While the Victorian Period has given readers such novels as Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Frankenstein by Marry Shelly, poets such as Percy Shelly, William Blake, and Rudyard Kipling, perhaps one of the best writers of the time was Alfred Lord Tennyson with poems such as the epic “In Memoriam” and “The Lady of Shalott”. There has been some controversy over whether or not Tennyson knew of the existence of the Arthurian legend of Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat, for Tennyson has himself said: “Indeed, I doubt whether I should ever have put it (‘The Lady of Shalott’) in that shape if I had been aware of the Maid of Astolat in Morte Arthur” (Tennyson 11141). Because of this controversy, the poem makes the bridge between Victorian Literature and Medieval Literature and concepts such as unrequited love. Also subject to argument is the posing of Lady Shalott as a factory worker; the poem was perhaps used as a way to protest the way that female factory workers were treated in the Victorian Period as a means of inexpensive labor.
The tale of Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat takes place in legend when King Arthur of Camelot goes jousting, and Guinevere urges the Knight Lancelot du Lac to go with her husband to joust. Instead of meeting with Arthur right away, Lancelot goes instead to the castle of Astolat where he is received warmly by the Lord of the castle. While there, Lancelot comes into contact with the Lord’s daughter: Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat. Elaine falls madly in love with the Knight, but because Lancelot has decided to remain a bachelor dedicated to his Queen, he cannot – or will not - return her love, and she falls into a deep depression where she refuses to eat, and Elaine wastes away to nothing. Before dying, she asks her father to send her down the Thames River into Camelot via boat; the Lord obliges his daughter’s final wish. Once found in Camelot, Lancelot reads her final letter to him, and, in guilt or remorse, has her buried with all the honor and reverence of King Arthur. Likewise, in Tennyson’s poem about the fictitious character known by nothing other than the Lady of Shalott, a woman also falls hopelessly in love with Lancelot. Unlike the Arthurian tale, however, this Lady is subjected to a life of weaving where, if she were to stop, a strange curse would fall upon her. Upon seeing Lancelot, she rushes from her place to see him pass by, knows she is going to die, and takes a boat to Camelot to see Lancelot one last time. Lady Shalott dies, however, before ever seeing her Knightly love again.
It is easy for a reader to see how the two tales would be similar as well as different. In the Arthurian myth, a woman falls in love with a man she can never have; the same is true in “The Lady of Shalott”. In the tale, the Maid never had to do a real day or work in her life – in “The Lady of Shalott”, the Lady had to weave else something bad would happen to her (Tennyson, 39-45).
One of the biggest differences is that, in Tennyson’s version of the tale, the Lady of Shalott did not take her own life like Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat, for “She (Shalott) has heard a whisper say,/ A curse is on her if she stay/ To look down to Camelot./ She knows not what the curse may be,” (Tennyson, 39-42). The reader doesn’t know why the Lady of Shalott was cursed or who cursed her, but Tennyson does clearly say that the Lady was cursed (Tennyson, 40). At first, the reader would even think that the Lady of Shalott is happy with her life of endless weaving, for Tennyson says: “But in her web she (Shalott) still delights/ to weave the mirror’s magic sights,” but as the stanza goes on, the reader learns that the Lady longs for something more for, “‘I am half sick of shadows,’ she said/ The Lady of Shalott.” meaning that she wasn’t at all happy with her life stuck in her tower, her only view of the immense world outside was a mirror (Tennyson, 64-5,71-2). Readers must wonder what it would be like to be trapped in a tower, never to know the touch of another person, and they must sympathize with the feelings of frustration that the Lady of Shalott feels as well as the rash decision she makes after seeing Lancelot pass in her mirror (Tennyson, 109-17). It almost seems that Tennyson made the Lady of Shalott connected to the mirror, for he seems to make a big deal over the fact that the mirror breaks, and it is after Shalott knows the mirror has broken, she races down to find a boat to take her to Camelot, writing her name on the boat itself in case she didn’t make it alive to her destination (Tennyson, 115, 123-26). Because she herself looked onto the world, she caused the curse to take effect, and, with the breakage of the mirror, cut the stings that she had to life.
In Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat, there is no curse that takes hold of or threatens the woman. She is simply brokenhearted over the fact that she cannot have the man that she desires: Lancelot. While readers today may think that Elaine seems overly dramatic in her fasting for love, at the time the tale was written, such things as great measures over lost love were popular. The greatest thing that a person can do is sacrifice their lives for the person that they love, even if that person doesn’t return that love.
The presence of unrequited love is also blatantly in both stories. Readers would agree that Tennyson’s version of the act is much more beautiful and poetic than that of Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat, for Tennyson adds that spark of the supernatural with the addition of the curse (Tennyson, 40). In comparison, Elaine’s plight seems so much more silly than the Lady of Shalott’s, for Shalott rushes from her tower even though she knows she is going to die because she fell in love with a Knight whereas Elaine refuses to eat because she cannot have the Knight that she wants.
Readers could also argue that in both tales – though more prevalent in Tennyson’s version – that love that is not returned, the unrequited love, is the ultimate death. Most people have been in the position where they have desired a person that didn’t notice or desire them back, and they have felt as if their hearts have been torn from their chests, wishing death to the pain they felt knowing that they couldn’t have the person they wanted. In both tales, an actual death occurs: Elaine’s is a self-inflicted suicide; the Lady of Shalott’s was a mystical curse. Readers throughout time have been fascinated with the connection between love and death, for Tennyson says in the poem:
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance –
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
….
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the waterside,
Singing her last song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
….
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights of Camelot:
Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.” (Tennyson, 127-35, 145-53,163-71)
In the very last stanza, lines 163-71, the reader can see a great correlation between “The Lady of Shalott and Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat: Lancelot is the first to honor both women. Readers feel perhaps more sympathetic towards the Lady of Shalott because she had no real control over whether or not she lived or died whereas Elaine chose not to eat because of her depression over Lancelot.
Another question that is raised in “The Lady of Shalott” when Tennyson says that “There she weaves by night and day/ A magic web of colors gay./ She has heard a whisper say,/ A curse is on her if she stay/ To look down to Camelot./ She knows not what the curse may be,/ And so she weaveth steadily,/ And little other care hath she,/ The Lady of Shalott.” is the comparison between the Lady of Shalott and a Victorian factory worker (Tennyson, 37-45). Because the Lady of Shalott has to keep weaving, some readers see that Tennyson is giving a sort of criticism on the way factory workers were treated: long hours for little pay. Readers can say that the curse is some kind of overseer or boss and the Lady of Shalott must keep her work going because otherwise she might be fired from her job at the factory and lose what meager pay she has.
Likewise when Tennyson says: “‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said/ The Lady of Shalott”, it can be said that Tennyson is making a comment on the actual factory itself (Tennyson, 71-2). The factories were dark and stuffy, works subjected to the dreary, smoky conditions with bits of whatever textile workers were working on floating around and invading lungs and causing coughing fits and other illnesses. And, when Tennyson says, “Down she came and found a boat” can be said to mean that the factory worker is breaking away from her work to the world outside where she is able to breathe (Tennyson, 123). This is supported by “She left the web, she left the loom,/ She made three paces through the room,/ She saw the water lily bloom,/ She saw the helmet and the plume,/ She looked down to Camelot./ Out flew the web and floated wide;/ The mirror cracked from side to side; ‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried/ The Lady of Shalott.” in that the tether that held the worker in the factory is broken now, she has no more loom to hold her attention, and she can be free (Tennyson, 109-17).
Therefore, there are many ways in which Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott” can be interpreted by readers. There is the ever popular dispute between Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat and the Lady of Shalott. There is also the idea of unrequited love as the ultimate death as well as the idea of the Lady of Shalott as a stand-in for a factory worker who breaks free from her bonds in the factory and makes it to freedom. Aside from the different ways to interpret the poem, Tennyson is a great poet who deserves to be read and praised for his writing.
WORKS CITED
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. “The Lady of Shalott”. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2006.
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