"Living and Partly Living"
             The Chorus plays an important role in T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral." In order to help show what was happening throughout the book, T.S. Eliot made the women of Canterbury the Chorus. This gave him many advantages due to the fact that women, at the time, were looked down upon and disregarded as insignificant beings. The character of the Chorus also changes, changing the mood of the play.
             Since women were disregarded as being insignificant, a lot of things happened in front of them because the men knew that other people wouldn't listen to them, since they were just women. T.S. Eliot uses the choir to witness all that is happening, "We are forced to bear witness." (Chorus) This gives him and advantage. Since women were uneducated, he portrays them as people who do not think and ponder things but merely repeat what they see and what they know, without any of their own interjections, "They know and do not know." (Thomas)
             T.S. Eliot also uses the chorus to help foreshadow events, "O Thomas, Archbishop; return, return to France. Return. Quickly. Quietly. Leave us to perish in quiet. You come with applause, you come with rejoicing, but you come bringing death into Canterbury: a doom on the house, a doom on yourself a doom on/ the world." (Chorus) Here he uses the Chorus to foreshadow Thomas's death.
             T.S. Eliot also uses the women to help shift the mood of the play. At the opening of Part I, the women give off a sense of fright and danger, "Here let us stand, close by the cathedral. Here let us wait. Are we drawn by danger? Is it the knowledge of safety, that draws our feet towards the cathedral?" (Chorus) Again, at the end of Part I, the women reaffirm their fright, " but now a new terror has soiled us, which none can avert...O Thomas, archbishop, save us, save us, save yourself/ that we might be saved; destroy yours
             ...