The second section of The Waste Land entitled A Game of Chess gets subdivided in

to two parts, each dealing with the theme of sterility in matrimonial-sexual rel
ationship. The title has been derived from Thomas Middleton s drama Women Beware W
omen, a play of endless sexual intrigues. Bianca a young wife is seduced by a lu
stful middle aged Duke while the latter s pimp keep Bianca s mother in law engaged i
n playing a game of chess. The moves of the game of chess outside are made to su
ggest the moves of the seduction by the Duke inside and allude to the tragic con
sequences to follow.
The very opening scene is laid in the drawing room of a fashionable lady called
the Lady of Situations, an expert in sex intrigues. Her gorgeous drawing room is
replete with the smells of voluptuousness. The paintings and other works of art
, employed over here, refer to the stories of ancient love and rape. The story o
f Philomel, the raped girl transformed into nightingale later on, bears a symbol
of purification through suffering, but in modern times of sexual perversion the
re is a queer degeneration of love into lust without any hope of regeneration. T
he Lady of Situations is waiting for her lover every now and then, who arrives a
fter sometimes. Her complain of headache is representative of the nervous breakd
own of a modern woman. In the aftermath of some pretty conversations, the lady d
esires to run out into the streets. Her empty aimless routine of daily life repr
esents the barren life of a modern woman. Having gone through her dull routine o
f hot water bath in the morning followed by a game of chess in the afternoon at
the club and so on, we are reminded of the aimless running of rats among the dea
d bones. Showing an example of monotony of routine life and of the exhausted ner
ves Eliot has made the lover silently expressing his agony to his beloved: