“Aunt Helen” is a short poem illustrating the aftereffects of the narrator’s late-aunt Helen Slingsby’s death. The narrator describes her as being a privileged woman as she lived “near a fashionable square” (Eliot 2) and was “cared for by servants” (Eliot 3). The poem describes how these servants moved on quite quickly after the death of their mistress, lending to the idea of the desire for remembrance, or lack thereof it. When elaborated upon, the story dissolves from an ode to a passed loved one into an example of the unfeeling nature of humans. One line, “now when she died there was silence in heaven / and silence at the end of her street” (Eliot 4-5), can be interpreted either as a nod to the respect that most felt towards her, earning her the right to a “moment of silence”, or it could be representative of the utter impartiality that those around her felt, which is more likely. In the latter situation,  the silence demonstrates the lack of mourning, or the apatheticity (that’s probably not a word), of the characters towards the passing of Helen. Even though these servants had been around her, cared for her, they could care less that she died. Some of them actually seem pleased that she perished, as the housemaid “who had always been so careful while her mistress lived” (Eliot 13) engages in previously hidden scandalous activity with the footman. Everything in their lives proceeds just as before, and “the Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece” (Eliot 10) regardless that its owner had passed, and Helen receives no acknowledgement for having ever been alive, which is a most unsatisfying death.