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the edge of the wold -- Vague Literary Criticism

“On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
            To many-towered Camelot; 
And up and down the people go, 
Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below,
            The island of Shalott.”
		- Alfred Lord Tennyson (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/los1.html)

My mother always hung a huge poster of John William Waterhouse’s painting, “The Lady of Shalott” which was based on the poem. She tacked the poem up nearby. I grew up staring at this, reading this, assigning large chunks of the poem to memory.

I was a teenager by the time I realized the wold didn’t mean world. That the words are different. That the wold is merely part of the world. A subset, like a forest, like an ocean, like a hillock.

But the edge of the wold was no different from the edge of the world for the Lady of Shalott, locked in her tower.

“And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
            Winding down to Camelot: 
There the river eddy whirls, 
And there the curly village-churls, 
And the red cloaks of market girls,
            Pass onward from Shalott.”

She’s stuck. This woman, called beautiful, is cursed to live in a tower and can’t even look at the beauty with her own eyes, she must see it in reverse, through her weaving mirror. Standing on the edge of reality. The wold, the market-goers, Lancelot.

“"I am half sick of shadows," said
            The Lady of Shalott.”

Only half sick? I begin to rage a bit inside, HALF SICK of the shadows out there, the shadows of life, of the world, the wold, outside your window. Look to your English countryside, the ups and downs of hills. Walk from your weaving prison and be with humanity, experience life.

And she does. Sir Lancelot wanders by and in her mirror she falls, hard and fast in lust or love. She turns her head:

“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 is come upon me," cried
            The Lady of Shalott.”

And the feminist in me wants to scream. A lost life for a man she’s never met, a lost life for... but wait, what kind of life did she have.

And this is where the painting comes in, she ends up in a boat, chained to it, drifting. For one moment of real sight, of the wold, the knight, the water lilies, for ONE reckless moment the curse brings her death. A woman marred by the mere sight of a man forbidden to her.

And for this, besides death, her prize is unremarkable, when she drifts to shore Lancelot is among the crowd and says,

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

He knows not that she died but for to look at him. He simply sees a lovely face, not a life captured and lost in one glance past the mirror, one glance over the edge of her rules. It is a story that lives today in so many places, women are safest if we obey.

A lesson best noticed and fought. We are no longer in Arthurian times, let us move forward. Break the shackles, both seen and unseen, literal and figurative. Let us learn from the unnamed Lady of Shalott.

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The painting
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.chinaoilpaintinggallery.com/oilpainting/John-William-Waterhouse/The-Lady-of-Shalott-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.chinaoilpaintinggallery.com/famous-artists-waterhouse-c-141_159/the-lady-of-shalott-1-p-13629&h=199&w=253&sz=1&tbnid=86l15rhPE0QsRM:&tbnh=160&tbnw=203&zoom=1&usg=__bffZqRRNO1KiVfz5Qj1Z-9dwoyw=&docid=SP2Y-ebDCNY_EM&itg=1&sa=X&ei=DXZPUcSIGqvLigLxo4AQ&ved=0CLUBEPwdMAo

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This piece of vague lit crit was brought to you for week 9 of LJ Idol:Exhibit A http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/635121.html

Hope you enjoy my take on the poetry of another this week.