J. Alfred Prufrock: The Perfect Failure

- An essay on the middle-class ‘failure to live’ -

The word “modern” is often applied to writing marked by a strong, conscious deviation from convention. “Modern” can imply historical withdrawal, isolation, exhaustion, and the moral decay of the modern middle-class. In the early 20th century, two authors grabbed hold of hollow reins and led the charge into modernity. T. S. Eliot, with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Katherine Mansfiedl with The Garden Party. Each work is concerned with the protagonist’s failure to live, but each explores this theme in a different way. Eliot’s Prufrock is paralyzed due to indecision, whereas Mansfield’s Laura is transfixed by ignorance.

In J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot creates one of literature’s quintessential failures. Haunted by incessant indecision, Prufrock is unable to live a normal life, or even a life at all. Throughout the poem, it is unclear whether or not Prufrock ever leaves his home. It appears that he does not, deciding instead to remain in his room, ready for “a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of toast and tea.” Indeed, the entire fourth stanza reads like a format for an entire life. Again and again he declares that “there will be time” for this, and “there will be time” for that, but for Alfred, there never seems to be a time for life.

Our protagonist has such trouble making decisions that he dares to compare his plight with that of Prince Hamlet, Shakespeare’s own hesitant hero. Prufrock transforms Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” into his own manifestation, “To drink tea or not to drink tea.” The difference between the two men is that Hamlet was able to come to a decision where Prufrock is not. Even more pathetic is that Hamlet’s dilemma is infinitely more arduous than Prufrock’s and he still manages to come to a decision. Whether that decision is right or wrong is inconsequential, the fact of the matter is that he decided and Alfred does not.

Prufrock asks himself, “Do I dare?” and again, “Do I dare?” These three simple words sum up his entire life. How is one able to make a decision if he constantly second-guesses everything he does? Time and time again he’s turned back and desceeded the star. His whole life he’s been turning back at that last step, where he finds that “there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

There is not a more poignant example of Prufrock’s infirmity then when he asks himself “Do I dare disturb the universe?” Contemplating whether or not to do anything at all is failure to live its very essence. One cannot help but feel sympathy for Prufrock, for his indecision seems to be entirely out of his control. There is a mental illness at work here which was taken hold of Prufrock’s fragile mind, further cementing the notion that he would have better served the world as “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” At least then he could have contributed to the universe as food for someone who wishes to continue his or her life.

The curse of J. Alfred Prufrock is an overemphasis on every instant, where he feels the need to “force [each] moment to its crisis,” and if that is not possible then there is no point. The problem here is that Prufrock does not fancy himself a prophet, and only a prophet can know what is to come, therefore, if one does not know what is to come then how can they make the most of anything? This sort of thinking is what makes living for Prufrock impossible. If this is how a person thinks, then he or she cannot make a decision about anything. His indecision appears inescapable, and until he sheds himself of it J. Alfred Prufrock will never truly live.

As a consequence of his inability to live, Prufrock has cast himself from society. He has refused himself all forms of relationships, friends or otherwise, which has left him yearning for a love that he will most likely never receive. Much of the poem is about sexual frustration and the desire for liberation. With his balding head and thinning legs, Prufrock will never be like Michelangelo’s David, the pinnacle of male beauty and sexual prowess. He dreams for a sophisticated life, one where he can bask in the “music from a farther room.” But despite these desires, his life will never be so. For he will always hear the mermaids of society singing, each to each, but never to him.

In contrast to The Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock, Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party does not explore a failure to live altogether, as Eliot does, but a failure to live morally. The story is a criticism of bourgeois values and class distinction. This criticism is told through Mrs. Sheridan, who has raised her children to believe that they are better than the working middle-class, and her daughter Laura, who through the course of the story, realizes her faults and sees the need to change them.

Laura is fully aware of her own image of class differences. She is upper-middle class and as indicated by her mother, must maintain certain behaviors when dealing with the middle-class. She seems painfully self-conscious and awkward when she is confronted by the four workmen in the early moments of the story, and views them as almost otherworldly entities that she knows very little about. She seems surprised to see even a smile cross their lips, saying to herself, “How very nice workmen were! And what a beautiful morning! She musn’t mention the morning; she must be business like.” Laura can’t comprehend the idea of the working-class appreciating beauty or art. Soon after, she watches as a workman pinches a spring of lavender, and then smells it. This gesture catches Laura completely off-guard – a workman caring for the smell of lavender? “How extraordinarily nice workmen were,” she thinks.

Due to her newfound “appreciation” for the working-class, Laura naively believes that she has shed “these absurd class distinctions.” Perhaps this thought can be attributed to her upper-class conceipt, because it isn’t so. She thinks it inappropriate that a workman would “talk to her of bangs slap in the eye,” and she still mesmerizes herself with her beauty. Seeing a member of the working-class sniff lavender is not nearly enough to change a lifetime of brainwashing. In an effort to show how she despises “stupid conventions” Laura takes a big bite of buttered bread – just like a “work girl.” Such a childish act cements the fact that she hasn’t yet changed quite enough. Laura assumes that being a working girl is a role that she can simply “put on.” She does not realize that being a member of the working-class is something that must be experienced to be properly understood.

While Laura seems determined to alter her way of seeing things, the same cannot be said of her sister, Jose. The initial glimmer of Laura ‘s moral conscience occurs as a result of her sister’s lack of one. When Scott is found dead just outside the party area Laura insists that the party be stopped. Jose is astonished at this apparently absurd notion, telling Laura to stop being “so extravagant.” Laura is appalled at her sister’s lack of concern, which only annoys Jose further. “You won’t bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental,” she tells her sister. Jose assumes the man was drunk simply because he was of the working-class. This last comment infuriates Laura, who immediately turns her attention to her mother.

As expected, Mrs. Sheridan acts just as Jose does, perhaps worse, because the whole situation seems to only amuse her. In response to Larua’s plea, she tells her “If someone had died there normally – and I can’t understand how they keep alive in those poky holes – we should still be having our party, shouldn’t we?” Remarkably, Laura admits that her mother is right. This is quite interesting because it reveals to the reader for the first time the amount of power Mrs. Sheridan holds over her daughters. Laura, deep down, knows that continuing the party is wrong. Laura pleads one final time, to which her mother responds by placing a hat on Laura’s head. What Mrs. Sheridan is trying to do here is call upon Laura’s self-centeredness once again. She tells Laura to look in the mirror, which Laura declines. Laura “couldn’t look at herself.” She knows what her mother is doing, so she quickly exits the room in favor of her own.

Unfortunately, by chance, “the first thing she saw was this charming girl in the mirror.” The mirror literally and symbolically reflects her back upon herself, erasing any concern for another lass. The incident with the dead man “all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper.” If all it takes is one look in the mirror to bring her back to her mother’s beliefs, then they aren’t necessarily her mother’s beliefs anymore. Maybe Laura really does believe that she is above the middle class.

But for all Laura’s faults, the true figure of falsity in the story is Mrs. Sheridan. In a moment of “generosity,” she decides to take all of the leftovers from the party and donate it to the family of the deceased. “Let’s send that poor creature some of this good food,” she says. This is her idea of sympathy, thinking that it will satisfy Laura. It satisfies her enough that she does not press the matter any further.

Since Laura is so concerned with the poor family, Mrs. Sheridan tells her to take the food over herself. On her way, Laura remembers that she is on her way to where a man lies dead, and yet this has no affect on her, to her own confusion. She thought for a moment, and realized that all there is inside her are “kisses, voices, tinkling spoons, laughter, [and] the smell of crushed grass.” Laura is entirely within her own class sensibilities, not matter how much she wants to change. That is who she was raised to be and there is nothing that she can do to change that.

However, Laura at last stumbles upon the young man who has died. She is repulsed, but sees this as something “peaceful.” And in an instant she is changed. “What did garden parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him,” she thinks to herself. Her witnessing of death allows her to see how paltry her own life is. Her mother has kept her inside a Bourgeois bubble, disallowing sustained contact with anyone of a lower class. She has done everything in her power to keep Laura’s head filled with kisses, and tinkling spoons, and crushed grass. But there is nothing her mother could do here. As she looks down on him she realizes that he was “far away from all those things.” Laura almost envies him, truly wishing that she herself could be rid of “these absurd class distinctions.”

It is a sad reality when the class that is responsible for revolutionizing the way western civilization operates is looked at as a failure. The Bourgeois became stagnant; completely satisfied with everything they had accomplished and saw no use for going any further. The purpose of Modernism was to show how withdrawn they had become, to reveal the moral decay from which they suffered. Although the time of “modernist literature” has passed, its message always has modern application. Every day we fail to live in some way – no one is exempt from that. For that reason there will always be literature, to keep humanity grounded by revealing how flawed we truly are.