Women in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot: A Psychoanalytic Approach

167 Pages·1984·19.446 MB·English

by  Tony Pinkney (auth.)

ISBN 978-1-349-06668-1
9 781349 066681
WOMEN IN THE POETRY OF T. S.ELIOT
MACMILLAN STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY
LITERATURE
Anne Wright
LITERATUREOFCRISIS, 1910-22
Tony Pinkney
WOMEN IN THE POETRY OFT. S. ELIOT
Holger Klein withJohn Flowerand EricHornberger
THESECOND WORLD WAR IN FICTION
EricWarner
VIRGINIA WOOLF: A CENTENARY PERSPECTIVE
Harold Ore!
THELITERARY ACHIEVEMENT OF REBECCA WEST
Women in the Poetry of
T. S. Eliot
APsychoanalytic Approach
Tony Pinkney
M
MACMILLAN
©TonyPinkney1984
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Firstpublished1984by
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ISBN978-1-349-06668-1 ISBN978-1-349-06666-7(eBook)
DOI 10.1007/9789-1-349-06666-7
Acataloguerecordforthisbookisavailable
fromtheBritishLibrary.
Reprinted1993
ExcerptsfromCollectedPoems1909-62,Four
Quartets,SelectedEssays,MurderintheCathedraland
TheFamilyReunion,allbyT.S.Eliot,arereprinted
bypermissionofHarcourtBraceJovanovich,Inc.;
copyright1932,1935,1936,1950byHarcourt
BraceJovanovich,Inc.;copyright1939,1943,
1960,© 1963,1964byT.S.Eliot;
copyright1967,1971,1978byEsmeValerieEliot.
Inmemory ofourdearson
RaymondMinow Pinkney
Contents
Preface
IX
Acknowledgements
Xl
ListofAbbreviations Xll
1 Theoretical Preliminaries: Klein, Winnicott and
Psychoanalytic Aesthetics 1
2 Wrestling with the Devil of the Stairs: Early Poems to
Prufrock 18
3 Carving: Hulme, Pound, Stokes and Sweeney 58
4 Not Waving but Drowning: The Waste Land to Eliot's
D~ma ~
5 Stiffening in Conclusion: 'Gerontion' and the 'Objective
Correlative' 132
Notes 147
Index 153
Vll
Preface
Early in Murder in the Cathedral we hear that 'Several girls have
disappeared / Unaccountably'. But this tantalising hint, promising
a narrative at least as interesting as that more resplendent
'disappearance' which is Beckett's martyrdom, is never quite
developed. Two vivid lineslater in the text seem to belong to it:
We have seenthe young man mutilated,
The torn girl trembling by the mill-stream.
And there is a final obscure allusion to 'the push into the canal'.
'We are not ignorant women', declare the Women of Canterbury,
whose speeches these are; and they do indeed seem to know more
than they are willing to tell. As we attend to their long choruses,
we may well come to feel, for abrief, vertiginous moment, that the
play's 'official' religious narrative is perhaps only a Formalist
'motivation of the device' for their catalogues of deprivation and
daily pain or for those more lurid visions of 'the savour of putrid
flesh' which terrorise them. It seems asifthe energies ofthe text lie
not so much in Beckett as 'In the guts of the women of
Canterbury'
.1
Such a foregrounding of the role and tribulations of women in
Eliot's work will be the aim of this study, which will also invoke
the psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott in an
attempt to render those disappearances a little less 'unaccountable'.
Delving behind the Oedipus complex into the most primitive
phases of relationship between infant and mother, Klein and
Winnicott focus critical attention on the commanding importance
of representations of the mother and the female body in Eliot's
texts. These two analysts have not, as far as I know, been
systematically used in literary criticism before, yet both have
powerful claims on the attention offeminist criticism.
Though my account of Eliot's verse isloosely chronological, I do
not have a psychoanalytical narrative to tell. 'Hysteria' opens and
IX
x Preface
'Gerontion' closes my dealings with the poetry, in defiance of
chronology, and my discussions are grouped thematically, as my
chapter headings suggest. It has seemed more fruitful to use
psychoanalysis to 'open up' the texts, to focus on the apparently
marginal and to defamiliarise the well known, than to submit both
poetry and drama to ateleology handed down by theory in advance.
I have throughout aimed to be suggestive rather than exhaustive,
and my own critical preference isdecidedly for the intricate dialectic
of the 'schizoid' rather than the more suave schematisations of the
'depressive position', for reasons Idiscussat length below.
This book derives ultimately from Moira Megaw's decision many
years ago to lock my copies of Leavis away; I am grateful to her
both for that and for her teaching. lowe along intellectual debt to
Robin Jarvis and also to myoId Thumbscrew associate Julian
Pattison, whose incisive comments have cleared away much
literary-critical lumber for me. Thanks too to Graham Whybrow,
fellow Winnicottian, whose suggestion that Othello's handkerchief
isa 'transitional object' hasyet to be explored. I am deeply grateful
to Terry Eagleton for his practical help and stimulating teaching
during the writing of this work; to him lowe both the chance
recommendations that directed me to Klein and Winnicott and the
sustained encouragement that led me to persevere with them. To
my wife, Makiko Minow, lowe the support, patience and
continuing intellectual exchange which alone allowed me to
complete this book. We dedicate it to the memory of our son
Raymond, whose arrival made infant-mother psychoanalysis so
exciting to me and whosedeath leavesit now sobitter and painful.
T.P.
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have
kindly given permission for the useofcopyright material:
Faber & Faber Ltd, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc., for the
extracts from T. S. Eliot's On Poetry and Poets, To Criticize the
Critic, Knowledge and Experience, Elder Statesman and Poems Written
inEarly Youth.
Faber & Faber Ltd, and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., for the
extracts from T. S. Eliot's Selected Essays, Murder inthe Cathedral,
Confidential Clerk, The Family Reunion and Collected Poems 1909
1962.
Faber & Faber Ltd, and Harvard University Press, for the extracts
from T. S. Eliot's TheUse o{Poetryandthe Use o{Criticism.
XI