Annotating "The Lady of Shalott" was an engaging process. Tennyson layers references and commentary on the social position of women and their lack of social mobility. The first impression of the poem is the base description of the Lady falling to her doom through her attraction to Lancelot. However, there are more intricate details within the poem that come to light through a focused critical analysis. The text is rife with allusions but what I enjoyed most was the symbols of the constrained life of the Lady of Shalott.
In William Holman Hunt's interpretation, the isolation of the Lady is exaggerated through her immediate physical bonds (the wool that she is weaving around herself) and those that have been imposed upon her by external forces in the form of her tower. This is superimposed by smothering guilt in the illustrations within her chamber. The frame to the left seems to depict shields (representing the work of the state to protect her), the frame on the right depicts the crucifixion of Christ (representing religion protecting her purity), and in the centre frame is Lancelot riding past (representing the work of mankind to shelter her). In the case of each of these frames that both are gazed upon and gaze upon the Lady, their represented subjects are ignorant as to the Lady's wishes. All of these attempts to protect her and shelter her effectively cloister her and alienate her from her own desires. The Lady is placed on a pedestal, rendering her an object rather than a subject as the will of the state, the church, and man is imposed unto her.
Context elucidates the themes put forward in the text (such as women's rights, the suffocation of societal expectations, and the limitations placed on free will). An understanding of the Matrimonial Causes Act, the role of women as objectified models in the illustration industry, and the restraints on women's mobility through societal expectations add to the interpretation of the text. It was issues like this that would later precipitate the women's rights movement. Through a modern lens, it also highlights problematic issues with Dante Gabriel Rossetti's interpretation using Lancelot as the central character and the Lady of Shalott as a prop. Whether this is an ironic self-critique or not is questionable.
Comments
Lancelot as Central Character, Lady of Shalott as Prop
Submitted by Lorraine Kooistra on
Your end to this very interesting analysis inspires me to share a real-life story about DGR and his model (later wife) Elizabeth Siddall. When Lizzie died of a drug overdose in February 1862 (a month before her sister-in-law Christina published Goblin Market and Other Poems), Dante Gabriel Rossetti was distraught. He felt guilty for his wife's death, which appears to have been by her own hand. In remorse, he put his manuscript of poems in the coffin , to be buried with her (at this point, he had not yet published a collection of poetry, but was known principally as a painter). Seven years later he decided he would publish his poetry, after all, and had her body exhumed to retrieve his manuscript. This was real-life Victorian Gothic.