This final 1857 illustration by Dante Rossetti depicts Sir Lancelot gazing down at the Lady of Shalott, who lies dead in a boat. Lancelot is hovering over the Lady of Shalott, emphasizing his freedom and power as a man in Victorian society. The Lady of Shalott, who in a sense, died for her freedom from her restricted life, represents middle class Victorian women at the time, whose lives were governed by strict gender expectations. Women were expected to be homemakers and to stay in the domestic sphere to protect their purity. Women were expected to literally stay inside the home unless accompanied outside by a man or female family member. When a Victorian woman left the house alone, it would be the 'death' of her purity.
Further, the intricate and complex illustration by Rossetti helped establish the 'golden age' of English wood engraving illustrations. Rossetti had a philosophy about illustration in which he believed that illustrations should function separately from the text. Illustrations should function as a painting where meaning could be extracted rather than depicting the exact line of a text. The growing middle class of the 1850s and 1860s saw an increased demand for domesticated art from wood engravings in books. The Moxon Illustrated edition of Tennyson's poems was very successful and saw great sales in the book market.
Group 4.
Source, the British Library.