Andrew's Wiki
Lady Shallott

Content

• Part of the medieval mania of Victorians; part of his Camelot cycle
• Like Penelope, she weaves, unable to move
  • But unlike P, she “hath no knight” (again a superfluous Victorian woman)
  • She takes joy from creative production; people see her as the prototypical poetess (female artist)
• Curse: can’t go down to Camelot or look at it (she uses a mirror)
  • Like those in Plato’s Cave, she only sees “shadows”
• Me: here, domestic space is literally turned into a curse, a prison that you can’t leave
  • Tennyson is all about the unattractiveness of domestic space
• The vision of sexy, gem-dripping Lancelot
  • She is NOT AN OBJECT OF DESIRE. Lancelot is lovingly described, gets a whole Part of the poem
  • She is left in a tower w/no one hearing her except some farm laborers up early
  • His attractiveness makes her look directly at Camelot: the curse
• She’s condemned only to see shadows, but is cheerful anyway b/c she can make art out of it. When she is tempted by Lancelot, her “half” being sick of shadows turns to 100% sick of shadows, and she looks.
  • She sets herself in a boat, labels it with her name, and then singing floats down to Camelot: identity replaces mystery. Dies of exposure (she’s cold; that’s all you can tell from the poem). Everyone sees her in her death (exposure), making the royals sad and Lancelot muse a little at her beauty.
  • Either way you go, it’s not life. It’s either death-in-life (living in world of shadows), or life-in-death (dead in the real world)
    • Pretty much sums up the position of women: limited significance in home, dead to public
    • Lady of Shalott is another character desperately trying to leave the domestic sphere. The castle she ends up in is a diff model of home: it’s a home, but it’s not private.
• What’s great about his poem? It leaves much to the imagination, its rhymes and rhythms are fluid and lively, it thematizes artistry, it brings up appearance/essence as well as life/death, and also sex
  • Also, it helps to explain the VACUUM that Nancy Armstrong should’ve explained….that is she wants to show the desire for woman is codified in the domestic novel, but she doesn’t really explain why it’s necessary. She explains its effects, but I think we could use Tennyson to show WHY we need so much discourse around the domestic: b/c no one really likes it anyway. Or at least our existing literary tradish doesn’t know how to respond to it

Form

• Four parts; part one, 4 stanzas; part two, 4 stanzas; part three, 5 stanzas; part four, 6 stanzas
• Good thing for Tennyson “Shalott” rhymes w/”Camelot”