Some critics say Eliot was making a general statement about the modern human condition in the 20th century. What might he be saying generally about...

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” indeed represents the challenge of modernity to human connection and relationships through its portrayal of its middle-aged protagonist. Like the protagonist of Matthew Arnold's "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse", Prufrock is "wandering between two worlds, one dead,/ The other powerless to be born."

Eliot began writing the poem in 1910 and it was first published in 1915. As Prufrock is middle-aged, this means that Prufrock is not a fully "modern" man, but rather a product of the Victorian era (Victoria reigned from 1 May 1876 – 22 January 1901) who now is embedded in the modern world but does not quite belong to it.

Prufrock is a member of the upper middle classes, who dresses conservatively and follows social conventions. He comes from an era when a man of his class, before proposing marriage would make an appointment with the prospective bride's father to formally ask permission to address his daughter. The father, before the appointment, would normally consult his daughter. By the time the suitor actually proposed, he already knew the answer. Although Victorian customs may now seem stifling to us, what they provided was certainty and structure, whether in terms of social hierarchies or intimate relationships. Although we do not know if Prufrock's question is a proposal, a proposition, or something else, we do get a sense of his discomfort at asking an important question without knowing the answer beforehand.

In the period after the death of Queen Victoria, social and sexual relationships became freer, with less fixed conventions or certainties. Prufrock, a character of the Victorian era caught up in the shifting modern world is beset with uncertainty, as one can see in the lines:

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” ...

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Although Prufrock speaks in the past tense, saying "for I have known them all already", the future of the modern world, of his place in it, and of his relationships to its denizens remain terrifyingly uncertain, and Prufrock is a meticulous, but not courageous, man, who is constantly second-guessing himself. 

The women in his social circle seem to him to be going through motions which appear similar to those he understood from the conventions of his youth, but he is afraid not only that he does not understand what lies underneath these actions, but is also afraid that his very discomfort and unfamiliarity with the new modern world make him appear absurd in the eyes of younger women. 

At the end of the poem, we see Prufrock come to accept an identity, acknowledging that he is growing old and that the "mermaids" will not sing to him.