The Lady Of Shalott Part II - Analysis

Introduction and Tone

The Lady of Shalott - Part II presents a melancholy, dreamlike tone that blends enchantment with quiet resignation. The speaker paints a picture of a secluded woman bound by a mysterious curse, whose life is shaped by mediated, shadowy experiences of the outside world. The mood shifts subtly from steady, ritualistic weaving to a note of yearning and weariness at the poem’s end.

Contextual Note

Written by Alfred Lord Tennyson during the Victorian era, the poem reflects contemporary interests in medievalism, moral constraint, and the role of isolated feminine figures in art and society. Such cultural currents help explain the poem’s fascination with duty, spectacle, and the price of breaking social or supernatural boundaries.

Main Theme: Isolation and Mediation

The poem develops isolation through the Lady’s confined activities: she “weaves by night and day” and watches the world only through “a mirror clear.” The mirror creates an intermediary layer—life is always represented, never lived. Lines like “She hath no loyal knight and true” emphasize both physical solitude and emotional deprivation.

Main Theme: Art versus Life

Weaving functions as a metaphor for art: she reproduces the “mirror’s magic sights” into a beautiful web, yet this art is derivative and secondhand. Her delight in the web coexists with discontent—“I am half-sick of shadows”—suggesting an inner conflict between the safety of artistic craft and the desire for direct, messy human experience.

Main Theme: Fate, Curse, and Agency

The vague “curse” structures her choices: she “knows not what the curse may be,” which undercuts full agency. The uncertainty about the curse’s consequences keeps her in passive compliance, highlighting how fear of unknown punishment can enforce self-restraint and limit autonomy.

Symbols and Vivid Imagery

The mirror is the central symbol: it represents mediation, limitation, and reflected reality. The “magic web with colours gay” symbolizes creative output that is beautiful yet confined to reproductions. Recurring images—the river, the road “winding down to Camelot,” funeral processions, and lovers—contrast motion and communal life with the Lady’s stasis, reinforcing her separation from living experience.

Concluding Insight

Part II of the poem sketches a poignant tableau of a woman whose artistic labor both sustains and imprisons her. Through mediated imagery, symbolic objects, and a quietly shifting tone, Tennyson probes tensions among creativity, isolation, and the yearning to participate directly in life.