Review of 'Hysteria' a poem by T.S.Eliot

 'Hysteria' a poem by T.S.Eliot

I request readers to read the poem from the above link first and then only my review. Thanks.

The creator of a modern poem or fiction makes it sharp and powerful with subtlety and much left unsaid. The reader feels and internalizes the work creatively. The scene in a restaurant visualized by T.S.Eliot doesn’t need elaboration. The question before us is how a young woman’s lapse in etiquette was viewed as hysterical both by the narrator and an attendant in the restaurant. In that era hysteria was considered a feminine infirmity. The poet has left unsaid intently watching a stranger is an equal lapse in etiquette. But the men around, waiter and guest alike have the privilege to put a ‘hysterical’ woman in her place. A deeper understanding of the poem reveals, even though not explicit in the poem that the air in the home of the girl in question has nothing to cheer about for her. She is spontaneously happy and jubilant in an outing. Patriarchy has been challenged and today there are certainly laws enacted to check gender discrimination of any kind. But change in the deep rooted psyche of men has a long way to go.

Historians archive chronological events of a community or nation with minute details of geography and interpret them on the leads connectable with other settlements having trade or cultural relationship with them. But the collective psychology of a community and outlook towards various sections of a society often is addressed by anthropologists. Nonetheless the limitations in the contributions of historians and anthropologists are supplemented only by writers. Readers of later generations read in between the lines of the archives of historians only through literature. Reading T.S.Eliot enriches our in-depth understanding of history.