Preludes Society and Class Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Line)

Quote #1

From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands. (16-18)

Those muddy feet are the feet of the working class, who wake early to get their coffee and get to work. It's an unpleasant image, even if you don't have trouble getting out of bed early in the morning. The mud is leftover from last night's cold rain, and nobody wants to wake up just to get cold and muddy. With these lines, Eliot brings back the gloom from earlier in the poem to remind us of the struggles faced by the working class.

Quote #2

You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands. (36-38)

Back then, if you were unable to afford a curling iron to create stylish curls, strips of newspaper would be the next best thing. Eliot shows us a snippet of how poverty affects the lives of women, who are unable to get beauty supplies or even bathe properly. It's an image as equally unpleasant as the images of the working and business class; all of society is shown to be facing some type of grime (ew).

Quote #3

Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock; (18-19)

At the end of the day, everyone leaves their jobs en-masse and enters the street. These are the business people, and they trample the soul of those less fortunate because they are too busy to even see them. Though Eliot doesn't depict them as being dirty or stuck in mud, the upper classes still have their own type of "dirt." They're morally dirty.