Author(s)

Chao SUN

Corresponding Author

Chao SUN

ABSTRACT

T.S. Eliot is one of the twentieth century’s major poets, as well as an essayist, publisher, playwright, and literary and social critic. “The Waste Land” is published in 1922 as one of T.S. Eliot’s representative works. In this poem, Eliot shows the decadence of human nature as a main theme and develops it by referring to the difficulty of life. And, it should is a remarkable fact that there are many female images in this poem. By presenting women who suffer from boredom, lack of aims, frustration in love both from mythic origins and modern society, the flexible gender image and images related to females, Eliot is warning the modern secular man of the psychological, physical and social deterioration that result from industrialization and shedding light on the emptiness of modern love and the the sick relationship of modern people. However, at present, among the main studies on Eliot’s “The Waste Land” at home, there are fewer researches that take female images as the starting point to discuss Eliot’s thoughts. Therefore, this paper aims at exploring the field of female images study on “The Waste Land”, if unable to fill the gaps of the research, but at least will help to reveal the the meaning under the images of woman in this poems. At the same time, this paper will contribute to the creation and appreciation of modern poem and bring some enlightenment to other research.

KEYWORDS

T, S, Eliot, “the waste land”, Female images