Waste Land Essay: Love and Sex

Love and Sex in The Waste Land

Attitudes toward love and sex are one of the major themes of the poem. The introduction to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature states that "This is a poem about spiritual dryness," and much of this spiritual dryness relates to the nature of the modern sexual experience (although there are also other aspects of spiritual dryness the introduction also notes that major themes include a lack of a "regenerating belief" that gives "significance and value to people" and a type of death that "heralds no resurrection"). (Introduction 2146) Comparisons of different types between past and present are often used to highlight the nature of this modern sexual experience, which is pictured as empty, as lacking in both romance and passion, and as fruitless. Lil's rejection of her offspring (line 160) has already been mentioned; other examples abound throughout the poem. One example is furnished by the seduction of the typist by the "young man carbuncular," described by Tiresias in lines 230-256. This scene describes a seduction seemingly without any love or passion. The typist seems to have no desire for sex, but no desire to resist seduction, either -- the young man's "caresses are unreproved, if undesired." (lines 236-237) Her single emotion expressed in the passage is a vague relief when the episode ends. Eliot follows the scene of seduction with these lines:

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone. (lines 253-256)

These lines parody a song from Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, in which a woman who had been seduced earlier...

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... life cycle cannot continue and a large context for meaning in life is lost.

Works Cited and Consulted:

Abrams, M.H., et al. Footnotes to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Abrams, M.H., et al. Introduction to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Footnotes to "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume 2. General Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.