Comparing Rudyard Kipling And Oscar Wilde's The Harlot House

Poetry has typically defied the confines of the period it was written in and ushers in a new era in terms of ideas, politics, art, music, and everyday life. In the Victorian Period, many poets would write about ideas, the current attitudes toward women, and the resisting temptation, from a new viewpoint, which lead to changing thoughts and morals among the masses (Khanna and Landow). Although the word ‘Victorian’ brings to mind conformity, the Victorian Era of poetry is anything but typical (Victorian Poets). These poets wrote with almost no bounds, no topic being too taboo, such as in Oscar Wilde’s The Harlot House where he discusses prostitution and love verses lust in a relationship (Greenblatt). Though Rudyard Kipling wrote with more restraint than Oscar Wilde, he wrote on a more common level, where everyone who read it could understand the main idea (Greenblatt). Rudyard Kipling’s If- talked about remaining in balance with one’s self and included a self-confident tone (Greenblatt). Rudyard Kipling’s If- seems to lift up the reader as though it were a pep talk among teammates. When Oscar Wilde wrote about women, and referred to them with a rhetorical and almost critical view such as his distaste for the prostitutes in The Harlot’s House (Greenblatt). Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wild, both from the …show more content…
In Oscar Wilde’s The Harlot’s House we see AAB, as each stanza is only three lines. The rhyming in the poems allows thoughts to flow and sometimes indicates the ending of a sentence or idea. Rhyming is used to move the reader along and give the poem movement as if sung like a ballad. The use of rhyming in these Victorian poems separates them from the Romantics because many Romantics did not rhyme, they just wrote their poetry as if it was a short story, meant for enjoyment with no deeper