by Anna Yaguexta

Created on: March 12, 2009

"The Lady of Shalott," a poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1839, entails the unfulfilled life of the Lady of Shalott and her eventual death because of her restricted existence. This poem represents a female breaking out against the restrictions placed upon her in conventional Victorian society, although it is set in the Arthurian Era.

In Part I of this poem we learn of the Lady as she appears in comparison to the outside world. Only the reapers "hear her song that echoes cheerly" (line 30). No one ever sees her at the window or down upon the land. The lady is secluded from her world, physically because of the water and the height of her tower, and because of her womanly "duties"-her weaving, which is how she spends all of her time.

The reader is also never told what she is thinking, much like in Victorian society, where the woman's voice is often not heard, or where women just refuse to speak because they know it is futile. In Part II the Lady "knows not what the curse may be/And so she weavesth steadily/And little other care hath she (lines 42-44). The Lady does not ever seem to think twice about why this curse has been put upon her or how she can be freed of it. She just accepts her fate, which is the main problem with Victorian society as Florence Nightingale mentions in Cassandra when she says, "Awake, ye women, all ye that sleep awake" (1625). The Lady is asleep to her dull reality.

Because the Lady can only look through her mirror, she never learns much of the world. The mirror "hangs before her all the year" (line 47) and all she sees are "shadows" (line 48). She is deprived of direct contact with humanity and all that make her human-love, purposeful work, and freedom. Her own life is only a shadow in the vast reality of the world below. In Part II, the Lady says, "I am half sick of shadows" (line 71) because she hears the two lovers. In Part III, Lancelot is introduced in the poem, and when the Lady hears his voice singing, she is compelled to leave her idle work and turn to the window. It is then that "the mirror crack'd from side to side (line 115) and the curse seized her with death. Although the life she has is lost, her greatest curse is that she dies unfulfilled and unrecognized much like Cassandra and other women of the Victorian era. She went "silent into Camelot" (line 158).

Learn more about this author, Anna Yaguexta.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.