Discuss Eliot's Treatment Of Women In His Poems

Eliot’s descriptions of women are also often to depict them as lifeless and insignificant. In ‘…Prufrock’ the protagonist increases his sense of isolation with the women characters by commenting how their “arms… lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl”. To Prufrock, the women there are not conducting actions themselves but rather are objects. The women characters in Eliot’s poems are isolated from the men, as Prufrock shows by his lack of communication with women. They “come and go/Talking of Michelangelo” amongst themselves. When Prufrock attempts to communicate with one they cannot understand one another, as shown through her reply of “That is not what I meant at all”. Eliot imparts the blame on the women themselves. Prufrock’s misery is enhanced when he hears “mermaids singing, each to each”, but Prufrock does not believe “they will sing to me”. This could be a declaration of Prufrock’s frustration at being isolated from women, who are intentionally withdrawn from men who do not meet their high standards set by Michelangelo. Eliot therefore segregates women into a similar category as to objects, as they are so different to men they cannot be referred to as the same. In ‘Gerontion’ the protagonist displays a similar, although more demeaning, attitude towards women. He refers to the woman who looks after him merely as “the woman”. He gives a very belittling description of what she does; she “keeps the kitchen” and “sneezes at evening”. Women’s lack of importance in Eliot’s poems shows them as mere details in a wider web of problems apparent in his view of society; their lack of importance perhaps shows Eliot’s underlying lack of respect for women.

The fact that Eliot writes so much about women in his poems could conversely show that he actually sees women’s role as pivotal in the depiction of society. ‘Portrait of a Lady’ centres on the narrator’s interaction with a female character. Despite describing the events as false and staged with “an atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb”, the narrator later questions his disparaging attitude to the lady by asking whether “these ideas are right or wrong”. Eliot here may be showing that isolation from others, in this case isolation from women, is caused more by someone’s own attitudes rather than the feelings of another. The lady is given a derogatory view in ‘Part I’ of the poem, where she seems to be the antithesis of the narrator. In the next part of the poem, however, she shows that she is quite similar to him and understands how his mind works. The lady says how “youth… smiles at situations which it cannot see”, highlighting the arrogance of the narrator due to his youth. The characters who do not interact with women in Eliot’s poems, such as Prufrock and Gerontion, are isolated individuals who make no active attempt to battle their loneliness. Eliot uses women as a symbol of what will appear to be a total contrast of yourself if you live in isolation, rather than using women as an example of ‘an other’.

In conclusion, the numerous negative references to women in Eliot’s poems may be seen as critical as they are used as a device to show the harm that isolation can cause. Women can be used as a symbol of ‘the other’ to lonely men as although characters like Prufrock can find a small sense of solace through other “lonely men, leaning out of windows”, their interactions with women would be limited. This could also be seen as creating a negative view of women, as there are no real female characters in Eliot’s poems but rather characters used solely as devices to highlight the loneliness apparent in the characters. The use of women only as a symbol of the danger of isolation in fact increases the isolation of the protagonists in Eliot’s poems, and may therefore result in a negative view of women being portrayed. Eliot’s lack of female characters that do not symbolise derogatory images shows that Eliot does treat