind (3.3). This movie projector type visual picture gives this poem a choppy edited effect. The imagery of this poem is vivid. The shadowy figures of the occupants at the harlots house are portrayed as mechanical (3.1). The narrator and his companion watch at all that is happening at this house of unfortunat e repute. The reader gets the sense that both stand below the window for quite a some time. Whether through fascination, or wondering how people live on the other side of the tracks, clearly there is some allure to standing(a) on this street watching the ghostly dancers spin to sound of trumpet and violin (4.1-2). There are two more dances described, a quadrille in the fifth stanza, a saraband in the sixth. Wilde moves the picture from a fantasy equal dream, with dances and gaiety, to a pointed change of stark reality he affects by wordage. In the 20th line, a phantom lover is pulled close to a clockwork creature (7.1-2). The horrible marionette comes to the porch to smoke, upon ... ...ng hours and there was little to celebrate. Britian grew richer, plainly it was not the pitiable who benefited from this revolution according to the Longman Anthology (Longman p. 1818). The overcrowded conditions in the cities created urban slums of unimaginable miserableness (p. 1819). T his wretchedness is mirrored in The Harlots House. The harlots marionette is portrayed as alive but not really living, and the narrator who stands on the street thinks he condemns a wretched lifestyle. The irony is that, he is perhaps, just as lifeless as the marionette (only more so for being a hypocrite). He is in all probability just as dead(a) as the dead dancing with the dead at the house. Works Cited Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature Vol. B. Compact ed. New York Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.