The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock?

Question

I am analyzing this poem for an English class, and I understand most of it, but I have been unable to figure out the significance of the repeated quote:

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."

If anyone has read this poem, I would greatly appreciate any help that you can give me. If you haven't read it, I don't expect you to because it is so long, but I included a link anyway.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

Prufrock's continual return to the "women [who] come and go / Talking of Michelangelo" and his recurrent questionings ("how should I presume?") and pessimistic appraisals ("That is not it, at all.") both reference an earlier poetic tradition and help Eliot describe the consciousness of a modern, neurotic individual. Prufrock's obsessiveness is aesthetic, but it is also a sign of compulsiveness and isolation. Another important formal feature is the use of fragments of sonnet form, particularly at the poem's conclusion.


http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section1.html

Answer 2

The repeated line is meant to criticize the trivialization of art by the bourgeois as the subject of the day during Eliot's time.

In context:
.....
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask what, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And then again:
......
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

In the first instance a visit is to be made and the second refers to taking tea and toast. On both there is the possibility of trivial conversation. Eliot uses Michelangelo, since he is one of the most famous Renaissance artists, as an example of how high art was trivialized to the point of being nearly debased for the sake of bourgeois entertainment. Most didn't even know what they were talking about, they just knew it was important and wanted to sound educated.

This is one of my favorite poems, I am fascinated with it. The ending is what has always puzzled me the most. "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/by sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown/Till human voices wake us and we drown."