The Waste Land
specific history that ‘largely precludes femininity and homosexua lity, and linked, as in Sigmund Freud’s version of Darwin’s ‘ scientific myth, ’ with the ideological establishment of a reproductive patriarchy’, 4 that is, a poem which is inherently tied to the prescribed roles one plays within the family in a social macrocosm. The Waste Land functions in that way, exploring sterile sexuality in modern society. However, I would disagree with the argument that that The Waste Land ‘ precludes femininity ’ and would argue that it specifically highlights the gendered circumstances after the war. The first section acts as a poetic statement of intention for Eliot: the ‘ cruellest ’ month of April has been ‘ mixing memory and desire ’ , a representation of how the poem will juxtapose the present with ‘ memory ’ , a lasting motif symbolizing history, but also the trauma it contains. It immediately draws attention to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , 5 subverting the potentialities of new life expected of spring with the imagery of death. This is immediately conveyed in the section title, the ‘ Burial of the Dead ’ , suggesting remembrance, but also, perhaps, a burial of tradition. Time is manipulated within this section to be disorientating, shifting from ‘ April ’ to a ‘ winter ’ that ‘ kept us warm ’ and describing how ‘ summer surprised us ’ . The subtle shift from a timeless statement, ‘ April is the cruellest month ’ , to the past tense could also demarcate a focus on the past. Eliot signposts the importance of locating the poem within history, indicating to the reader the significance of the tradition. While subverting most conventions of the typical epic (in true modernist fashion), The Waste Land is anchored within mythology. The five sections are loosely connected by the designated poetic protagonist, the androgynous blind prophet, Tiresias, and the Arthurian myth of the Fisher King. Both play a pertinent role in depicting the reproductive circumstances of London. The figure of Tiresias is fitting for the poem, playing both parts of the sexual binary. 6 Eliot co-opts this classical figure into the epic as a way of depicting gross sexuality within London, introducing the hermaphroditic figure of Tiresias as ‘ throbbing between two lives ’ . Immediately, the verb ‘ throbbing ’ connotes violent, virulent, and (perhaps most importantly) male, sexuality. However, this is contrasted by the liminality that follows: he lingers ‘ between two lives ’ , that of the two sexes, defined by Eliot as separate. However, he also, in his transgendered state, becomes a presentation of emasculation, 7 a figurehead of the transversion of the ‘ reproductive patriarchy ’ argued by Paris and others. Tiresias’ blindness is a form of castration from a Freudian perspective, another depiction of emasculation. Tiresias is not the only important blind figure to consider. Madame Sosostris, in her tarot card reading, depicts the Phoenician Sailor, a figure with ‘ pearls ’ for eyes. This blindness is again a form of castration but could also represent a spiritual blindness. The penultimate section of the poem, ‘ Death by Water ’ , depicts the death of the Phoenician Sailor, Phlebas. Here, Eliot offers a depiction of the economic strife of post-war Europe, as the sailor arguably represents trade and merchantry, and his death the forgetting of worldly possessions, of ‘ profit and loss ’ . However, the tone of the section is ambivalent, and the imagery of water seems to represent a washing away of the world, a rebirth, a baptism.
4 Paris 2016. 5 Ward 2014. 6 Bonevac 2013. 7 Schein 2009.
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