T.S Elliot: Threatening Women

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Threatening Women
A reoccurring theme in much of Eliot’s poetry is the figure or figures of threatening women. Eliot includes his intimidation of women in a lot of poetry he writes. However, with some of his later poetry his feeling towards women changes. He goes from fearing them and feeling threatened to almost celebrating them. When comparing his work in “The Wasteland” to his work in “Marina” you can definitely sense a change in his feelings. Could this change in his poetry be a result of his estranged relationship with his first wife and the beginning of a happy one with his second? Being that a lot of his poetry was based on his relationships with women this notion is quite possible when delving further into the meaning of his poetry. Eliot’s usage of threatening women in his poetry changes as his relationships with women changes.
To get a better understanding of this one must understand the relationship between Eliot and the women in his life. Vivien Haigh-Wood was his first wife. He met Vivien in 1915 and married her that same year. Neither of their parents knew of the courtship. She was of the English upper-middleclass. She was very intelligent and lively, but she was also very unstable, unknown to Eliot. From the start neither one of them could understand the other (T.S Eliot par.7). Vivien was extremely controlling and jealous, and embarrassing to take out socially. She drained Eliot with her constant illness and nearly drove him to a nervous breakdown (par. 9). Vivien was in and out of mental hospitals from 1928 and on. Then in 1932 Eliot was offered a job lecturing at Harvard. He saw this as his chance out of his unhappy marriage. So he went to the United States and filed for a legal separation from Vivien (par.13). In 1947 Eliot was shattered by the news that Vivien had passed away in a private mental hospital (par.15).
Eliot met his next love interest in 1949. She was his secretary at Fabres, her name was Valerie Fletcher. After working with her for 8 years he finally proposed in 1956 (T.S Eliot par.17). They were married in 1957. Valerie was only 30 and Eliot was 68. Not many of his friends stopped him from this happiness. He told friends, “I am the luckiest man in the world.” He was very jolly during this time in his life (par.

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