In male hands: Women, publishing, and t.s. eliot's early poetry

The poems of the period that resulted in Prufrock and Other Observations feature women and speakers who endeavor to engage the favor of the women. Often used as evidence of Eliot's misogyny, these poems were composed at a time when young Eliot sought to make his way in a London magazine culture dominated by women. Both Eliot's papers and his poems reveal his frustration with women who want to edit his poems, or whose articles will take up magazine space where his own might be published. He also associates the "Puritanical" impulse of censorship with women, like Amy Lowell. As the title poem in the volume, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," presents a problem, of the risk associated with self-presentation to a critical audience, and subsequent poems in the volume propose tentative solutions to Prufrock's problem. A non-canonical poem, "The Triumph of Bullshit" presents a bawdier response to the "ladies" who have attempted to suppress Eliot's work, yet Eliot himself suppressed the poem later in his career. Further directions in Eliot's career, including, The Waste Land, accompanied by Eliot's own notes, seek additional solutions to the problem of criticism. By refocusing efforts on the poems of the Prufrock period, this study seeks a contextual reconsideration of Eliot's earliest poems, in conversation with the women editors whose efforts shaped them.