In the Room the Women Come and Go Talking of Michelangelo

T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is anything but romantic. Prufrock takes the reader on a visual journey through the streets of a retched part of town. He enjoys comparing something beautiful to that of something scientific and medical. An important idea that Prufrock mentions is the superficiality of society. "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo." (13-14). The women briefly walk in and out of rooms (possibly rooms in an art gallery) briefly looking around but not actually taking the time to appreciate the artwork. These women, like people in society, believe that throwing out famous artist names like Michelangelo makes them an aficionado of the arts and allows them to seem highly educated amongst their peers. Prufrock denounces their pretentiousness subtly by purposely indicating their behavior two times in the poem. Maybe the reason Prufrock chooses to be alone is he can't find a woman who is as intellectually deep as him. The women he sees are all the same: fixated on the trivial aspects of life (i.e. fitting into society) and lack the time to stop and admire the significance of what the world truly has to offer.