The Lady of Shalott like Tennyson's earlier Mariana contains an imprisoned woman who is forced to live in isolation. However, The lady of Shalott does not live in dejection. She is for the most part content to live inside her "four gray walls" and weave at her loom (line 15). The lady can live a happy existence as long as she does not look upon Camelot and she complies with her restriction to look at the world through shadows. Only when she sees funerals or weddings, which represent the ideal of love for other people, does she lament "I am half sick of shadows" (line 71). After all, The lady of Shalott's isolation prevents her from falling in love or experiencing love, but she can watch the shadows live a life she can never experience. Her destiny is to work at her loom and if she turns her curse will befall her (line 40). However, once the lady hears Lancelot and sees him in the mirror, she leaves her loom and looks down to Camelot (line 109-113). She sails down to Camelot trying to reach Lancelot and not worrying about the curse. While she sails towards Camelot, she begins to die. She sang until "till her blood was frozen" (line 147). The lady dies before she reaches Camelot.
The Lady of Shalott addresses an age old question: how far would one go for love? The lady lived a life without love or the company of others. She does so contently for the most part, but she does feel that a part of her life is missing which is evident when she grows tired of the shadows. The lady desires a life beyond isolation, yet she does not dare discover what her curse entails until she hears Lancelot's "tirra lirra" (line 106). She falls in love with Lancelot, and her love or her chance at love with Lancelot is what gives her the courage to face her curse. She leaves everything she has ever known, and risks her life in order to experience love.
Tennyson wants people to see that life is short, and they should be living it how they see fit. Life is too short for them to live life without experiencing a full and happy life. Love is what people should be living for and looking for. The lady gives up her work and her old life for her love. The lady's life may have been content at her loom and looking at shadows, but she was not truly living. She was living a half-life, a life that prevented her from experiencing emotions. She was living as a drone, and once she falls in love with Lancelot, she would rather experience the wrath of her curse than live with the shadows.
Lauren,
ReplyDeleteGood commentary on this poem, with your usual adept handling of textual passages and analysis. But do you really think she loves Lancelot? She has not even met or spoken to him, only seen him from a distance and heard him sing. Seems more like Tennyson is cautioning about infatuation than celebrating love here!
"It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all." This poem could be compared to the story of Adam and Eve. By leaving her "Garden of Eden" she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and metaphorically "died."
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