Examine Eliots treatment of women in Prufrock, Preludes,...

Examine Eliot’s treatment of women in Prufrock, Preludes, Portrait of a Lady and Rhapsody on a Windy Night In all four of the poems; ‘Prufrock’, ‘Preludes’, ‘Portrait of a Lady’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, Eliot makes references to women. Eliot seems to treat women almost as objects to either be looked at with wonder and, at times, fascination or as objects to be scorned upon. In all of the poems Eliot makes the voice of the poem slightly distanced from the women and this, to me, makes the women seem almost untouchable. When looking at the poem ‘Prufrock’ we must first notice that the full title is ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock.’ This title seems almost ironic as, after reading the poem, we realise that the poem†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬ËœPortrait of a Lady’ has a very dramatic structure - a one-sided dialogue, in which the lady speaks and her visitor silently comments ably shows us Eliot’s clear views in this poem about women, and in ‘Portrait of a Lady’ the tone suggests that he feels women are ‘false note(s).’ The dialogue of the woman is very pretentious with lines such as â€Å"So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul / Should be resurrected only among friends† and â€Å"Without these friendships – life, what cauchemar!† By having the lady speak French Eliot suggests that he perceives this woman to be trying too hard and this makes us think of the woman as if she is putting on a mask rather than being herself; this is one of the main themes which is interwoven into Eliot’s poetry. The poem ‘Preludes’ portrays women in a very different light to ‘Prufrock’ and ‘Portrait of a Lady’. In ‘Preludes’ Eliot draws influence from Baudelaire who wrote about ‘the more sordid aspects of the modern metropolis,’ and it would seem that in ‘Preludes’ women can almost be included in these ‘sordid aspects.’ Eliot talks about a woman in the third stanza of the poem, and it would appear that the woman is a prostitute. Writing about a prostitute, he presents to us a more sordid side of women. In ‘Preludes’, Eliot’s view is almost degrading and at times Eliot presents an ashamed tone when he says â€Å"The thousand