Between his textual narrative of Lil and his reference to Ophelia, Eliot examines the contrast and connection between love, virginity, purity, and exploitation.
Here, the speakers discuss how Lil is not taking care of her appearance and will not be appealing to her husband, then one says “What you get married for if you don’t want children?” This implies that the sole reasons for marriage are sexuality and having children, while the concept of love is not mentioned.
The final line of “The Game of Chess” is “Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, / good night,” which is a reference to Ophelia’s farewell in Hamlet prior to her suicide. By ending the passage with Ophelia’s words of distress, it is implied that Ophelia’s situation is very significant to Eliot’s message.
Ophelia says, in the excerpt from Hamlet, that “To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.”
She mentions arriving at Hamlet’s window as a virgin (a maid – older description for a young unmarried virgin), looking to be his Valentine, or to find love. Ophelia leaves this meeting no longer a maid, or a virgin.
Afterwards, Ophelia adds, “Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.
So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.”
Hamlet promised to marry her, which she was ready for, but instead just slept with her and then shunned her.
Ophelia seems to feel used and exploited for her body. Lil, having already lived a life of five children, chooses to resist the need to appease her husband with superficial changes to her appearance. It is almost as if Lil lived Ophelia’s life, but continued living with a different mindset, though she is still subject to the same expectations and judgement. The difference between the two women is that Lil experiences this while married, and Ophelia is a young unmarried woman. Considering the time period of the piece, having lost her virginity to a man who decides not to marry her after all, Ophelia is left “ruined” and “dishonored” in society and in future romantic relationships. Essentially, by taking her virginity without marrying her, Hamlet has sentenced Ophelia to a life without the authentic love she originally desired.
Left without clear choices and grieving the loss of her father, Ophelia becomes mentally unstable and feels that she has no other option than suicide by drowning. This is significant, because water is most often viewed as spiritually pure, especially as the medium for baptism. At the start of one’s life, they are baptized, and at the end of Ophelia’s life, she drowns.
So, at line 170, when the women in the bar say “goonight” to each other, they are just going home for the night. In the final line, however, when the farewells shift to Ophelia’s voice, she is saying goodbye to the “Game of Chess” – the “game” of a woman experiencing sexual exploitation and a loss of pure connection – and transitioning the reader to the next section where water (the River Thames) becomes polluted and “impure,” as well.