By the margin, willow veil'd, Slide the heavy barges trail'd By slow horses; and unhail'd The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott?
I consider it an allegory, though unintentional, of life in computing: do we not work a magic loom with a screen that shows us the world? And what happens when we see the "real" world? Somehow Plato's Allegory of the Cave in the Republic seems mixed in with all of this...or Ada Lovelace...
Update, as of 2005: The whole idea of this rests on the idea of digital computing being a development of Jaquard's Loom, as utilized by Charles Babbage and Ada Byron King, Lady Lovelace, who devised the Difference Engine, and the fact that in classic wall hanging weaving, there is a mirror (of polished metal or mirrored glass) set into the loom to monitor the work, which also monitors whatever's behind the worker.
Ada Lovelace was in every sense, both her father's daughter, and yet, something else: standing between the masculine, free-and-easy Georgian era and the feminized, yet repressed, Victorian era, she managed at least one great correspondence, and a few great ideas before succumbing to cancer and a few vices...
The Lady of Shallot in Tennyson's poem has been equated with Elayne, daughter of The Fisher King, who falls in love with Lancelot, and seduces him, with the help of Morgan le Fay, by taking on the visage of Queen Guinevere. Elayne bears Galahad, and dies, her heart broken by Lancelot's indifference. Her body is placed in a boat, and floated to Camelot in a boat to reproach him.
I don't buy this explanation. The Lady is more removed from the Arthur story than this - she is an observer, and not even a direct observer. Outside her window, away from the isle, we can see people and activity, bustle and buzz. The Lady can watch all this, dimly reflected in a mirror, but she is set apart. There is a curse that prevents her from looking at Camelot directly, its terms unspecified, but implicitly dreadful.
At first the Lady is content. She has her work to do, her web to weave. She is enchanted by the shadows that dance for her. But, over time, she grows aware that she is missing out, becoming dissatisfied as she hears the sounds of lovers at night. She becomes lonely. Finally, Sir Lancelot, every maiden's dream, comes into view. This is temptation that cannot be resisted, and the Lady risks disaster.
For a wonderful moment, she is part of the real world. Everything is laid out before her in brilliant colour, and beauty; and then the curse comes and snatches it away. Destroyed by her boldness, she dies, and her epitaph is spoken by her unknowing slayer.
Leah M. Sanger in her essay Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" and the Woman's Place in Victorian Society suggests that the story illustrates the tension between the the traditional and emerging roles of women - the move from cloistered, domestic life, protected and removed from the real world, into an active role where she can be touched, tainted and ultimately destroyed.
Sanger draws no conclusions on Tennyson's position - certainly he seems sympathetic to the Lady's loneliness, but even so, he punishes her for her boldness in rejecting her predestined role.
Ultimately, the Lady can't win - a situation that makes her appealing to teenage girls like Anne of Green Gables the world over. She is the archetypal tragic heroine, beautiful, sheltered, and doomed to live without love, or die reaching for it. What could be more romantic?
Yet I can't stop laughing when I read it because it reminds me of that Monty Python and the Holy Grail bit where Brave, Brave Sir Robin boldly rides forth with his minstrels. But I'll stop being immature and talk about the poem...
The social context is, of course, significant; Tennyson wrote the poem during a period of social and intellectual change, where people began to question accepted wisdom, and pursue their own line of questioning. Thus the poem may represent Tennyson's desire as an artist to shatter the barrier that held him back from reality, but it is also a comment on the very nature of the artist, who strives to perfect his art and may only achieve perfection in death. Tennyson, from the first stanza, presents us with two distinct and separated areas: nature, and the Lady's walled tower. The tower, a phallic image in itself, conveys the manner in which masculine dominance in the Victorian era led to creative and intellectual suffocation for women. Alternatively, considering Freudian theory, one could consider the image of a female imprisoned by a phallic structure to represent the emasculation that Tennyson feels as a poet, because outside, the "willows whiten, aspens quiver,/Little breezes dusk and shiver/ Thro' the wave that runs for ever." The language clearly emphasizes the magnitude of nature's creativity, and its freedom, yet the Lady cannot even look on jealously because she has been cursed. Observing this beauty through a mirror, she tries in vain to recreate it on her tapestry, but the sheer futility of this is demonstrated through the images of perpetuity and passivity in the fifth stanza. She weaves "night and day" and "She has heard a whisper say,/ A curse is on her if she stay/ to Look down to Camelot." Firstly, the pace and repetitive rhyme scheme conveys the sense of continuity, and crucially, it tells us that despite Romantic poetry's fixation with the individual, Tennyson accepts the ultimate insignificance of the individual, or perhaps the artist.
The "curse" is the conceit of the poem, and once again, could firstly suggest the misogyny inherent in Victorian society: by labelling it a curse, Tennyson satirises his contemporaries' refusal to believe that change was necessary and even possible. Recognising female repression as outdated and redundant, the irony is clear when he calls it preordained. However, a more interesting understanding of the curse would seem to involve a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, as teleny suggests. In the same way as the people in the cave, the Lady, as an artist would, draws her perception of nature which she must view through a mirror. The mirror, however, in Renaissance times and later, was symbolic of self-delusion and vanity thus suggesting that any perception the Lady makes, and any art she creates is tainted by hr own prejudices and beliefs. The repressed images and dark colours (the castle is described as having "four gray walls, and four gray towers"), then, seem to signify Tennyson's frustration with this growing gap between reality and perception, and his inability to cope with the sheer beauty of reality manifests itself as the realisation of the curse, which causes the mirror to crack "from side to side" and the web to fly out of the window. The surreal, violent images are sexual at times because the Lady's encounter's with reality is destructive, but at the same time an epiphany. While searching for the perfect art form, Tennyson feels that he has broken out of the cave and the destruction of the tapestry represents to me its relative insignificance and triviality in comparison to the colourful, dynamic environment - that is to say, what use is making paintings and sculptures when we have stunning landscapes, flowing rivrs and mountain ranges that look better than anything the human hand can manage (note I'm not necessarily agreeing with that)? I also feel that this artistic inspiration is personified to an extent by "Sir Lancelot" whose "helmet and ... helmet-feather/ Burn'd like one burning flame together." The images are dazzling yet harmful, and the passion the Lady feels for Lancelot is all -consuming. So, Tennyson's quest slowly eats away at him, and his frustration at being unable to clearly depict the reality he has seen (through his art) leaves him in mental conflict. The mere "tapestry" is unable to capture the infinite, brilliant aspects of nature like "the sun" that came "dazzling thro' the leaves," the "starry clusters" or "the blue unclouded weather."
Consumed by her desire for art, the Lady ignores prophesies of her death like the "funeral with plumes and lights" and the "bearded meteor In fact, the latter image shows the manner in which Tennyson ironically illustrates this separation of reality and perception: The beard on the meteor is in fact its trail, yet the image conceals the true nature of the world that the Lady sees. I believe that the "broad stream" is another mythological allusion to the River Styx, and in a "trance" that symbolises her total detachment from the real world, that is way beyond her tiny little human brain. Walter Pater once said (something like) "all art aspires to the condition of music," and the lady achieves this musical perfection, although in death. It is tragic, sad but beautiful.
There is of course more that once can say about this poem, simply because there are so many interpretations and the imagery is so complicated. James Joyce was someone who wrote extensively about the quest for the perfect art form, and although I can't claim to have read either, I know that Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explore this theme, portraying the quest as a sense of loss and wandering. Dubliners, a fantasic novel, also explores this, particularly in the stories Two Gallants and Clay.
The subject of numerous paintings, illustrations, a famous poem, and a fairly well-known song. Of the paintings, I will only focus on those most famous, as to examine every depiction of the Lady of Shalott would be difficult, as I have yet to see a full catalogue.
John William Waterhouse:
When I was in college (the late 1990s), it seemed as if a poster of this particular painting was given to every incoming freshman girl as she moved into the dorm. It's not hard to imagine why--here is unrequited love at its most tragic, and frankly, melodramatic. Not unlike a teenage girl, myself included.
This particular painting is on display at the Tate in London. In person, the details become much more impressive, no doubt due to its massive size.
What is most interesting about Waterhouse's Lady is that despite the different models, each figure comes across as a sturdy, even serious young woman, fully aware of her curse.
William Holman Hunt 1886-1905: The Lady of Shalott In an ornate chamber, decorated with images of angels, fruits, trees, and other such things the Lady cannot go near, she stands inside a ring, seemingly entangled by one of her tapestries. She is barefoot, dynamic, in the middle of turning, perhaps away from the mirror facing us the viewers, and out towards the window towards Lancelot. Like Waterhouse's 1916 version, this Lady is active, aware, and making the most of her fate.
Arthur Hughes 1873: The Lady of Shalott The Lady, dead in her bower, is found seen by women who stand upon the bank with sad looks on their faces. The Lady is a ghostly white, while the women are in robust colors. Not my favorite, but worth noting.
John Sidney Meteyard 1913: The Lady of Shalott Here, the Lady is lounging in a chair, seemingly asleep, as a figure is seen in her round mirror. Like other depictions, the scene is both claustrophobic and lush with color; she sits before her loom, and is surrounded by flowers.
William Maw Egley 1858: "The Lady of Shalott" Like Waterhouse's 1894 piece, this depicts the Lady having turned from her work and her mirror to gaze on Lancelot's actual form, thus triggering her death. While lush, it doesn't work as well in depicting the Lady's captivity, nor her curse; there is a very large glass window which takes up much of the background, and which is not the window she is gazing from. Ultimately, while very pretty, it doesn't accurately reflect the poem.
Many of the images for these paintings can be found at this website: http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/7303/shallot.htm
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