From one Eliot to another

Yes, today we are moving on to T.S. Eliot. Like Wordsworth, he believed in writing poetry as close to the forms of natural spoken language as possible. Hence, the poem below is one stanza without metre (it is in prose) or lines per say.

The poem would be rather ruined by any more introduction, in my opinion, and so I shall let you take a look at it before I say more.

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ...” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

I can hear your mental 'okaaaaay' from my study. I hope that somewhere in your mind there is also a little person struggling to compute the events which just unfolded before your squinting eyes. Let us therefore take the poem bit by bit to create a more rounded picture.

Firstly, the word 'hysteria' is derived from the Greek word for 'womb', so until recently (and even still today it would be odd to hear of a 'hysterical man') could only be applied to female madness, supposedly caused by the imbalance of hormones. So T.S. Eliot is targetting the seductive nature of a woman who has gotten a little excited - at the time (first half of the 20th Century) a woman could be called hysterical for acting in any way passionate and most women were considered to have the 'disease'.

So we have the paradox of men wanting women to be seductive but if they were they could be labelled as hysterical and therefore be devalued in society (I am really restraining my inner angry feminist right now). All that the woman in this poem is doing is laughing. And because she laughs for a long time (and because she is a woman) she is seen as mad. The imagery of the 'squad-drill' depicts her laughter as becoming uniform (due to its ongoing nature) and thus unnatural.

However, when the 'elderly waiter' becomes repetitive in his speech no such label is given. If we assume the waiter is male then he is merely shocked in the eyes of the poet and could not be hysterical as he is but male.

So he finds this laughter attractive because he thinks it is hypnotic and enjoys laughing himself (as anyone should be allowed!). Yet he thinks this expression of joy is superfluous; he is attracted by colour in the cloth and table and synaesthesia occurs when he next hears the repeated request, and therefore he fights to maintain self-control. And the only way in which he finds he can do this is to concentrate on her 'breasts'.

Don't misinterpret me, it is a very good poem, what with its asyndetic, complex sentences and vivid imagery. But my blood does rather boil at the notion of a female trying to enjoy herself only to be objectified sexually for it, whether or not the writer's tone is jocular. 'I decided' gives the male the cognitive power and reduces her to a problem of society which needs solving.

As always there is much more to be said about this poem and there are far more interpretations than my feminist criticism. Whatever the case, I hope you can extract a reading that suits you and also pleases you, as I have.