T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, shuffles through many characters, several of who are women. Each one of the characters has their own story and their own voice. They each contribute something unique to the overall meaning of the poem. The women in particular vary widely in age, stage of life, education level, and socioeconomic status. Their voices are unique and distinctive, and it is typically easy to tell them apart when they come up in the poem. However, despite their differences, Eliot remarked that the women are actually all a manifestation of a single woman. Two women in the poem who exemplify this thought make their appearance in Part II: “A Game of Chess.” These women appear to be complete opposites, but they work together in the poem to express Eliot’s view on modern sexuality.
The first woman introduced in Part II of The Waste Land is a wealthy, upper-class woman who is sitting in a chair that is described as being “like a burnished throne” (8). The setting described in the poem indicates the woman’s position in life. She sits in her chair surrounded by marble, a candelabra, jewels, satin, and perfumes. These words set a regal tone, but they also elicit a certain feeling of coldness. This feeling stems from the fact that the woman is wearing jewels and perfumes and is sitting at a table with candles like she is waiting for a guest, but there is no indication that her guest has arrived. There is a strong feeling of detachment. Even the light in the room is even described as being “sad” at one point in the poem (8). The setting gives the impression that the woman is waiting for someone important, possibly even a lover.
Eliot alludes to a lover with the inclusion of the references to Middleton’s play, Women Beware Wom...
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...and for reasons other than to produce children, she has driven herself mad. She has become desperate and unstable. Likely, Eliot views these consequences as a direct result of her actions. The second woman seemed to do everything according to Eliot’s philosophy, but her husband could not keep his hands off of her, implying that the couple had sex for more reasons than just to procreate, and she had an abortion. The abortion breaks the chain of nature and therefore contributes to the mental and emotional decline that Lil faces. Despite their very different lifestyles and situations, Lil and the first woman have the same problem in Eliot’s eyes. Their lack of respect for what Eliot views as the correct way to think about sex has earned them a spot in The Waste Land.
Works Cited
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. Ed. Michael North. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Print.
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
Lizabeth associates much of her childhood with the vision of “acid, sterile dust . . . the dry September . . . and grassless yards” (Collier, p. 748). The use of this specific imagery relates the effect that poverty had on Lizabeth’s mentality and the role it played in shaping her perspective. A part of that effect is her inability to understand beauty amongst ugliness. This is exemplified in Miss Lottie’s marigolds. Lizabeth describes the marigolds as “the strangest part of [Miss Lottie’s yard]” because “they did not fit in with the crumbling decay of the rest of her yard” (Collier, p. 751). Lizabeth’s preoccupation and apparent disgust with Miss Lottie’s marigolds is a reflection of her unfamiliarity with beauty. It is not until she is familiarized with the beauty present in the marigolds that she understands the fault in her perspective. As a women looking back on the events of her childhood, an older Lizabeth recognizes her fault, yet also states “one does not have to be ignorant and poor to find that life is as barren as the dusty yards of [her] town” (Collier, p.
In the opening of both the play and the novel we are introduced to the two main female characters which we see throughout both texts. The authors’ styles of writing effectively compare and contrast with one another, which enables the reader to see a distinct difference in characters, showing the constrictions that society has placed upon them.
McCormick, J. Frank. "Eliot's The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock And Shakespeare's Hamlet.(Critical Essay)." The Explicator 1 (2004): 43. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
The influential roles of women in the story also have important effects on the whole poem. It is them that press the senses of love, family care, devotion, and other ethical attitudes on the progression of the story. In this poem the Poet has created a sort of “catalogue of women” in which he accurately creates and disting...
The poem utilizes both masculine and feminine imagery which provides a look at the different perspectives that men and women
Many features of the setting, a winter's day at a home for elderly women, suggests coldness, neglect, and dehumanization. Instead of evergreens or other vegetation that might lend softness or beauty to the place, the city has landscaped it with "prickly dark shrubs."1 Behind the shrubs the whitewashed walls of the Old Ladies' Home reflect "the winter sunlight like a block of ice."2 Welty also implies that the cold appearance of the nurse is due to the coolness in the building as well as to the stark, impersonal, white uniform she is wearing. In the inner parts of the building, the "loose, bulging linoleum on the floor"3 indicates that the place is cheaply built and poorly cared for. The halls that "smell like the interior of a clock"4 suggest a used, unfeeling machine. Perhaps the clearest evidence of dehumanization is the small, crowded rooms, each inhabited by two older women. The room that Marian visits is dark,...
In all, the misogyny presented in these two poems is not restricted to the time period they were written. Just as in medieval literature, it is still common for today's woman to be recognized only for her physical attributes. I believe that in order to have equality of the sexes and to help overcome the objectifying of women, it is necessary for women not to use the misogynistic views placed against them to their advantage.
the way he does. I feel that Eliot describes women in the way in which
...s heading and how we lead that life. Eliot does end up with a girl in his life that he loves to finish this parody in a Romantic way.
Written in two different literary periods “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” share various similarities with one another. While Browning can not be credited for inventing the dramatic monologue himself it was his fondness and skill for it that raised it to a highly sophisticated level. He also helped increase its popularity both with poets and the general public. His huge success with dramatic monologues served as inspiration for Eliot years later. Based on his work, Eliot was clearly influenced by the dramatic monologue style used by Browning. However, despite their similarities there are stark differences between the poems by Browning and Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” shows a clear movement away from the Victorian style found in “My Last Duchess” and goes towards Modernism.
Dinah’s piety generates a pure and idealized feminine beauty. Eliot often describes Dinah’s beauty with spiritual language, such as Lisbeth’s first impression of Dinah as “nothing at fi...
This, in fact, is an example of “dynamic decomposition” of which the speaker claims she understands nothing. The ironic contradiction of form and content underlines the contradiction between the women’s presentation of her outer self and that of her inner self. The poem concludes with the line “’Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.’” which is a statement made by the man. Hence, it “appears to give the last word to the men” but, in reality, it mirrors the poem’s opening lines and emphasises the role the woman assumes on the outside as well as her inner awareness and criticism. This echoes Loy’s proclamation in her “Feminist Manifesto” in which she states that women should “[l]eave off looking to men to find out what [they] are not [but] seek within [themselves] to find out what [they] are”. Therefore, the poem presents a “new woman” confined in the traditional social order but resisting it as she is aware and critical of
On the most superficial level, the verbal fragments in The Waste Land emphasize the fragmented condition of the world the poem describes. Partly because it was written in the aftermath of World War I, at a time when Europeans’ sense of security as well as the land itself was in shambles, the poem conveys a sense of disillusionment, confusion, and even despair. The poem’s disjointed structure expresses these emotions better than the rigidity and clarity of more orthodox writing. This is evinced by the following from the section "The Burial of the Dead":