Portrait of a Lady

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

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Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context: 19th-Century French Symbolist Jules LaForgue

In his last year as a Harvard undergraduate, T. S. Eliot devoured the work of the French Symbolist poet Jules LaForgue. The French Symbolists were a literary group that emerged in the second half of the 19th century. In addition to LaForgue, they included Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine.

LaForgue treats romantic relationships between men and women with a satirical eye: The eagerness of the woman to ensnare the man in a romantic alliance is deflected by the ironic detachment of the male, which prevents any serious emotional communication. LaForgue’s influence can be seen in Eliot’s “Conversation Galante” (1916), whose mocking tone mimics LaForgue’s style in his poem “Autre Complainte de Lord Pierrot” (or “Another Lament of Lord Pierrot”), a dramatic dialogue between a man and a woman.

That poem by LaForgue was also on Eliot’s mind as he wrote “Portrait of a Lady,” as can be seen by the line, “Well! and what if she should die some afternoon” (Line 114), which echoes LaForgue’s “Enfin, si, par un soir, elle meurt dans mes livres” (“Finally, if, one evening, she dies in my books” [LaForgue, Jules. “Autre Complainte de Lord Pierrot.” The New Criterion, 1885. Line 17]). LaForgue’s final line, “C’était donc sérieux?” (“So it was serious?” [LaForgue Line 20]) finds a distant echo in Eliot’s concluding line, “And should I have a right to smile?” (Line 124).

Literary Context: Matthew Arnold’s Poem “The Buried Life”

Another very specific influence on the poem is “The Buried Life” (1852) by English Victorian poet Matthew Arnold. Arnold’s poem, in which a male speaker addresses a female lover, is about how people do not reveal their authentic selves or say what they really feel. Arnold laments that people disguise themselves, both to themselves and to others: “What we say and do / Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!” (Arnold, Mathew. “The Buried Life.” Poetry Foundation, 1852. Lines 65-66). Although a deep desire remains for “the knowledge of our buried life” (Arnold Line 48), it is only in rare moments, when two people in love physically connect that, “A man becomes aware of his life’s flow, / And hears its winding murmur” (Arnold Lines 87-89).

Eliot recasts “The Buried Life” with some irony, alluding to it in these lines spoken by Eliot’s lady: “Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall / My buried life, and Paris in the Spring” (Lines 52-53). The presence of the woman hinders rather than enhances the possibility of the speaker speaking truly; for him there is no moment of authentic revelation. Indeed, his true self is buried so deep, to his growing frustration and discomfort, that it would take major excavation work to unearth it. As for the lady, while the coming of spring does bring her “buried life” to mind, her happiness at the memory of Paris fades into melancholy as she addresses her young companion:

But what have I, my friend,

To give you, what can you receive from me?

Only the friendship and the sympathy

Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends (Lines 64-68).

Occupying herself with small social rituals while the years tick on to the inevitable end is a bleak life. Read in the light of “A Buried Life” and the possibilities it presents of rare moments of emotional wholeness, “Portrait of a Lady” takes on another level of pessimism.