Gender and Sexuality in The Waste Land
In a society obsessed with materialism, nihilism, and indulgences, The Waste Land provides a counter to this cultural degeneration. Whether it is post World War I or the modern era, Eliot manages to exploit the cultural crisis through allusions of a deteriorated wasteland and the characters that inhabit it. Using an obscure and ambiguous style, Eliot depicts the lack of spirituality and morals, and reiterates the need for reform through faith and responsibility. Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot portrays numerous occasions of sexuality and gender roles to illustrate fertility, yet at the same time, ironically depict impotency. With scenes abruptly shifting and characters constantly changing, the poem effectively engages the reader to see beyond that of conventional society and focus more on the underlying problems that define it. In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot utilizes the theme of gender and sexuality, with barren imagery and representation, to convey society and culture of the time.
In depicting gender and sexuality, Tiresias, the blind prophet, is the first one to come to mind. Eliot notes Tiresias as, “Although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character,’ [Tiresias] is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest…What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.” Although his official appearance isn’t until ‘The Fire Sermon’, he is indeed known as the narrator through most of The Waste Land. He depicts himself as, “blind, throbbing between two lives, old man with wrinkled female breasts” (64.218-219) raising the question of gender. Is he or she a male or a female or quite possibly a hermaphrodite? According Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he is technically a male yet was a female for seven years. Regardless, the gender of Tiresias is more than just a physical appearance. It is a representation of all the characters that inhabit the poem. The males and females in The Waste Land merge into...