Lady of Shalott, The~ by Alfred Lord Tennyson~ February 9-28

[marjifay]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and  enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  Everyone is welcome.

February  Book Club Online:

The Lady of Shalott
by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892 )

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, “I am half-sick of shadows” (1916)

We've all heard of it, but what's it about, again? People have been enjoying arguing over the message for 150 years.   When's the last time you read it?

 Why not join us February 9?  Read it in 5 minutes, talk about it the rest of your life. What does  a 150 year old poem by Tennyson have to say to us in 2015?   Come tell us your thoughts about the many issues it raises: a woman who looks at life literally second hand, not only through a window but through a mirror as well, not daring to take part. What does that mean or say to us? Is the Internet in some ways a mirror freeing us from the closeness of face to face interaction? 

We'll have a great time with this one! Do  join us and share your thoughts starting February 9.
  



DISCUSSION SCHEDULE:


February 9-28

Interesting Links: :

~ Enjoy this haunting rendition of the poem in  ballad form  by Loreen McKenna with many beautiful illustrations

~A comparison of editions:  1833 and 1842 by The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester

~ Elaine of Astolat links

Elaine of Astolat is the maiden who dies of unrequited love for Lancelot and floats in a barge to Camelot with a letter for Lancelot clutched in her lifeless hand. She appears in Malory and in Tennyson's idyll of "Lancelot and Elaine." The figure of Elaine in the barge became one of the most popular Victorian images.

~ SC Edu Library Online Text

~ A wonderful page on the Lady by a pathologist with a very clever way of comparing the editions.

Discussion Leader: ginny

And there are knights in shining armor, too!! How up ARE you on your knights and armor? Take This delightful quiz from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enjoy finding out!

I posted but I don't see my message.  Actually, just as well, as I do not like poetry.  And after reading The Lady of Shalott, I don't see anything to change my mind.

Marj

[ginny]

OH! Well that's certainly a downer. hahahaa

I was so excited to see your name, too.


It's the ideas I want to talk about, they are not germane to poetry.

[ALF43]

Well- I've been away from here for some time but this piqued my interest. I'm using my IPad which I'm still learning , so am approaching with caution
I've got issues- Marcie signed me on with the link but my old password didn't work. Just book marked you Ginny and hope to read this one to the finish.
When I read it in high school lit class, I contacted the Asian flu and I was out of commission for a long time, finally they closed the school and our Lady of Shallot got lost in the the epidemic.  So now I rejoin her cracked mirror some 55 years later!
I'm excited to be back and see so many of my old friends still here.  I have missed this.

[Jonathan]

 'It's the ideas.' 

Ah, shucks. I'm in it for the poetry and the graphics.

Well! Glory be! ALF! How nice to see you, and how nice to hear that you got over that flu. I always did enjoy your posts, starting with that other boat ride: The Ancient Mariner. You won't remember me. Ginny consigned me to the crow's nest on that voyage. For this one I'm bringing my own little shallop. And it does not rhyme with Shalott.

[JoanK]

We seem to have a nautical theme here. Bring your rowing technique from the "Boat" discussion, JONATHAN. The poor Lady may need it.

[Frybabe]

Hi ALF! Welcome back.

I am so happy to see some of our old friends who have been silent for a while popping in again.

[ALF43]

Of course I remember you Jonathan. I loved ur interesting posts as well.
Joan, Frybaby I'm so happy u both are still with SeniorLearn. I've been away for a long time, dealing with life as she meets me!
This yr I can see again after retinal surgery. Tough to keep an old broad down.

[JoanK]

You bet!!!

[BarbStAubrey]

Tra la - couldn't get in yesterday - Alf, how great to see you -

Interesting all the talk of Camelot - I think of Yeats more than Tennyson being associated with the Arthur stories - I wondered then if Yeats had ever written anything about the Lady of Shalott - ha my spell check wanted to make her coming from an onion  - anyhow poking around the various web sites I found so many sites and a few that showed the landscape of the island where the story takes place - no direct link between the two authors on this topic but each touch on the glory of this past, one from England and the other from Ireland. Yeats does say that Tennyson is one of his writing role models.

Over the years I have read this work and each time with a different point of view - everything from the metaphor to an artist, the view of women in society, and the one viewpoint that has stuck with me the longest is from an interior analogy. I am looking forward to the various viewpoints that this discussion should bring out - what fun...

 

[JoanK]

Ooops. We start tomorrow. Better get busy.

[Jonathan]

Yes, just hours away from embarking on another fabulous voyage.

Your spell check, Barb, is onto something. Getting at the truths in this poem is like peeling an onion, verily.

Tennyson does enjoy sending people off in boats. Remember Ulysses. And now The Lady. But how about this spledid little epitaph he did for Sir John Franklin, lost in the Arctic. On the cenotaph in Westminster Abbey:

'Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou, Heroic sailor soul, Art passing on thine happier voyage now Toward no earthly pole.'

Good luck, Lady.

[ginny]

Well my goodness!~ Look at the wonderful surprises here! I'm just in from a wonderful trip and find Andrea (ALF) back!~ Hooray!! Welcome back, Andrea, we have missed you so much, and I am glad to hear of your successful retinal surgery!  

And Jonathan!! SO glad to see you here, what a metaphor about the onion, well done!! I thought you made up that word shallop and I find to my shock you did not, that's exactly what she is shown floating down the river.... I've learned something! And oh, the rolling Tennyson phrases, thank you for that quote.

And Barbara, welcome, welcome.  I know what you mean about prior readings, and what an interesting statement from Yeats about Tennyson. i hope everybody will continue to bring interesting background material and perspectives to the discussion. We will need them.

But from what angle SHALL we begin? Which of the many ways to look at the Lady shall we take?

I am remembering The Yellow Wallpaper discussion particularly fondly and our first ever book club discussion on SeniorNet, Snow Falling on Cedars,  in 1996.. and we started  both if I recall correctly with one simple question,  and we asked everybody to PLEASE talk to the others in the room about what their thoughts were on   that question or perhaps something said in the discussion, responses,  or ideas others bring up in response.  In other words, it's to be a conversation.  And I need your help in making it so, in talking to each other.

So to start us off tomorrow, February 9th, Monday, here is our first Topic du Jour or springboard for your thoughts:  

What, in one word, is this poem about?   Tell us why you think so.... what you see in the poem that indicates that idea to you.   Let's see how many different ideas we can get and go from there.

Everyone is welcome!

[Frybabe]

I enjoyed reading the poem, sad and beautiful.

On the face it is lovely; making it into an allegory of an artist's life rather spoils it a bit, but not much. Did Tennyson actually say it was allegorical of an artist's life, or is that the opinion of others? How did she end up with the curse in the first place?

For the most part, I think Tennyson was right to revise it. When I am awake enough I want to reread the original bits.

Ginny, I'd say it is about the shattering of self-delusions and it's possible consequences (definitely not one word). Or you could say, the dangers of going out, from a sheltered life, into the real world emotionally unprepared.

[ALF43]

My first question is - is this a mythical,allegorical, just a plain fancy fairytale or is it a tale of a deluded woman who has enclosed herself into the bowels of this castle, depressed and frightened to face the reality of the outside world?
Who has demanded that she weave a tapestry thru REFLECTION, forbidding her to see life as it is?

[ALF43]

While folding clothes I was considering Tennyson. Could this be from a guilty conscience, harbored by the Lady?
C.S. Lewis said:

"For an autonomous faculty like a sense cannot be argued with; you cannot argue a man into seeing green if he sees blue."
What is reflected?

[ginny]

Gosh I think you both have raised some wonderful points already!

I actually tried to summarize what you've both said and I think  your thoughts are so rich in context we need to look at them as they are.

First:

On the face it is lovely; making it into an allegory of an artist's life rather spoils it a bit, but not much. Did Tennyson actually say it was allegorical of an artist's life, or is that the opinion of others? How did she end up with the curse in the first place?

That's a good question! I thought that idea came from a scholar or critic, I'd like to know more. I did not see that IN it and now it's been raised it's interesting, isn't it? The Lady (why is it always a LADY in a tower) obsessed by her work but the issue Andrea raised, I think, was the one which is quite striking:

What's keeping her there?

I love the mystery of that and did you notice,  Frybabe mentions the revision and that Tennyson was wise TO revise. We may want to look at that.

I think one startling thing WAS the revision about the curse...did you all think so?

If you don't know what we're talking about, look at the pathologist's website in the heading above, he's got the two versions laid out so you can compare them.

The  so called "curse" really interests me.


Ginny, I'd say it is about the shattering of self-delusions and it's possible consequences (definitely not one word). Or you could say, the dangers of going out, from a sheltered life, into the real world emotionally unprepared.

I did want to put these initiaial What's the Poem About in the heading so we cold compare them later when we're finished discussing it but even I can see it would make it too long.

 Shattering of Self Delusions...what are her self delusions? How do we know?  Is everybody self deluded? What are some of ours?

What an interesting and wonderful start and now on to Andrea!~

[ginny]

Now Andrea, in this, you have hit on the same thing that really struck me initially:

Who has demanded that she weave a tapestry thru REFLECTION, forbidding her to see life as it is?

Exactly!~ And in fact who has demanded she can't leave? And who has demanded as you say she can't even look out a window? That's pretty powerful stuff there.

And when you read the poems side by side you get the first version:

Now the first version here is from 1842 but the earlier version here below  is from 1832...so 10 years later he wanted to clear things up a little bit:

 II

1842:


There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours 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.

1832:

   No time hath she to sport and play:
A charmèd web she weaves alway.
A curse is on her, if she stay
Her weaving, either night or day,
    To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
Therefore she weaveth steadily,
Therefore no other care hath she,
    The Lady of Shalott.

There's a big difference, to me, in these two versions.


In the last corrected version she has heard a whisper say...she has heard a whisper...from whom?

How does she eat?

How about toilet matters?

Are there servants?

What is she doing up there alone and what's the difference if she has heard a whisper that a curse is on her or the stated fact that a curse IS on her?

I find the curse or the whisper of the curse very interesting and maybe the key to the entire thing.


Whence comes this curse?

[ginny]

She doesn't even know what the curse IS, she's just heard a rumor....

And then...

My first question is - is this a mythical,allegorical, just a plain fancy fairytale or is it a tale of a deluded woman who has enclosed herself into the bowels of this castle, depressed and frightened to face the reality of the outside world?

Again I think you have put your finger on this as well. If WE, the readers, can't figure it out, should we just then consign it to another fairy tale with the woman in the tower (why are they always in towers, what does that symbolize?) OR is it Tennyson and his muse... I have more trouble with that one...And how many MANY MANY times have we seen an author think he is saying one thing and we hear something else.


I wonder if a Victorian "I died for love" would read this the same way we do in 2015...

 and why do you say she is deluded?

Do we all think she is frightened? And if so, of what?

(And remember, we don't seek consensus here, just ideas).

I can see we can't put all this in the heading, but everybody please refer back to these  thoughts as you go.


What is reflected? THAT is another good question!~ Why "reflected" in the first place?

Super start on the discussion!

[Halcyon]

My idea of a fairy tale has always been happily ever after so this seems more realistic to me.  No prince charming to save her. Was Tennyson ahead of his time saying women had to save themselves?

Having seen the play "In The Next Room" yesterday I am today much influenced by the by the expected behavior of Victorian women.
Women were constricted not only by their corsets but by the mores of the times.  Responding badly sometimes meant these women suffered from hysteria.  Under those conditions anyone would suffer from hysteria.  I think the whispers the Lady hears are like harpies telling her "This is the way a proper lady behaves,"  and the curse is "What will they say."  The ubiquitous they.

[ALF43]

Oh thank you Ginny, I thought I was way off base on this one. ( actually we all seem befuddled.)
Deluded, as in duped, misguided or tricked?
It seems absurd that she would have remained in the castle (unless she was like Rapunzel awaiting freedom.)
LOL Ginny - why indeed is it always the females who have been stuck up in the tower? That could lead to a whole different discussion; captivity,restraint  - not to mention phallic?
I'm going to have to REREAD these 2 diffent versions. Something's missing beside the answers. Did any of you teachers teach this poem?

[ALF43]

I missed your post Halcyon, I'm sorry.
Perhaps you are on to something here. We, the ladies of this century respond much differently than the Victorian damsels, don't we? Perhaps that's why I have such trouble "Getting it."
They were prudish and very conservative ladies, weren't they? I guess I have a different character than the prim and proper ladies like Maggie Smiths character on Downton Abbey.

[Frybabe]

The last stanza of the poem was changed considerably.

1842:
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 at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

1832:
They crossed themselves, their stars they blest,
Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire and guest,
There lay a parchment on her breast,
That puzzled more than all the rest,
The wellfed wits at Camelot.
"The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not -- this is I,
The Lady of Shalott."

I like most of the 1942 version better, but do like that Tennyson changed the ending speaker from the Lady to a statement from Lancelot. It changes the tenor/mood a bit don't you think?  After completely ignoring her when he passed by, Lancelot is showing some compassion/sympathy.

I do like "That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot" a lot, although I can't see exactly why a suicide note would be a puzzlement.

[ALF43]

FryBaby- Haha notice " the well fed wits" @ Camelot".  It sounds as if they were clueless to me who she even was.
I prefer the 1832 version,myself, because the maiden is speaking. She tells everything on her parchment. I keep going over what that parchment said & what it meant. It doesn't sound as if Lancelot has a clue either.

[ALF43]

Oops I've forgotten how to use the B button . Sorry . Help

[Halcyon]

That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot.

Perhaps it means that the people of Camelot were fat and happy and did not have a clue why someone would commit suicide.

How would Lancelot even know he was the cause of her death?  Could anyone see in her tower?

[PatH]

That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot.

Perhaps it means that the people of Camelot were fat and happy and did not have a clue why someone would commit suicide.

How would Lancelot even know he was the cause of her death?  Could anyone see in her tower?

The people living near the tower knew at least something about the lady, but what did the "wellfed wits", or the rest of Camelot know about the lady and the curse?  If they didn't know, her note would be hard to figure out:
"The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not -- this is I,
The Lady of Shalott."

How could Lancelot know he was the cause of her death?  He surely couldn't; even if he saw her, he wouldn't know that her reaction to his gorgeous appearance led to her death.

This is different from the medieval story of Elaine and Lancelot, the one Tennyson said he took the story from.  In it, he knows very well that he has caused her death.  Elaine specifically accuses him in her note.  She had fallen in love with him, but he refused to return her love.  She sees she is dying of love and arranges to float to Camelot, bearing the note accusing Lancelot of cruelty.

[PatH]

The 1842 version of the last stanza alters the whole mood of the ending.  The townspeople are not only puzzled, but afraid.  And Lancelot, looking at her, is moved by her beauty, and blesses her, showing a tenderness toward her (absent in the other 2 versions) that would have been hopeful except that she's already dead, a sort of might-have-been.

[Halcyon]

PatH-
What do you think the townspeople feared?  Death intruding on their idyllic existence?  Makes me think of JFK lying in state.

[JoanK]

To me the river is the most powerful symbol (maybe it's just me - I like rivers). Somehow, it's the river of life, and she keeps having to weave the web of her reality every day. She sees something more glorious than her woven reality, and her self- woven reality isn't enough any more. (I'm making this up as I go -- don't know if it makes sense).

[Frybabe]

JoanK, I did notice that he placed more emphasis on the river in the 1842 version. I think that was appropriate given that the Lady lived on an island in the river. The reaper turned into reapers and became secondary to the river.

[Halcyon]

JoanK
Are you still in the boat? Haha
Don't we all weave the web of our own reality every day?  I like the way you phrased that. Was she stepping out of her comfort zone?  If so, it didn't work out very well.

ALF
I've been thinking about towers as phallic symbols which makes sense to me on some level but it's usually some which that has cast the spell that results in the maiden being in the tower. That made me wonder who wrote these fairy tales?  I thought they were stories passed down from generation to generation. Sorry, I seem to be rambling and all over the place with this. It's fun.

[Jonathan]

The fairy Lady is dead. She could be seen at her casement from time to time, with a wave of her hand. She could be heard singing in the moonlight The world was captivated by her.

And at the end Lancelot, looking at her on her bier,  'mused a little space...she has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace.'

That's showing tenderness? Lancelot is a fake.  If this poem can be summed up in a few words, it would be: behold the dark side of Camelot. Never be taken in by a knight in shining armor.

Leave her to heaven...indeed!

[Halcyon]

Oh, Jonathan, you are so right.  Never be taken in by a knight in thing armor.

[ginny]

Ha HAAA, good heavens what comments, you dazzle. It's dazzling.


 Wait wait wait, Jonathan!!

Lancelot is a fake?!!! How on earth does he know about her? Where do you see her waving from the window? Is he out there at midnight to hear her singing? I thought nobody heard her but those reaping or something? At midnight?

The man rides by and sings on his horse. He's a cowboy of the Middle Ages and he's singing on the way to Camelot,  what is his own connection in any way to her?

As you go down the street in  your car singing, is it your fault if somebody you pass by  sees you out of a window?

What's fake about him?  What do you make of that changed ending concerning him?

Good heavens and here I thought the only fireworks I'd see this week were at Disney  World. hahahaa

[ginny]

Halcyon said, I think the whispers the Lady hears are like harpies telling her "This is the way a proper lady behaves,"  and the curse is "What will they say."  The ubiquitous they.

Oh now THAT'S interesting!!! But now why would ladies of that era expect her to keep to her loom and not even look out the window? Or am I being too literal?

My idea of a fairy tale has always been happily ever after so this seems more realistic to me.  No prince charming to save her. Was Tennyson ahead of his time saying women had to save themselves?

Happily ever after and so many of them are so brutal.  But  in the end they are supposed to end happily ever after, I wonder why this does not?  I'm trying to see what the moral of this might be IF it's a fairy tale, that is. If Tennyson is saying women had to save themselves, she sure did not. Is that the point? Leave your muse and die?

How do  you commit suicide by sitting in a boat? How far TO Camelot is it, anyway?  

Andrea you like the 1832 better? She is speaking thru the note? Frybabe has put it here:

"The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not -- this is I,
The Lady of Shalott."

What on earth does that mean?


Pat H: How would Lancelot even know he was the cause of her death? And I think Halcyon said it too.  Could anyone see in her tower?

Me, too. I don't understand how this can be unrequited love. I don't think he knows anything about it, he's riding by, there's a tower, some people....not many, some....have heard  her in there sometimes singing.. Nobody has seen her!


Yet who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
    The Lady of Shalott?

   Underneath the bearded barley,
The reaper, reaping late and early
Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
Like an angel, singing clearly,
    O'er the stream of Camelot.
Piling the sheaves in furrows airy,
Beneath the moon, the reaper weary
Listening, whispers, "'Tis the fairy
    Lady of Shalott."


Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the beared barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
    Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
    Lady of Shalott."

Yet who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she know in all the land,
    The Lady of Shalott?

I don't think  that anybody has ever seen her at all. Nobody has even seen her wave her hand? Or stand at the window. Nobody has even seen her.

In fact, I don't see how anybody thought she was real at all. Aren't both of those versions calling her a fairy?

So nobody has seen her, and she's taken on this fairy like reputation or aura so she herself is almost a symbol of...what? Maybe it's all symbols.

What IS unrequited love? I thought it was love which is not returned. If I don't know XXx loves me how can I return it and who says it's love, for Pete's sake? All she did was turn to look at him.

That's a good point PatH and Frybabe both  make. The different endings convey different things.  In the last ending Lancelot  takes a part and shows some mercy, the others are staring...her name is on the prow of the ship and he...I think he IS showing some tenderness. Nobody else is, in either version, are they?  One version shows fear.  

Why him tho? In both versions she has to introduce herself, by prow writing or by parchment , to whoever may find her.  I am confused by that. How long HAS she been up there?

[ginny]

You know what just flew into my head? Fractured Fairy Tales.  Remember those?

If we assume Tennyson had a purpose, what message did you get from the 1832 version that you don't from the 1842 one?  Anybody know why he changed it?

This is the kind of poem one wants answers to. One wants somebody to swan in and give all the "right" answers. If it's an allegory, which Andrea asked way back there, what might the different parts symbolize?

Jonathan says the dark side of Camelot.

And Joan K and the river: "To me the river is the most powerful symbol (maybe it's just me - I like rivers). Somehow, it's the river of life, and she keeps having to weave the web of her reality every day. She sees something more glorious than her woven reality, and her self- woven reality isn't enough any more."

 Her "self woven reality" isn't enough any more.  What an interesting thought.  That might apply to so many things. A lot of people say that the internet is a kind of self woven reality, that people are not always what they seem to be or purport themselves to be.

Some analysts  go further. They say the internet, the i phone, etc., etc.,  etc., has changed our human interaction forever. Note people out to eat. Out come the iphones...everybody at the table is "talking" to others not there. What does that say about our society in 2015?

Is it  a way of keeping people at bay in some ways, of keeping them at arm's length, of controlling the depth of intrusion?  Or is it the opposite?   In her case, something changed and she entered  the real world.

What a disappointment that she failed....am I the only one who feels that disappointment? What did Tennyson mean by it? The original note that she supposedly wrote on parchment makes no sense to me. As quoted it's not a suicide note.

That was also interesting about what Pat said about the original Elaine and Lancelot which Tennyson said he took it from, and the contrast is interesting, thank you for bringing it here.

I don't see how Lancelot could have caused anything in this poem.  And we have to ask who did?

I also agree with Halcyon this is fun!

[ALF43]

The suicide note just stated who she was and that they should fear not- the Lady of Camelot!
Why would they fear her when they had never seen her?
Lancelot found her lovely so she certainly did not secrete herself in the tower due to any physical deformity. Ahh perhaps she was a leper! I wish Tennyson were around. We'd give him a run for his stanzas.

[Halcyon]

 
The combination of the deaths of his father and his best friend, the brutal reviews of his poTems, his conviction that both he and his family were in desperate poverty, his feelings of isolation in the depths of the country, and his ill-concealed fears that he might become a victim of epilepsy, madness, alcohol, and drugs, as others in his family had, or even that he might die like Hallam, was more than enough to upset the always fragile balance of Tennyson's emotions. "I suffered what seemed to me to shatter all my life so that I desired to die rather than to live," he said of that period. For a time he determined to leave England, and for ten years he refused to have any of his poetry published, since he was convinced that the world had no place for it.

I found this under The Poetry Foundation as part of a biography of Tennyson.  His quote "I suffered what seemed......"  may be an explanation for the death of the Lady. Note the use of the word "shatter".

[BarbStAubrey]

For what it matters to reading the poem - according to if you see the poem as telling a story or as an analogy, this is background that may have value.

The Lady of Shalott was the Lily maid of Astolat, Elaine of Astolat, who died of unfulfilled love for Sir Lancelot. Lancelot enters a jousting tournament hiding his true identity so he asks Elaine to give him a different shield. In return, he agreed to wear her colors in the tournament.

Lancelot wins, but was injured and flees to avoid discovery. Elaine finds him and nursed him back to health. She tells him of her love however, Lancelot could not return her affection because he loved Guinevere.

Heartbroken Elaine dies of grief, but before dying, she writes a letter to Lancelot asking that he bury her. Her father placed the letter in her hand and put her body on a barge, with a mute boatman, who rowed her to King Arthur's court at Camelot. Lancelot sees the barge and recognizes Elaine. When King Arthur read Elaine's letter, he asked Lancelot to bury her, granting her final request.

The impact for me that the story of Elaine of Astolat is from the Arthur stories that are Celtic myths and Tennyson chooses to use some words, things, nature, that are symbolic in Celtic lore which helps the reader go deeper into the poem.

Then we have to decide if the poem speaks to us in a certain way because of what we know today and the imagery we associate with our views on the world around us or are we looking at the poem with the understandings that were typical of the average person soon after the poem was written, when every Tom Dick and Harry was familiar with meanings that came from Celtic Lore - During the time of Tennyson till after WWII corn dollies and other good luck charms could easily be found tucked in the beams and stair cases of country cottages.

Example, he uses the tree, a Willow - which is tied into the cult of Esus - not only was willow considered a cure for sore throats but there was human sacrifice made to the God Esus and Esus in Celtic lore was considered the God of Vegetation - not only were Willow branches easily plyable but surrounding a garden with a willow woven fence was considered good luck. Honoring the God Esus would bring a fruitful harvest from the garden.

And Barley we see often as part of the wreathes and decorations in Autumn which is symbolic for the renewal of life.

Interesting to me in his first version of Part One he talks of a stream and then the second version he changes it to wave - Wave has the traditional meaning of endless movement.  Tying that bit to his opening phrase where he speaks of a river, which in poetry usually symbolizes the flux of the world, the continuous change of ideas, ideals, idioms - standards of living and quality of life.

For me the charge to come up with one word to describe the poem - so far, I am still lost in the words, symbols, visualization of Part One, I would say it is a poem about change - change from life to death - from the past to the unknown future - from the weaver, like the spider, creator of fate, carried in death over the water that is the source of all matter - the change we all make as we look at life as if through a mirror - the mirror of our own ideas, ideals, idioms - values, books we read, places we have seen, traditions we experience and hold.

[Frybabe]

Great, Barb. You've hit on some of the symbolism of what Tennyson included in his poem. I hadn't thought to look at it in light of Celtic beliefs and superstition.

They were certainly a superstitious bunch back in King Arthur's time, but pagans were not particularly for or against suicide as best as I can tell. However, in the Catholic Church suicide was, by the mid-400's, considered a big no-no under all circumstances. I can imagine the group at Camelot was mostly Christian. Would they not have wanted to touch a suicide for fear it would transfer some stigma to them?

Tennyson's description of Lancelot would have turned any head. First, our Lady noticed that he was traveling alone rather than with others as was apparently usual from what the poem indicated. Then there is the description of a stunning, dazzling dress and equipage both for the horse and the man, a real jaw dropper. I can see how it would have turned her head from the mirror to the real thing.

This brings to mind something one of us (Jonathan?) mentioned earlier. Beware of Knights in Shining Amour, they very often prove false. How many of us as young women or teens looked for or found what appeared to be such a one only to discover later that our expectations were nowhere near the reality regarding the object of our desire? But who was actually false here, The Lady of Shalott or Lancelot? Lancelot the oblivious or the Lady with her overactive imagination?