Miss Gee TED

Auden utilises form in Miss Gee to highlight the problems with society, and
the neglect of Miss Gee, which ultimately led to her death. The poem has
100 lines suggesting finality or completion, which could represent the end
of Miss Gee life. Yet, this morbid formation of the poem is juxtaposed
against its jolly, upbeat rhythm: the tune of St James’s Infirmary. This
shows a sense of irony, which is paralleled to Auden’s ideal that sexual
repression leads to ill health, that it is ironic that if you do not act upon
your desires, however bad they may be, that you will become ill.
Moreover, the rhyme scheme of A B C B shows a break and incompletion
in the poem, which could represent that of societies attitude to Miss Gee.
Society are pushing her away and isolating her, showing contempt that
ultimately leads to her downfall, thus again showing Auden, not as a poet
but a lecturer, in highlighting the faults of society.

Stanza 6 shows Miss Gee asking a question ‘Does anyone care that I live in
Clevedon Terrace on one hundred pounds a year? This could be seen as
her attempt to conform and show that she is a normal part of society.
However, it is unanswered suggesting that society do not care that she is
conforming as she is doing nothing out of the ordinary, thus lead to a
repetitive neglect of Miss Gee. Alternative, it could be viewed as rhetorical
question, suggesting that it is a plea from Miss Gee for society to
recognise and integrate her. Moreover, each stanza finishes with an end
stop line, suggesting that her death is categorical and it is fate that she
will die as a result of her life style. Additionally, the chiasmic juxtaposing
of the lexis ‘looked’ is used in stanza 16 so further emphasise the point
that someone, Doctor Thomas, has actually taken notice of Miss Gee, and
has not passed her by like the couple: ‘she passed by the loving couples
and they didn’t ask her to stay.’

Linguistically, Auden links the church to sexual repression, which he

believed, inevitably, led to illness. Miss Gee goes to ‘The Church of Saint
Aloysius’; Saint Aloysius was an extreme Christian who remain celibate his
whole life, however he died young, which Auden believes because he was
a virgin. This is paralleled with Miss Gee who was also sexually repressed,
‘with her clothes buttoned up to her neck’, and like Saint Aloysius, she also
died as a result of this sexual repression. Moreover, this sexual repression
in real life is highlighted by the fact that she only has sexual experiences
in her dreams: ‘she dreamed a dream one evening… she was biking
through a field of corn, and a bull with the face of the Vicar was charging
with lowered horn’. The lexis of a field of corn suggests fertility, that Miss
Gee’s body clock has not ended, and the imagery of Vicar charging with
his ‘lowered horn’ again links religion with sexual repression, as the lower
horn connotes a phallus, and the fact that she can only think these things
in her dreams relates to the sexual repression. This repression is
highlighted by the Doctor who states the reason that Miss Gee has cancer
is due to the fact that she is childless: ‘Childless women get it’. Moreover,
the isolation and repression of society is epitomised in the title of the
poem: ‘Miss Gee’, this shows that she is so repressed that her name is
reduced to being pronounced as 1 letter: ‘G’.