Explore how far you agree that a feminist reading of Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ is too narrow to offer a detailed understanding?

The Lady of Shalott, the second version of which was published in 1842, is not only a poem about unrequited love, based on the legend of Elaine of Astolat who died for her love of Lancelot. It is more significantly an allegory of female oppression in the Victorian era and serves as Tennyson’s argument against the way women are treated, their place in society and their established gender roles.

The Lady of Shalott reflects life of women in the Victorian era in that she too is trapped and isolated, The Lady of Shalott within her tower and Victorian women in unhappy, unfair marriages caused by living in a patriarchal society. The unusual, tightly structured rhyme scheme of the poem foreshadows The Lady of Shalott’s entrapment, with the ‘C’ lines unable to escape. Her imprisoned isolation within her tower is a powerful metaphor for the social, sexual and intellectual repression of women across English history. The Lady of Shalott remains trapped within her tower watching the ‘shadows of the world appear’, disallowed to be a part of the outside world. Her isolation as all the more tragic as she is so close to the outside world yet not really a part of it, and is only allowed to watch the faint outlines of life ‘through the mirror blue.’

Throughout the poem, the paradoxical ‘clear mirror full of shadows’ symbolises her isolation from the outside world, as it only omits a reflection and lacks the intensity of real life. As she weaves her ‘magic web’, while ironically trapped in someone else’s web, the ‘silent nights’ that envelop The Lady of Shalott serve to emphasise her isolation and the voice that she lacks. It could be argued that Tennyson purposefully distances her from the outside world with no voice and rarely makes her the subject of the poem so that her passivity limits how empathetically the reader can react and respond. This causes The Lady of Shalott to become not only physically isolated but emotionally, such as was the case for Victorian women, which then evokes a battle between the inside and outside.

Her isolation becomes even more profound as Tennyson repeatedly describes the ‘remote’ ‘island of Shalott.’ Through going from referring to the tower as on the ‘Island of Shalott’, to ‘remote Shalott’, the reader begins to sense that her tower is becoming more and more like I prison, with the ‘four grey walls’ closing in. The loom that she uses symbolises the structure of hers and Victorian women’s lives and the patterns that they form. The Lady of Shalott must die if she leaves this structure as this would be the case if Victorian women left their marriages. They would be lost without this domestic structure, and in worst cases this would be through death due to having no money without a husband to provide for her. The Lady of Shalott remains in her tower despite ‘[not knowing] what they curse may be,’ which represents the fear of the unknown that women stereotypically seem to possess. ‘The overwhelming problems Victorian England faced created a psychological need for women to retreat to the safety of the home where delicate spiritual values could be protected and preserved. ‘Although The Lady of Shalott does in fact manage to escape her isolation, it costs her too her life. However, it is argued that The Lady of Shalott remains isolated for the entire poem, going from being trapped within her tower to being trapped within her metaphorical coffin.

‘Feminist critics [have] showed how often literary representations of women [repeat] familiar cultural stereotypes…the woman…as cute but essentially helpless [and a] self-

sacrificing angel.’ ‘The representation of women in literature [is] felt to be one of the most important forms of ‘socialisation’, since it provided the role models which indicated to women…what constituted acceptable versions of the ‘feminine’ and legitimate feminine goals and aspirations.’ It is suggested that ‘to be female; [is to be] naturally timid, or sweet, or intuitive, or dependent, or self-pitying,’ and The Lady of Shalott is quite clearly initially trapped living the life of an ideal traditional woman. She is a passive figure, subsumed into her surroundings and defined by her task, due to stereotypical ideas that the domestic interior belongs to women and the active exterior belongs to men. The Lady of Shalott accepts the role that society gives her as protector of the home and plays the feminine role of domestic goddess. This gives her the title of ‘damsel in distress’, stuck in her predetermined irrevocable role.

The Lady of Shalott initially embodies the Victorian image of the ideal woman, as she is virginal, embowered, spiritual and dedicated to womanly tasks. ‘A pure [and unattainable] woman enhanced her sexual desirability. Mary Wollstonecraft suggested that women are taught by their mothers to play up their imbecility for the attention of men, and The Lady of Shalott unknowingly manages to do this. Her purity is made clear when Tennyson describes her as ‘lying, robed in snowy white,’ as the colour white is well known to symbolise purity, as do ‘the lilies.’ Tennyson gives The Lady of Shalott stereotypically negative feminine traits such as irrationality, which is seen when Lancelot ‘[flashes] into the crystal mirror’, for a split second yet she still ‘[leaves] the web,’ as well as the stereotypical idea that women are constantly complaining. Tennyson shows this by personifying the river with femininity. This personification emphasises the tragedy of The Lady of Shalott’s fate, as it is so tragic it even makes the ‘banks [complain.]’ The river is essentially the backbone of the poem, as it is integrated into the beginning, middle and end, running through it and holding it up. It is a ‘wave that runs forever’, a current that cannot be stopped and will inevitably pull The Lady of Shalott to her death.

Tennyson also abides by the stereotype that women should be protected with no power. The Lady of Shalott is disempowered by the feminine language used whilst she is the subject. Even the natural world around her is described using feminine language as the two are ultimately linked. While the ‘willows whiten [and] aspens shiver,’ nature is the subject of this stanza, not The Lady of Shalott as women were typically kept away from any action, expected, like children, to be seen and not heard, and to be sheltered, which is the case as ‘the silent isle imbowers’ her. The world sheltered also links this activity to the natural world as it seem tree-like. Due to The Lady of Shalott’s lack of voice that patriarchal societies led to means that it is left to the reader to assume how The Lady of Shalott feels, similarly as we have to with Victorian women. ‘A thorough revision of gender roles [seems] the most effective way of changing the power relations between men and women.’

The poem negatively presents women as always wanting a man to protect them. When The Lady of Shalott exclaims that ‘she hath no loyal knight and true,’ the reader sees her as a typical woman in this way. She feels incomplete and lonely without a man which only adds to her isolation. When Tennyson describes the ‘red cross knight’ on Lancelot’s shield, the reader’s belief that The Lady of Shalott is looking for a man to protect her is only furthered. This is because the ‘red cross knight’ is a character in an epic poem called The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, who within this poem is courage and chivalry, with this reference symbolising political and literary history in England. The colour ‘red’ is important

due to its connotations with love and desire, which is especially important as these colours are introduced at the point that she sees Lancelot.

‘Female characters [such as The Lady of Shalott] were…put together…by the culture they belonged to – to serve a not so hidden purpose: the continued social and cultural domination of males.’ ‘Gender has not to do with how females (and males) really are but with the way that a given culture or subculture sees them, how they are culturally constructed.’ Men and women within the poem are presented to have separate gender spheres, the ‘four grey walls’ of The Lady of Shalott’s confined domestic sphere within the tower greatly contrasting with the masculine sphere of ‘many towered Camelot.’ The repetition of towers is phallic imagery used to describe Camelot as a male dominated place. The importance of this male dominated place is made clear as it almost always ends the 5th line of each stanza, which suggests that it is a magnet as everything is centred on it. This is a subtle hint at the belief that Victorian men had that they were more important than women. The only line where the 5th line doesn’t end in ‘Camelot’ is when it ends in ‘of bold sir Lancelot’ which also shows his importance as a man and links with the masculine sphere of Camelot, when Tennyson describes his ‘mighty silver bugle hung,’ which is again phallic imagery.. Immediately after he is introduces, the language becomes masculine, which a feminist critic would say is purely because there is a male subject. ‘With its connotations of strength, rationality, stoicism, and self-reliance…traditional masculinity is a gender role that has far less to do with actual males than with…wishful thinking.’ The astronomical imagery such as ‘stars’, ‘galaxy’ and ‘starry clusters puts all the focus on Lancelot and only emphasises his importance to make him appear god like, like a metaphorical ‘meteor’ coming out of nowhere. This separate spheres reading is continued throughout the entire poem, even while ‘singing in her song [The Lady of Shalott] died’, as she can only become integrated into a male dominated place such as Camelot through death, as she could heaven, which shows the reader what a prestigious place Camelot is.

A major theme in the poem is the feminist idea that women are objectified by men. In the last stanza, The Lady of Shallot is figuratively sent back to her role as a beautiful object there only to please men, when Lancelot comments that ‘she has a lovely face.’ This creates structural tragedy, in that even after being willing to die to escape this, she is still objectified by men. Tennyson’s belief that women are objectified is magnified by the actions of The Lady of Shalott. When the reader is told that ‘around the prow she wrote her name,’ she is actually turning herself into a work of art by naming the boat. As ‘she loosed the chain, and down she lay,’ she puts herself on display like artwork, with herself as the painting and the boat as the frame. Her ‘piece’ basically says that women are constantly being objectified by men.

It is not until nearing the end of the poem that the gender lines are blurred and the masculine man made world merges with the natural feminine world. This could be perceived as Tennyson’s way of subtly saying how he thinks that men and women she be treated as equals. The Lady of Shalott is ultimately about The Lady’s transformation from a passive woman to almost a feminist which could be argued to be the case, due to the fact that she does in fact break out of her tower. However, it could also be argued that she completely submits to the power that men have over her as she dies for loving a man, though it is ultimately left up to the reader to decide which the case is. The poem is almost left as a cliffhanger, which is a metaphor for the indecisiveness of women, about whether she did escape the constraints that society had upon her or whether she simply played into the

hands of men. Her attitude to her isolation is subverted when she witnesses ‘two young lovers lately wed’, which is the moment of her sexual awakening. She becomes much less of a passive female and actually begins to have desires of her own, and becomes ‘half sick of shadows.’ At this point, although we still do not have an image of her, the reader manages to still feel the strength of her personality. It is then that she ‘[leaves] the web...[and] the room,’ and abandons her social and domestic responsibilities. It could be argued that this does not represent her refusal to be a slave but is actually in pursuit of love. It is suggested that she does not break free to follow Lancelot but to follow her desires.