This paper intends to reveal that Eliot’s life has a good influence on his poems, especially appearing in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats which was published in 1939. But a version of it was announced by Faber and Faber, as “Mr. Eliot’s Book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats as Recited to him by the Man in White Spats,’ in the spring of 1936. Therefore we need to feel out the period from before and between 1936 to 1939, when Eliot suffered fromdomestic problems ashe tried to divorce his wife Vivienne, and Vivienne herself was confined to the mental hospital Northumberland House in 1938. So this paper deals with his personal experiences (or situations and accidents) happening through his unhappy marriage, especially the emotional conflicts between him and his wife Vivienne in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

This paper intends to reveal that Eliot’s life entered a profound influence upon his earlier poems, especially in the unpublished work, Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917, which was edited by Christopher Ricks in 1996. Eliot said that there might be the experience of a child of ten, a small boy peering through sea-water in a rock-pool, and finding a sea-anemone for the first time: the simple experience (not so simple, for an exceptional child, as it looks) might lie dormant in his mind for twenty years, and re-appear transformed in some verse-context charged with great imaginative pressure. This paper deals with the personal experiences of his early years, from his boyhood to the time when he returned for the autumn term of 1911 and enrolled as a graduate student in philosophy; that is, the inhibiting circumstances from Unitarianism, the emotional conflicts between him and his parents from preparing for Harvard University, and from his mother’s opposition to studying abroad in Paris in 1910. In his poetry, Eliot reveals his passion for studying abroad in Paris that he kept in his mind even before graduation from Harvard University, and he also expresses his circumstances through his poems indirectly, something which he would not dare communicate directly to his strict family. For example, in the situation that he already had lost interest in Boston, the streets already seemed so boring and also it seemed the “Mandarins” says the oppressed feelings of his family that had been against the abroad study. He also expresses himself as a clownesque or a marionette, which even can’t make any decision about themselves.

Centering around with the marriage in 1915, in the poems that were written before the year we can find characters who are timid and indecisive. It is because Eliot grew up in the puritan family and so he controlled his passions in everything. In the poems that were written after the marriage we can find Eliot's negative views about women. It is because Eliot was influenced on his father and daughters thinking that “Sex and sin were the same thing” (Matthews 22) and on Vivienne's having a chronic nervous disease, a headache, and stomach cramps and on Vivienne's having been involved with not her husband but other men. In conclusion, Eliot transformed all the situations caused from Eliot's unhappy marriage with Vivienne into the materials for the poems. Especially we can find the negative views about women in his poetry written after the marriage.

In his critical essay, “Virgil and the Christian World,” On Poetry and Poets(1957), Eliot said that “a poet may believe that he is expressing only his private experience; his lines may be for him only a means of talking about himself without giving himself away.” His theory of impersonality is a way of talking about himself without giving himself away. He could escape from personality and emotion by throwing up all of his mental anguish which he had suffered from and then transforming it into the materials for the poems. Indeed several times he talked about how “every poet starts from his own emotions.” What he is trying to say, through the theory of impersonality, is that every poet should do his best to transform his personal experience and suffering into the materials that can be considered to be objective and general. But he has a contradiction in his impersonal theory by way of showing his experiences more personal than objective or general especially in the early poetry. Eliot used ‘persona’ figures in his poems, through whom his personal experiences and thoughts would be spoken indirectly by means of dramatic monologue. Eliot, who was raised in a Unitarian family, was a shy, timid, and self-conscious person. Using ‘persona’ was a proper way for Eliot to hide himself behind it and speak his own mind and feelings through it. In conclusion, the childhood memories of Eliot re-appear, are transformed and are charged with great imaginative pressure. It is believed that the biographical elements are the key to unraveling the mystery hidden in Eliot’s poetry.