Essay
25/25 a level english crime essay (poetry)
- Module
- Elements of crime writing
- Institution
- AQA
a full marks essay for crime poetry, really useful outline on how to reach the top band
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“The main focus of interest in the poems of Crabbe, Browning and Wilde is establishingsympathy for the criminal.”
Crabbe, Browning and Wilde’s poetry is largely not focused on establishing sympathy for the
criminal. Rather, it is investigating the source and cause of the criminal's behaviour,
displaying a social commentary. Although in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Wilde partially
seeks to create sympathy for Wooldridge, the condemned murderer, in ‘Peter Grimes’ and
‘My Last Duchess’ there is very little, if any. In all poems there is focus on the societal
impacts which shaped the killer and the crime. Crabbe and Browning point out fundamental
flaws in society and the criminal that lead to their actions, and although Wilde does attempt
to romanticise a murderer, he does achnowledge his crimes and ultimatly uses him as a
vessel to make a larger commentary on penal reform. As a whole, the most interest is
dedicated to exploring what shapes the crime and relating this to a larger criticism of society.
Although perhaps there are causes for sympathy in the criminal presented, largely the
reader’s focus is directed to sympathy for the victims.
In ‘Peter Grimes’, Crabbe explores the psyche of a criminal - perhaps lending sympathy to
the murderer - but focuses mostly on the culpability of those who are complicit through their
silence or apathy. Although Peter’s father attempts to force religion on his son, taking “young
Peter in his hand to pray”, which may be a source of sympathy to some. However this
relatively normal action of a parent attempting to raise their child to follow a similar religion to
them provokes “impious rage” in Peter, with Crabbe using the paradoxical euphemism
“sacrilegious blow” to illustrate the brutal murder of Peter’s father. Crabbe, a clergyman,
implies that there is something ungodly and hellish in Peter’s “boiling blood”, which in
modern times can be understood as some form of personality disorder. Grimes displays
cruel and repellant sadism, wishing for “an obedient boy” “to trouble and control”, leading to
the obtaining of three young boys, each “stoopling” more pitiful than the next. The listing of
“pinn’d, beaten, cold, pinch’d, threaten’d and abused” emphasise the ceaseless abuse each
child suffers at the hands of Grimes, with undertones of sexual abuse, a taboo in 18th
century writing. With Crabbe’s vivid description of abuse of innocent and vulnerable orphans,
there is little focus on anything that would lend sympathy to Grimes, even if he was riled by a
religious father, and it is clear that there is something seriously wrong with Peter. Instead,
attention is diverted to the complicity of those who could have stopped Peter before he went
on to murder more. From the workhouse where Peter is given more boys with “equal ease”
to the villagers who “suspected much”, it takes the abuse and death of three children before
they act, and even then he is not arrested. From a marxist perspective, these murders went
unnoticed as these are poor orphans stuck in the brutal workhouse system. Crabbe uses this
as a criticism of the workhouse system and the passive and uncaring society that was happy
to stand by and allow these cruelties to continue. Overall the main interest is not the
sympathy for the criminal, but the system that allows him to continuously access his victims.
However, in ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Wilde presents the criminal and his fellow
prisoner, Charles Wooldridge, in a sympathetic light. Despite never having spoken to him,
Wilde is empathetic to Woolridge as they share the same arduous life within the jail. Through
vibrant imagery of “blood and wine” and “scarlet” surrounding the murder, Wilde embroideres
and romanticises the tale of Woolridge’s crime, him having “murdered … the poor dead
woman whom he loved … in her bed.” He condemns capital punishment and critices the
determination of the prison that Woolridge, the first to be executed at Reading Gaol in years,
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