17

I'm reading T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (which you can read for free online) and one particular line stuck out at me:

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—

I have two questions. Is there any symbolism associated with the food "hot gammon"? And what's up with the phrase "to get the beauty of it hot"? Since the passage this quote comes from discusses adultery, is it possible that the phrase "get the beauty of it hot" is referring to something other than the hot gammon?

Improve this question
4
  • I think your second question should be it's own question.
    – user72
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 22:47
  • @EasterlyIrk I disagree, both questions are related, and an answer to one question would necessarily discuss the other question.
    – user111
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 22:49
  • discuss != answer the second question (or the first)
    – user72
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 22:50
  • 1
    I wonder if this question might be improved by adding some wider context, i.e. more lines from the poem around this quote? At first glance it looks as though you've just picked a random quote and are trying to read a lot of meaning into it when it could mean nothing more than what it looks like literally ... but after looking at the poem and seeing the "hurry up please it's time" lines on either side, I do agree it looks as though this passage has some greater interest or significance.
    – Rand al'Thor ♦
    Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 17:59

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

In the paper "Gloss on 'Gammon' in The Waste Land, II, Line 166" (available on JSTOR), Sukhbir Singh points out that the word gammon has two meanings. Gammon can refer to a type of food, specifically the cured hind leg of a hog. But gammon is also a verb meaning "to make pretense" or to say deceitful things. On a very basic level, the use of the word gammon is a pun referring to both the dinner and the implied affair.

The pun goes a bit further. Gammon was thought to be an aphrodisiac, so the word gammon is yet another reference to sex. And Eliot refers to sexuality again by describing the gammon as "hot"; hot refers to sexual desire.

These two lines make a comparison sexual desire and hunger for food. Singh makes the argument that this comparison supports the theme in The Waste Land of humanity's degeneration. If you want to learn more about that, I would encourage you to check out Singh's paper.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    "hot is slang for sexual desire" - does that usage of "hot" really go back as far as 1922?
    – Rand al'Thor ♦
    Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 17:55
  • 3
    It goes back a bit farther ... The Canterbury Tales has "And hoot he was and lecherous as a Sparwe" (Prologue l.628).
    – Gareth Rees
    Commented Feb 7, 2018 at 14:02
-1

There are obvious sexual connotations to this part of the poem. I also reckon that the next repeated phrase "HURRY UP PLEASE" is tonally allusive to newspapers (the capital print and rushing). Perhaps this typography is both dig at earlier modernisms, like imagism and BLAST, and leaves us with the taste of ham in our mouth, gossip and innuendo. Beauty may not be truth, but at least it's hot.

Improve this answer
1
  • I don't think HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME is allusive to newspapers, I think it suggests the setting of the triangle story, where the preaching voice - belonging to the adulterous female, the supposed mistress of her friend's husband now at war - is AT WORK IN A BAR, AND HURRIES HER CLIENTS OUT, BECAUSE 'IT/S TIME', i.e., CLOSING TIME. While all along has the chat with some other female friend, gossiping about Albert's wife, the one who looks so 'andtique' while being 'only thirty-one'. An Albert which she evidently fancies.
    – Oana
    Commented Feb 2, 2023 at 16:55