Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” is a poem that\u00a0tells the story of a cursed lady\u00a0imprisoned in a tower on\u00a0the island of Shalott near the city of Camelot. Through her curse, she is unable to look outside of her window into the real world. As a result, she is forced to live a life where she weaves a tapestry all day every day unable to see the world except through the reflection of her mirror. Although the tale\u00a0seems to focus on an unattainable love, a much more Victorian understanding\u00a0is unraveled when one focuses on the role of the lady\u00a0of Shallot.<\/p>\n
No time hath she to sport and play:<\/p>\n
A charmed web she weaves alway.<\/p>\n
A curse is on her, if she stay<\/p>\n
Her weaving, either night or day,<\/p>\n
To look down to Camelot.<\/p>\n
She knows not what the curse may be;<\/p>\n
Therefore she weaveth steadily,<\/p>\n
Therefore no other care hath she,<\/p>\n
The Lady of Shalott.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In the first stanza of the second part of Alfred Lord Tennyson\u2019s \u201cThe Lady of Shalott\u201d a woman is introduced, described as unattainable, composed, and dedicated to her womanly tasks \u2013 all of which an ideal Victorian woman should embody. She is described as being \u201ccursed.\u201d However, the reason for her curse is unknown to readers, as the woman herself does not even known the reason. Despite the passing of knights on horseback, priests, etc., the lady \u201cstill delights [in her web] \/ To weave the mirror’s magic sights,\u201d showing how dedicated she is to fulfilling her tasks (which is weaving the beautiful world around her).<\/p>\n
Despite the \u201cperfection\u201d to which the lady seems to embody, her downfall becomes evident when a man by the name of Sir Lancelot passes by her tower. Depicted as the most dashing and chivalrous of all knights, the lady of Shallot cannot help but look away from her mirror to see the image of the great knight from outside of her window.<\/p>\n
She left the web, she left the loom<\/p>\n
She made three paces thro’ the room<\/p>\n
She saw the water-flower bloom,<\/p>\n
She saw the helmet and the plume,<\/p>\n
She look’d down to Camelot.<\/p>\n
Out flew the web and floated wide;<\/p>\n
The mirror crack’d from side to side;<\/p>\n
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried<\/p>\n
The Lady of Shalott.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Up until this point in the poem, the lady of Shallot is considered the ideal woman because she is isolated from society\u2019s temptations, making her a very innocent individual. However, when Lancelot comes to the scene, she is no longer the innocent woman she once was because she is tempted by her desire to see the real Lancelot \u2013 that is, Lancelot from outside of her window, not from the reflection in\u00a0her mirror. From this point forward, she exits her tower, entering a world where evil lurks.<\/p>\n
This particular poem breathes domesticity. While men are constantly passing the tower doing \u201cmanly\u201d things (most likely), the lady of Shallot is confined to her tower, where she is subdued with tasks such as \u201cweaving a web.\u201d As a result of her unawareness\u00a0of the outside world, the lady leads an ideal life (from a Victorian standpoint) because she is unaffected by society’s temptations. However, the instance that she decides to look away from her mirror outside into the real world, she knows what is going to happen: death.<\/p>\n
Tennyson\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Lady of Shallot,\u201d seems to function as an admonition. He\u00a0introduces an interesting story about a woman and her newfound infatuation for the great Sir Lancelot to write that, when women escape their\u00a0domestic lifestyle\u00a0comprised of “womanly”\u00a0tasks, the ultimate conclusion is death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” is a poem that\u00a0tells the story of a cursed lady\u00a0imprisoned in a tower on\u00a0the island of Shalott near the city of Camelot. Through her curse, she is unable to look outside of her window into the real world. As a result, she is forced to live a life … Continue reading The Result of Temptation in “The Lady of Shallot”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2975,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}