T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

More a synopsis of emotional entanglement than a treatise on gender or sexuality, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” encapsulates the ennui and numbness of the modern world. The speaker reveals gender only tacitly, as through two separate mentions of encroaching baldness. The choral incantations of the women who “come and go/ talking of Michelangelo” refer to a bourgeoisie existence and do not reveal gender discrimination (lines 14;36). The speaker’s frustrated sexuality comes more from a lack of intimacy or authenticity in human relationships than from a desire for power or dominance. Therefore, accusations of misogyny against Eliot are unfounded, at least with regards to the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Prufrock, the speaker in Eliot’s poem, comes across as bitter and disillusioned as he muses about love and physical intimacy in human relationships. He shifts back and forth between a familiar, second person singular point of view to a more impersonal second person plural one throughout the poem. For example, the first line refers to “you and I,” as if the speaker wants to take one person on a special and almost mystical journey through “half-deserted streets,” (line 4). The reference to a “patient etherized upon a table” presages the mentioning of the “yellow fog” (line 15) and “yellow smoke” (line 16) that could refer to opium given the nighttime imagery and the “one-night cheap hotels,” (line 6). Clearly, Prufrock is someone who has explored the darker realms of society and human existence, has partaken of the yellow smoke and the obliteration of daytime worries it entails. Sexuality is an illusion for Prufrock, something that only leads to emptiness and longing and not to spiritual or intellectual fulfillment.
When Prufrock fantasizes about the room in which the women “come and go / talking of Michelangelo,” he also refers to his lack of connection with members of the opposite sex (lines 14; 36). Prufrock knows that he is aging, evident in his bemoaning of baldness twice in his verses. He claims that he has “known them all,” which could be construed as referring to sexual conquests (line 55). A closer reading of Eliot’s poem as per the parameters outlined in Sclib and Clifford reveals that the speaker only refers to the jaded quality that comes with old age. He refers to the “butt-ends of my days and ways,” (line 60) and to the symbolic “dusk” of his life (line 70). These are perhaps the musings of a former womanizer, but one who reflects wistfully and bitterly upon his empty past. He sees the other “lonely men,” seeing himself in their sad shadows (line 72). When Prufrock snaps out of his negative reverie, he quickly shifts attention to the intimate “you,” remembering a happy moment from long ago during which he shared “tea and cakes and ices” with someone who offered him just a glimpse of hope (line 79). His musings on intimacy not misogynistic; but they are sentimental.
Prufrock’s midlife crisis may be precipitated by some degree of conflict between his ideal masculine self and the way his life actually turned out. Yet Prufrock also seems to have a balanced view of his gender and sexuality. For example, when he realizes “I am not Prince Hamlet,” he says so with a hint of irony given the fate of the Danish king (line 111). The power bestowed upon a prince is neither absolute nor immutable. Prufrock compares himself to Hamlet, recognizing that some of the same qualities that brought about the downfall of the Prince are those that plague him now in his old age: like being too “cautious” (line 116) and “deferential” (line 115). Certainly wishing he had taken more chances in life, he knows that the proverbial “mermaids,” the female fantasy figures from the sea, will no longer sing for him at this stage in his life (line 124). Ultimately a reflection on his life and the opportunities that he missed, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is simply the song of a man whose better years have passed him by, and who warns readers to live life to the fullest lest they have any regrets. To read misogyny into the poem would be unnecessarily and unfairly distorting Eliot’s work.






Works Cited

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Representative Poetry Online. https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/love-song-j-alfred-prufrock
Schlib, John and Clifford, John. Arguing About Literature. MacMillan, 2017.