Portrait of a Lady

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

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Related Poems

“Conversation Galante” by T. S. Eliot (1909)

This early poem is a dialogue between a man and a woman. The man keeps deflecting the woman with elaborate intellectual digressions that do not have much substance. When she grows frustrated, the man replies with distinct hostility. The poem is modeled on Jules LaForgue’s “Autre Complainte de Lord Pierrot,” which also influenced “Portrait of a Lady.” In all three poems, a man is unable or unwilling to communicate with a woman, although the methods they choose to thwart it are very different.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot (1915)

Eliot’s most famous poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by Prufrock, a middle-aged man who lives a superficial, meaningless existence that he is powerless to change, even though he would like to do so. His timidity and indecisiveness prevent him from making any progress. He knows how ineffectual he is and speaks in a self-deprecating way. As in “Portrait of a Lady,” the speaker is unable to fit smoothly into social situations, fully express his ideas, or attain any authenticity when presenting himself to the world.

“A Dedication to My Wife” by T. S. Eliot (1959)

This poem, unusual for Eliot, who did not typically write love poetry, is often ignored or dismissed by critics. If “Portrait of a Lady” is all about a lack of communication and authenticity, this poem is the opposite—an expression of the deep and intimate understanding between two people in love. Eliot wrote it about his second wife, Valerie Fletcher, whom he married in 1957. He found happiness with her that had eluded him in his first marriage. The poem was published as a dedication to Eliot’s play, The Elder Stateman, which was published in 1959.

Further Literary Resources

“Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s Portrait of a Lady” by Nasrullah Mambrol (2020)

In this critical commentary, Mambrol points out connections between this poem and Eliot’s other early poems, including “the use of a dramatized voice, disjunctive associations, and unusual observations that shock or surprise the reader with their tonal imbalances and unexpected shifts of emotional focus.” Both characters, Mambrol says, “are missing the point of what human conversation is all about, which is to talk to each other.” The speaker’s dilemma, Mambrol concludes, is that he “cannot come to honest terms with his relationship with the lady whom he is portraying precisely because he cannot speak honestly to her.”

“Art, Gender, & ‘Portrait of a Lady’” by Jacqueline A. Pollard (2005)

Pollard interprets the poem as an allegory of the conflict between so-called feminine and masculine culture. Feminine culture arose in the late 19th century with the increase in the number of women writers and art collectors; some believed women’s access to these fields devalued high art, turning it into entertainment consumed for pleasure and making it conventional rather than transcendental. Pollard argues that the young man in the poem “represents the modern artist’s dilemma: he is disdainful and smug toward conventional aesthetic expression, but he is cautious about breaking free from tradition, characterized by the lady. Disgusted and overwhelmed, he chooses to flee to ‘another country’ rather than confront the issue directly.”

A Reader’s Guide to T. S. Eliot: A Poem-by-Poem Analysis by George Williamson (1998)

Originally published in 1955 and since added to, this guide to Eliot’s poetry for the general reader discusses the major poems individually. Williamson notes the similarities between “Portrait of a Lady” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The speaker in “Portrait of a Lady,” William says, is “another uncertain Prufrock, adolescent rather than prematurely aged, suspended between feelings of attraction and repulsion.”

Listen to Poem

T. S. Eliot reads “Portrait of a Lady”

A 1957 audio recording of T. S. Eliot reading the poem.

Related Titles

By T. S. Eliot

Study Guide

Ash Wednesday