John William Waterhouse
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ballad “The Lady of Shalott” has had several pieces of artwork based on its female protagonist. Undoubtedly, the centerpiece of the paintings is the Lady of Shalott; however, aside from the fact that the ballad revolves around her, she has been known to be viewed as an erotic figure in her many appearances of renowned paintings. In Tennyson’s ballad, the Lady of Shalott is locked up in a tower on an island in which she is unable to leave or even look at the world outside of the tower due to a curse. Her only way of viewing the world is through a mirror which reflects the images outside her window as she continuously weaves images on her loom. It is only by the mere presence of Sir Lancelot that she leaves the tower and gets on the boat which leads her inevitable demise.
In the last stanza of the poem in which the Lady of Shalott is discovered dead in her boat, the appearance of the great knight, Sir Lancelot, marks the first and only time a character within the ballad makes a bold remark on the maiden’s beauty. Lancelot’s comment on her “lovely face” may lead the reader to wonder why he is practically the only character to have brushed off the notion that the Lady of Shalott had just died to merely admire her for her aesthetic qualities. Perhaps Lancelot views her as a work of art than a deceased woman. Tennyson’s own depiction of the Lady of Shalott may mirror Lancelot’s own views on the deceased maiden on the boat. When the Lady of Shalott was still alive and stuck in the tower, her beauty was never admired or acknowledged. In fact, it is only when she leaves the tower and loses her life that she becomes an object to be admired by people like Sir Lancelot.
William A. Breakspeare
So we may ask each other, if Tennyson wrote the poem with the idea that the Lady of Shalott would only be recognized, how would an artist interpret this poem? Many artists of the Victorian era were known for accentuating the women body in their paintings and some would undoubtedly come off as erotic. The embowered woman, the Lady of Shalott, in Tennyson’s ballad is portrayed in paintings as an elegant woman either dead on a floating boat or weaving on her loom in her dark room in the tower. Many famous painters like Charles Edwin Fripp, William A. Breaskpeare, and John William Waterhouse show the Lady of Shalott in her angelic white garments in her boat as she floats down a river of Camelot. These artists were free to illustrate the lady based on their own interpretations of the poem considering that aside from the white robe the lady wears, Tennyson does not describe the woman’s physical appearance at all in the poem. Thus, the lady’s appearance is left to the reader’s interpretation. The only reference an artist may use is from Lancelot’s remark on the beauty of the lady’s face.
John William Waterhouse
Therefore, when looking at Waterhouse’s painting of “The Lady of Shalott” we have a woman with white robes that seem to be skin tight to accentuate her figure. A painting of the lady in the dark tower, bending over and staring directly at the viewer includes what appear to be her legs bound together with threads. The helplessness in her face as well as her situation reflects her initial status in Tennyson’s poem adding on a more erotic tense into the painting. Breakspeare’s painting of the lady on the boat puts a bigger emphasis on her facial features as well as putting her in a pose which emphasizes her thighs beneath her dress. Although the woman in these various iterations of paintings are fully clothed and barely reveal any form of erotic inclinations, the poses and ways the lady is illustrated reflect Tennyson’s own interpretation based on his poem.
VICTORIAN LITERATURE: SPRING 2013 