T. S. Eliot as a “moralist” or “critic of life” shows deep concern for the moral question, ‘how to live.’ Because Eliot experienced the tragic vision of life, he apprehended clearly the differences between failed “unlived life,” and genuine “buried life” or “fullness of life” as expressed in the characters of Henry James and in Matthew Arnold’s poem. “Portrait of a Lady” is a prime example of the “unlived life.” Like a spectator of life, the young male speaker in “Portrait of a Lady” leads a spiritually and morally dead “unlived life.” He shrinks away from his real life and a human relationship with the older lady, who wants friendship or sympathy from him. His passivity and selfishness toward life result in frustration, self-destructiveness and nothingness. So he as a force of evil obstructs the spiritual growth of the other people like a lady, and cannot change his fake life into a new meaningful life in a society. Eliot understands well the negative aspect of life, and by describing it vividly in “Portrait of a Lady,” he warns us not to waste life vainly but try to “live fully” finding a kind of deep, vital, satisfying, emotional “buried life” as a whole human being.

• 허정자(한국외국어대학교) | Jung-Ja Huh