Women Characters in T.S.Elios Poetry
Women Characters in The Waste Land
Thomas Stearns Eliot’s The Waste land presents a galaxy of characters. Some women characters include a priestess, a princess, a fortune teller, a lady of the upper class, a lower middle class girl, a typist girl as well as the girls of the river Thames. None of them is happy in the true sense. In the Epigraph we come across the Sybil at Cumae who was hung in a cage. Children threw stones at her and asked, “What do you want?” In answer, she said, ‘I want to die.” This very Sybil asked for as many years to live as there were grains of sands in her grasp from Apollo as a boon. In other words she asked for immortality but she forgot to ask for immortal youth like Tithonus who also suffered from agility. At last Tithonus said that a man should not try to vary from the race of man. This Sybil at Cumae out of old age shrank and shrank to become so small that she was kept in a bottle and hung in a cage. It is the irony of fate that the person who wanted immortality is now longing for death. She represents the death- wish of the twentieth century people. Lacking faith, they have no hope for resurrection and their life on this earth is full of frustration, anguish, uncertainty and anxiety to survive. According to Eliot, man may be motivated to die physically with the objective of living spiritually ever after.
The next woman is princess Marie Larsch, a countess and a relation of king Ludwing. The German princess ( I am not a Russian at all.... a pure German from Lithuania ) is an embodiment of the root –less ness of European citizens. In this society summer and winter are mere seasons which indicate bodily comfort or discomfort. So, she goes with the Archduke to the south in the winter. Her memories of childhood and her desire for physical comfort reveal her superficial state of living which is a common aspect of the sterile life of boredom of the inhabitants of The Waste Land. Her autobiography, ‘My Past”, records her experience of
Thomas Stearns Eliot’s The Waste land presents a galaxy of characters. Some women characters include a priestess, a princess, a fortune teller, a lady of the upper class, a lower middle class girl, a typist girl as well as the girls of the river Thames. None of them is happy in the true sense. In the Epigraph we come across the Sybil at Cumae who was hung in a cage. Children threw stones at her and asked, “What do you want?” In answer, she said, ‘I want to die.” This very Sybil asked for as many years to live as there were grains of sands in her grasp from Apollo as a boon. In other words she asked for immortality but she forgot to ask for immortal youth like Tithonus who also suffered from agility. At last Tithonus said that a man should not try to vary from the race of man. This Sybil at Cumae out of old age shrank and shrank to become so small that she was kept in a bottle and hung in a cage. It is the irony of fate that the person who wanted immortality is now longing for death. She represents the death- wish of the twentieth century people. Lacking faith, they have no hope for resurrection and their life on this earth is full of frustration, anguish, uncertainty and anxiety to survive. According to Eliot, man may be motivated to die physically with the objective of living spiritually ever after.
The next woman is princess Marie Larsch, a countess and a relation of king Ludwing. The German princess ( I am not a Russian at all.... a pure German from Lithuania ) is an embodiment of the root –less ness of European citizens. In this society summer and winter are mere seasons which indicate bodily comfort or discomfort. So, she goes with the Archduke to the south in the winter. Her memories of childhood and her desire for physical comfort reveal her superficial state of living which is a common aspect of the sterile life of boredom of the inhabitants of The Waste Land. Her autobiography, ‘My Past”, records her experience of
Bibliography: 1. Drew, Elizabeth, T.S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry( New York: Charles Scriber, 1949) 2. Leavis, F. R. ( New Bearings in English Poetry: Chatto and Windus, 1932) 3. Williams, Helen,T. S. Eliot: (London :Thames And Hudson, !968) 4. Miller, James E., T. S. Eliot’s Personal Waste Land: Exorcism Of The Demons ( Philadelphia, 1977 )