Why I Love ‘The Lady of Shalott’
Alfred Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ is a storytelling wonder. The poem carries a magic to its words that not even the tedium of A-Level English Literature could stifle for me. The image of the Lady of Shalott sat in a boat, floating down the river to her death, famously captured the pre-Raphaelite imagination, successfully ticking all their boxes with Arthurian legend, the natural world and a mysterious, ethereal woman at the centre of the action. Personally, I adore ‘The Lady of Shalott’ for its fascinating, complex and multi-layered web of imagery and symbolism, that is just as bewitching today as it was to readers in the 1800s.
The story is as follows. Just outside of Camelot, on a little island called Shalott, a lady sits alone in her tower. A mysterious curse forbids her from looking out of the window, so instead she observes the world through a carefully positioned mirror and crafts tapestries of the reflected view. One fateful day, Sir Lancelot rides gallantly past her window, unaware of the lady’s presence. The sunlight flashes vividly on his silver armour and the glare shines in the mirror. Her attention caught by the dazzling light, the lady abandons her weaving and walks over to the window.
Suddenly, the mirror cracks and the tapestry flies across the room. “The curse is come upon me,” cries the lady, knowing her time is up. That night, dressed in white, she leaves her tower in the midst of a mighty storm and writes her name across the prow of an abandoned boat. Then, she unhooks it and lies down inside as it floats along the river. The vessel eventually washes into Camelot, carrying the dead Lady of Shalott. On seeing this woman of legend, the townsfolk cross themselves in fear, except Sir Lancelot, who pauses to note that she has a nice face.
I first fell in love with ‘The Lady of Shalott’ for this powerful narrative. You don’t need to understand the poetic technicalities of enjambment or tetrameter to enjoy the sense of foreboding that runs throughout the poem’s lines. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but I always feel a powerful sense of suspense whenever I turn back to it. Tennyson also includes some wonderfully open-ended mysteries for us literary folk to get our teeth into: What is the curse? Who placed it on her? And for how long has the Lady of Shalott been weaving all alone inside her tower?
Within these ambiguities lie some interesting comments on Victorian society. For example, the question of the poem’s stance on female empowerment heavily divides critics. There’s many who argue that the Lady of Shalott is overwhelmed by the raw, burning sexuality of Lancelot, and her death represents female destruction by the forces of masculinity. However, others think that her actions are an intervention to boldly remove herself from the only two choices available to her, and other Victorian women: remain autonomous, virginal and sexually repressed, or submit to desire and live under a man’s control for the rest of her life.
Quite simply, she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. Viewed in this light, perhaps the ‘curse’ upon her is an attitude of society rather than an otherworldly force. Indeed, on finally seeing the Lady of Shalott, Lancelot only remarks that “she has a lovely face,” said with the indifference of a man viewing a Tinder profile he might swipe right on. By ending on this apathetic comment from her gallant knight, Tennyson seems to conclude by suggesting that the lady has quite rightly saved herself a lot of bother.
The poem is also famed for its comments on the life of an artist, and the isolation this often entails. From her remote situation on the island of Shalott, the tapestries that the lady creates are inspired by a filtered view of the world, observed not through her own eyes but through a reflection. However, when she finally welcomes reality into her space, the tapestry (i.e. her art) flies away in response to this intrusion.
Furthermore, when her knight in shining armour arrives, us literature geeks love the replacement of ‘Shalott’ with ‘Lancelot’ in the poem’s repeated refrain, emphasising that the knight marks a crude interruption into the lady’s artistic space. It seems like Tennyson is using this poem to consider his own craft, and he suggests that a certain distance from reality is required to produce an artistic response to it. In short, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ is a work of art that questions its own process of creation.
It’s safe to say that long periods of isolation in lockdown have left me feeling more ‘Lady of Shalott-ish’ than ever before. However, it’s also been a good time to reunite myself with some of my favourite works of literature, and this poem will always be top of my list.
Written by Carla van der Sluijs
Carla's 9 to 5 day is based in technical PR, and in the evenings she likes to unwind from the semiconductors by scribbling in notebooks. Though initially focussed on theatre, she has since expanded her writing to encompass all of life's other dramas. She currently resides in a cottage in Buckinghamshire, but has previously lived abroad in Italy and Russia. She can be found on Twitter under @carlavds21 or at her personal blog 'The Carla Chronicles’.