Portrait of a Lady

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

T. S. Eliot employs a long poetic line and also regularly uses half-lines. The long lines consist of pentameters (five poetic feet), alexandrines (six poetic feet) and heptameters (seven feet). The meter is predominantly iambic. An iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. It is the most common meter in English poetry and is exactly suited to the conversational style of the poem, since speech in English tends to take on an iambic rhythm.

Thus, the first two lines are iambic heptameters: “Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon / You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—” (Lines 1-2). These lines are followed by two iambic pentameters. “With ‘I have saved this afternoon for you’; / And four wax candles in the darkened room” (Lines 3-4). The first alexandrine follows in the next line: “Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead” (Line 5). In that line, Eliot has made a substitution in the first foot. Instead of an iamb, he has used a spondee (“Four rings”), which is a foot in which both syllables are stressed.

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The mix of pentameter, alexandrine, and heptameter lines continues throughout the poem. In addition, there are numerous half-lines of varying length. In this variation, Eliot followed the practice of 17th-century English poet John Milton (see for example Samson Agonistes [1671]) and Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser (see Epithalamion [1595]). Half-lines give flexibility to the verse; in their inherent interruption, they convey, for instance, the young man’s boredom after the lady’s long speech in Part 2: “I smile, of course, / And go on drinking tea (Lines 50-51). In other half-lines, the speaker shows the occasions that he is fully in control of his emotions: “I keep my countenance, / I remain self-possessed” (Lines 77-78) when reading a newspaper in the park, far from the lady’s presence.

Rhyme

Eliot employs end rhyme throughout the poem but the rhymes occur in irregular patterns. For example, in the first 14 lines, Lines 1, 4, and 6 (“Afternoon,” “room,” and “tomb”) rhyme, as do Lines 2 and 3, Lines 5 and 7, Lines 8 and 10, Lines 9 and 14, and Lines 12 and 13. Only a few lines are unrhymed, including, significantly, Line 11, which ends with “friends”—the euphemistic word the lady uses to describe the sexual and possibly mentoring relationship she actually wants. Part 2 and Part 3 are similar in the frequency of rhyme, but they follow different patterns.

Most of the rhymes are perfect rhymes. In a perfect rhyme, the vowel and succeeding consonant sounds of the accented syllables are identical but the initial consonant is different. Some examples from the poem include: “room” and “tomb”(Lines 4, 6); “pole” and “soul” (Lines 8, 10); “bloom” and “room” (Lines 12, 13); “find” and “blind” (Lines 20, 22); “clocks” and “bocks” (Lines 39, 40); “know” and “flow” (Lines 44, 47); “feel” and “heel” (Lines 59, 61); “page” and “stage” (Lines 72, 74); “fate,” “rate,” and “late” (Lines 105, 106, 107); and “dance” and “trance” (Lines 110, 113). These are also known as masculine rhymes because the rhyme is on the final accented syllable of the line.

Allusion

Eliot is known for using many allusions in his verse, often referring to other literary work, historical people or events, or mythology. Often, allusions increase the range of meaning in a work. In this poem, most of the allusions are to other literary works. The title is an allusion to Henry James’s novel, The Portrait of a Lady (1881); in that novel, a wealthy American heiress falls victim to the conniving manipulations of two expatriates. The connection is oblique but clear, though in Eliot’s poem the genders are reversed: His young man is also the potential prey of an emotionally manipulative, more experienced and established woman. Similarly, the allusion to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in (“an atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb” [Line 6]) underscores the lady’s actual intentions with the young man—they are not simple friendship—and effectively undermines the lady’s attempt to create a romantic atmosphere. “Achilles’ heel” (Line 61) alludes to the ancient Greek heroic warrior who appears in The Iliad, an epic poem by Homer about the Trojan War. Achilles was vulnerable only in one of his heels, so the expression of having an Achilles’ heel means having a weak point in a person that is in all other respects strong. Another allusion is to Matthew Arnold’s poem “The Buried Life” (“my buried life” [Line 53]). That poem expresses a belief in the possibility, in special moments, of recovering moments of authentic joy that are normally inaccessible. Eliot’s allusion to it adds poignancy to the fact that such an experience seems unattainable to the speaker. Finally, “dying fall” (Line 122) is an allusion to the first line of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which the Duke Orsino comments on a piece of music. In Eliot’s poem, it suggests that the lady’s death is somehow contained or prefigured in the music that she loves and which is invoked earlier in the poem.