Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady (Part-2)

"Portrait of a Lady" is another very significant poem of his collection. It is clear that the title of the poem has been taken from Henry James' celebrated novel The Portrait of a Lady. The poem offers a sharp contrast to the poem discussed above. There is marked complimentation between the ideas expressed in the "Love Song" and "The Portrait". However, the perception attributed to these two poems merge into one complete aesthetic unity. J.C.C. Mays rightly observes that "same story told by two voices merge, allowing more to a different but complimentary point of view" (112). May view fully expresses the thematic interdependence existing between these two major poems.
The narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation. The season imagery also plays a dominant role in the caste of imagery. The speaker of the poem visits an elderly woman on four different occasions. the speaker meticulously specifies the months – December, April, August and October, to show the advancement of time and action.
The narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation. The season imagery also plays a dominant role in the caste of imagery. The speaker of the poem visits an elderly woman on four different occasions. the speaker meticulously specifies the months – December, April, August and October, to show the advancement of time and action.
The poem expresses among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon (L.1) which makes the first line of the poem "Four waxed candles in the darkened room" (L. 4) recreate the urban atmosphere of "The Love Song" and "four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead" (L. 5) create the atmosphere of "Juliet's tomb" (L. 6). The reference to Shakespeare's Romance and Juliet accounts for the reenactment of the theme of life in death and death in life. Juliet in the play was taken to be dead whereas she was only in coma. The metaphorical contents of the December image are justified by the image of Juliet's tomb and it recolours the thematic implications of the allusion in Shakespeare. The succeeding time further ratifies the symbolic magnificence of the allusion when the speaker says :
Prepared for all the things to be said or left unsaid.
(L-7)
In the second stanza begins with the image of Lilac symbolizing love and friendship. It is again ironical that neurosis pervades the milieu:
I keep my countenance.
I remain self possessed.
Except when a street plano, mechanical and tired,
Reiterates some worn out common songs.
With the smell of hyacinth across the garden.
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong.
(Ll. 77–83)
The pervasion of melancholy and inertia continues to dominate the perception even in the October where the lady has nothing but a false hope to life with. She says:


You hardly know when you are coming back.
You will find so much to learn.
My smile fells heavily among the bric a brac.
(Ll. 90–92)
The lines quoted above ratify the parallel between the Prufrock and the Lady in the poem who is equally sensitive. Eliot also constructs a parallel between the Lady in his "Portrait" and Isabel Archer. Eliot obliquely brings into prominence the features of the Isabel and then he transplants the character into a new soil. Eliot's Lady is a sensitive intellect but the most striking covalency is observed when we realize the characters as independent. 'The independence of Isabel', says Arnold Kettle, 'is the quality about her most often emphasized' (p. 22). It is a conspicuous aspect of the poetic technique of Eliot that he transplants the character in a new soil and creates a new metaphor. The independence of the Jamescan character when planted in a new soil results into the scepticism and neurosis expressed in fake optimism:
We must leave it now to fate
You will write at any rate
Perhaps, it is not too late.
I shall sit here serving tea to friends.
(Ll101–104)
"Portrait of the Lady" thus becomes a milestone in the development of Eliot's poetry and the treatment of woman. The Lady in the "Portrait" grows into a complete metaphor which enshrine the vision of the poet. The loss of vitality and the lack of action together make her a living metaphor of life in death and death in life. The flower images further strengthen the meaning and motif as the vitality is realized only at sensual level and life ceases to exist beyond the limits of sensuality. The view of Grover Smith capture attention. He rightly points out:

By penetrating to the depth of the lady's lonely and empty life, the
young man has committed a psychological rape : this is for worse than
fornication, for he has not respected her human condition. (p14)

Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909–1962. Calcutta : Rupa and Company, 1994.
Mays, J.C.C. "Early Poems : from Prufrock to Gerontion". The Cambridge Guide to T.S .Eliot, ed. A. David Moody, London : Cambridge University Press, 1994, 108–120.
Smith Grover. T. S. Eliot : Poetry and Plays, Chicago : University of Chicago, 1951.