Portrait of Lady by T.S Eliot "Summary"

The poem entitled “The Portrait of lady “ is a very signification poem by T.S Eliot a great poet of 20^th century. Eliot is a difficult poet to understand and his poetry loaded with the weight of his stupendous learning and    slow allusiveness, baffles an average well informed reader.

 The titled of the present poem has been taken from Henry James celebrated novel “the portrait of a lady “ the poem is spoken by a young man who describes his three visits to an older lady who treats him as a friend, through in the end she declares that the friendship has failed. The poem tells the story of his failed friendship in three episode occuring over a period of ten months. In part one , the speaker visits the lady’s apartment in December after going with her to a concert reports her  talk of friendship and suggests that he prefers a most vigorous approach to life. In part two , the lady complains about her age envies her  visitors youth and says that april , sunsets and memories of Paris reconcile her with life. After all again her visitor turns from her to the world of newspaper , sports and comics.

Through confessing that he also has moments of exquisite regret . In part 3 the speaker takes his farewell from the lady before going aboard. She wonders why they  have not become friends and asks him to write her and she describe her melancholic solitary fate. At the end the speaker thinks of lady possibly dying and questions his behavior towards her.

   As we go through the poem, we find that the first stanza open among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon with four waxed candles in the darkened room  and this time recreated the urban atmosphere . the next time four rings of light upon the calling overhead. Create the atmosphere of inliets tomb. The reference to Shakesphere’s Romance and inliet’s accounts for the enactment of the theme of the life in death and  death in life  . The metaphorical contents of the December image are justified by the image of inliets tomb.

The second stanza begins with the image of symbolising love and friendship. It is again ironical that nevrosis pervades the milien . The pervasive of melancholy and inertia continues to dominate this perception even in the month of October where the lady has nothing but a false hope to life. The portrait of the lady is a milestone in the development of Eliot poetry and treatment od women. The lady 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 narrator relies heavily on the atmosphere and the delineation of urban surroundings to illustrate inertia and mutual alienation . The season imagery also play a dominant role in the caste of imagery . The speaker of the poem visits the lady on four different occasions. The speaker meticulously specifies the months December , April , August and October to show the advancement of time and action . It gives us an insight into upper class society of the time as something rather empty . The main focus of the poem , however is the speaker who is his own depiction of the lady who belongs to the upper class society as soulless and empty , reveals himself as the who cruel and unfeeling.