Chess Queens

The second movement of T.S. Eliot's "Waste Land" is called "A Game of Chess," in which he compares and contrasts two women. The first half of Eliot's "Waste Land" paints a picture of a lonely woman living in richness and refinement:

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

It continues on, stealing lines from Shakespeare and describing the woman's sad existence in spite of her many luxuries. Her husband is absent, though it is unclear where he has gone.

That she is "waiting for a knock upon the door" suggests that her husband is a soldier fighting somewhere. Every time she hears a noise, she worries, though it's just "the wind under the door," and she exclaims "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?" She is a prisoner in her mind. The second half portrays the plight of a common woman:

He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.

The second woman, whose name is Lil, has a husband who had been discharged from the army. Having borne five children and not desiring another, she acquires pills to induce the abortion of her sixth. The pills cause her teeth to fall out, and though she becomes unbearable to look at, Lil's husband still won't "leave [her] alone." She is a prisoner in marriage.

The rich woman is a queen on the back of the chess board, and her king is out on the frontline. The poor woman is a queen who, in relation to her king, is more like a pawn, used to satisfy his sensual cravings. The irony here is that each woman wants what the other has. The rich woman longs for companionship, and the poor woman wants to be left alone.

EDIT:  I commented on Mallory Searcy's "Looking into the Heart of Light, the Silence." and Brittany Hilbun's "Adventure Time."