Women in T. S. Eliot's early poetry

Abstract

In the first works Eliot wrote in his late teens to The Hollow Men, written in 1925, it is evident that the relationship between men and women is one of the main themes, so female characters have a significant part to play in Eliot's early poetry. It is therefore surprising that unlike some of Eliot' s male narrators and characters, we are never allowed direct access to the women's minds, except through their speech, behaviour and surroundings. This means that the reader is placed in the position of an observer who can see, hear and sometimes even smell the women but who is ultimately distant from them. While we can sympathize, interpret and fear the women, I think that we see them as something Other, people with whom we cannot identify. In addition, the female characters are not only distanced from us, but they are also separated from the male narrators and characters, with whom no satisfactory communication is attained. My aim in this essay is to get a closer look at these female figures, noting their function in the texts, their portrayal and characterization. I shall begin by discussing the possible influence of Eliot's background on his portrayal of women before turning to the poems themselves. The characteristics which recur in Eliot's female characters, their portrayal and behaviour, make it reasonable to suggest that Eliot's own opinions and experiences with women may have affected the poems. Despite the fact that Eliot subdued the personal aspect of his poetry, both in his critical essays and through his oblique forms of expression, I think that Eliot's work has a personal, social and cultural specificity, in that it could not have been produced by anyone with a different personality, gender or social and historical background.