Portrait of a Lady (poem)

Portrait of a Lady is a poem by T. S. Eliot, first published in September 1915 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, March 1916 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, in February 1917 (without the epigraph) in The New Poetry: An Anthology, and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations.

The poem's title is widely seen to be derived from the novel by Henry James with the same title.^[1] The poem employs as an epigraph the famous quotation from the play by Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, "Thou hast committed - / Fornication: but that was in another country, / And besides, the wench is dead."

The poem is one of the two Boston poems written by Eliot, the other being The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It gives us an insight into upper class society of the time as something rather empty and forlorn. The main focus of the poem, however, is the speaker, who in his own depiction of this Lady who belongs to this upper class society as soulless and empty, reveals himself as the one who is truly callous and unfeeling.

Like many of Eliot's early poems, Portrait of a Lady shows heavy influence from Jules Laforgue ^[2]. For example in 'Another Complaint of my Lord Pierrot', Laforgue has the lines:

Finally, if one evening she dies amid my books,

Quiet; feigning not yet to trust my sight

I'd try an 'Oh, that; we'd what it takes, it looks.

Then it was serious, all right?'

While Eliot has the lines:

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,

Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;

Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand

With the smoke coming down above the housetops;

Doubtful, for a while

Not knowing what to feel or if I understand

Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...

And Of course, to be so late, would ruin

me, though save me from fate.

Portrait of a Lady is also the name of a poem by William Carlos Williams.

References