Private vs Public Worlds in Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott'

Drawing upon your evaluative summary in Part 1, write an essay in which you set out your own thoughts on your chosen question. Analyse the relationship between the private interior world and the external world in Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’.

Tennyson’s poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ follows the classic tale of ‘the maiden locked away in a tower’ with a variety of hidden meanings left to interpretation. The subject of the poem ‘The Lady’ represents the isolated artist whilst embodying societies double-image of the Victorian woman. She transitions from the domesticated interior world of her tower into the bustling public domain of Lancelot, essentially becoming a part of the artwork she once created. In this essay I will analyse the relationship between the private and public worlds Tennyson has created, debunking his possible motives and how his poems reflect his ideas about society.

Tennyson uses a range of poetic devices to establish the two halves of the world we get to see in The Lady of Shalott. He starts by describing the ‘many-tower’d Camelot, where up and down the people go’, juxtaposing this busy scene with his aphoristic description of the island of Shalott – ‘four gray walls, and four gray towers”. There is an immediate sense of the privacy in which the Lady is enclosed, cut off completely from the external world of Camelot. Tennyson’s poetic form is similar to that of a ballad, it’s uses of language alliterative - ‘willows whiten’, and its meter almost musical- the emphasis falling on the beat of every other word in iambic tetrameter for much of the poem. Having said that, this poem’s meter and form is not always perfect, seemingly deviating from the ‘classic ballad’ in places on purpose. Tennyson uses these devices to characterize the two different halves of the world. For example, whilst the external world of Camelot is romantic in its description – ‘little breezes dusk and shiver’, and ‘piling sheaves in uplands airy’, the description of the Lady’s interior world is quite monosyllabic – ‘silent isle’ and ‘four gray towers’. Tennyson’s rhyming scheme seems to be the only constant, his AAAABCCCB structure reflected in each stanza. This is what gives the poem its musical quality, reminding the reader that this poem, much like the lady’s tapestries, is a form of art.

The next key part of my analysis of Tennyson’s poem stems from a thought the textbook brought to my attention – ‘It is clear that both poems are concerned with the relationship between the imagined and the real’. From her tower, the Lady is unable to engage with other people or function as a member of society. Until the moment she leaves the island, she is denied of any substantiality- ‘who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement see her stand? Or is she known in all the land?’. It is this idea of corporeality that separates her from the external world and suggests that until she becomes a part of it, she is intangible- a symbol of the objectification of a woman’s privacy. As discussed in part one of this essay, Joseph Chadwick is a huge advocate of this reading. ‘her separation is fundamentally a denial of her substantiality’. It is this idea that leads me to believe that Tennyson sees the isolated, interior world of a lady’s private life as an imagined illusion that has been created by men. A critical source that supports this is Carl Plasa’s journal article on ‘Sexual Politics in The Lady of Shalott’. He suggests that ‘private and public spaces are respectively identified with “femininity” and “masculinity”’. This is evident in the Lady’s dominance of the private world and Sir Lancelot’s domination of the external public. It could be said that Tennyson has created a microcosm of society here, alluding to the idea that men dominate Victorian society and women are repressed into domestic roles. An example of this from the text is statement that the Lady ‘hath no loyal Knight and true’. It suggests that she needs to leave the island to realise her femininity and place is society as a man’s property. Carl Plata expands on this by describing the Lady as ‘the object of the patriarchal gaze’. This not only refers to the characters in the story, but also the ever watchful eye of a culture ruled by men.

Tennyson’s poem has a very clear viewpoint on the place of a woman in Victorian society, and this is evoked via the telling of the Lady’s emancipation from her tower. Once again using anaphora to emphasize his point, Tennyson describes the Lady leaving her private world, ‘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’. This stanza of the poem is very telling, as its imagery is a metaphor for sexual awakening. The phallic connotations of the blooming lily and the helmet represent the Lady becoming a woman rather than just the objectification of one. I believe that this is Tennyson’s version of a realistic woman in the external world, not the internal, domestic ‘angel of the house’ Victorian standards expect a woman to uphold. This is solidified by critic ‘Al-rahid’, who in his analysis of the poem reminds us that in the context of the time, ‘the ideal woman was to be pure and free of any sexual aggression. Their primary role in society was to be a homemaker. She was completely isolated from public life, which was primarily a man’s domain.’ This source was an important part of my research as it relates so closely to my chosen question. He quite nicely summarizes that Tennyson ‘utilizes both the exterior and interior space to illustrate the idea of an isolated woman.’ Al-rahid finishes his essay with the statement that The Lady of Shallot is a common Victorian tale of ‘the fallen woman’, and that Tennyson ‘portrayed the women to have fallen into sin by challenging the Victorian ideals of femininity.’ It is unclear whether or not Tennyson agrees with the woman’s place in society, but it is undeniable that his female character’s fates are sealed.

There is a noticeably sad undertone towards the end of The Lady of Shallot in her acceptance of her own doom. This realization starts in the foreshadowing of the Lady’s inevitable death – ‘she looked down to Camelot… the mirror cracked from side to side… the curse is upon me, cried the Lady of Shallot’- it is as if she instantly knows what will happen to her. The mirror cracking into two halves is good imagery for the idea of two incompatible worlds – she cannot simultaneously belong to the interior and exterior worlds. In terms of these two worlds, the mirror symbolizes the Lady’s only connection to the outside world, and even then it is only via a reflection. The critic ‘***’ draws our attention to the ‘third order reflection’ in which the Lady sees the outside world. The Lady sees Lancelot’s image reflected in the river through a reflection of the river in her mirror. ‘Mediated by the river and the mirror, this is the closest visual experience of the ‘real’ world outside the lady has yet had.’ Once again, Tennyson drives home the separation between the oppressed Lady and the freedom of the man, Lancelot. The final thing I took into account when developing my answer to the question is the author, Alfred Tennyson’s background and family history.