How Is Love Presented In The Lady Of Shalott

1825 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Love in literature essay

People tend to go to absurd limits for love, especially when it is forbidden. Love is one of the most desired emotions because it gives people the feeling of being complete. To love and be loved is the ultimate goal for most people because they desire a companion to go through life with. Being lonely and desiring an unattainable love like what is represented in “The Lady Of Shalott” can cause someone to go mad and ultimately dive into the deeper end of things which leads to a path of temptation. Tennyson uses the actions and thoughts of The Lady of Shalott in “The Lady Of Shalott” to show how being lonely and having love almost in grasp can cause people to go to unimaginable lengths for the sake of love, although they know it is best to stay away. “The Lady Of …show more content…

In this poem The Lady of Shalott was faced with a curse that would not even allow her to steal a glance out of her window, and the only way to view the world was through her mirror. She attempted to keep herself busy and distracted by weaving a web of beautiful colors and looking at the distorted images her mirror provided her with. Over time her strength that kept her safe wore thin and she grew tired of being held in solitude in her castle. Through watching Sir Lancelot, she fell in love and desired his attention so she left her web to pursue him. The Lady of Shalott pursued the knight, although she knew even a glance would mean certain death, but in her final moments she was happy and she sang of her happiness until her last moments breathing. The Lady chased unattainable love and faced death to find a sense of being whole and being loved. She tried to ignore her desires, but in the end she lost her life for the sake of love and only received the knight’s attention once her blood was frozen and her eyes were dark and

Show More
Related

  • Enslaving Nature of Love Exposed in Lucretius

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Dryden's Lucretius, the speaker argues that (1) Love is a sickness, (2) Love's sickness enslaves, and (3) all attempts to remedy Love's sickness are vain and will only frustrate the lover. Just as Milton's Adam and Eve become enslaved to sin by disobeying God, so mankind becomes enslaved to Love when pierced with Cupid's "winged arrow". In Milton, there is redemption and freedom through Christ, but in Dryden, no salvation from love is possible. This poem leaves mankind in a hopeless, frustrated state, unable to break free from love's yoke.  This essay will center on the last heroic couplet: "All wayes they try, successeless all they prove,/To cure the secret sore of lingering love".

    Read More

  • A Maid Of Christ By Brother Thomas Of Hales

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    People often try to fill the void by loving another human being. It is not wrong to love besides God, but it is believed that Disordered love will eventually occur where something or someone that we love cannot return the love, which leads to suffering and unhappiness. In this poem, Thomas of Hales, as a narrator, critiques disordered love, "That worldly love is spasm mad, Beset by evils manifold, Deceitful, weak, false and bad”(2). He believes that the worldly love is like a temptation from the devil making people feel unstable, and it does not last forever as it is very easy to be broken.

    Read More

  • Love in Midsummer Night's Dream

    1285 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is love? Love is a very powerful emotion! Love is something that can come at any time in your life. It can appear in any way, shape, or form. In the famous play “Midsummer Night's Dream,” by William Shakespeare, love is a major theme that affects many people and causes many challenges. In order for love to conquer these challenges one needs to stay true to their love, they may need the help of some magic, and must be persistent.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Love In Sappho's 'Deathless Aphrodite'

    1804 Words  | 4 Pages

    Can a simple emotion such as love be regarded as one of the greatest weapons to create or attain power? It’s a renowned fact that human beings are by nature designed to need, crave, and even require love as part of their survival mechanisms. It comes to no surprise that one of the first accounts of antique poetry maintains love and the craving for it as its main theme; thereby, reinforcing the deep importance that it upholds in the lives of many individuals. Sappho’s “Deathless Aphrodite” clearly epitomizes the suffering and bitterness that arises from an unrequited love. In Sappho’s case, which portrays the case of many, she constantly finds herself in loneliness and despair for though she tries repeatedly, she is only let down recurrently as no one reciprocates the love she gives. It is only the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who holds

    Read More

  • Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Power of Love

    1250 Words  | 3 Pages

    Deceiving and irrational, love can be a challenging emotion to endure. It can be difficult to find happiness in love, and on the journey to find that happiness, love can influence one’s thought process. Shakespeare uses specific wording in his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to poke fun while exploring the individual’s quest for love. The desire to find love and a happy ending with a lover is so strong in the foundation of mankind, that people will not accept a life without it. In fact, they would rather give up their attribute of rationality than their opportunity to find a significant other. The heart’s control of the mind can make a foolish man.

    Read More

  • Love In Danticat's Night Woman

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    Danticat uses the many short stories in her novel, Krik? Krak, to express the endurance of love and how neither time nor death can tear it apart. The story Children of the Sea expresses this beautifully with the hope of young love. The piece is told through love letters written back and forth between a boy and a young girl. In an attempt to flee the oppressive government in Haiti under which he was considered a fugitive, the boy sought passage on a boat. However, in doing this, he had to leave the girl he loved behind. Despite the distance between them and the hurt she feels from him leaving, they continue to write each other letters in the hopes of lessening the distance between them and keeping their love alive until they meet again(7).……….

    Read More

  • Love, Chaos, and Disorder in Midsummer Night’s Dream

    1215 Words  | 3 Pages

    Love can be quite chaotic at times. As much as poets and songwriters promote the idea of idyllic romantic love, the experience in reality is often fraught with emotional turmoil. When people are in love, they tend to make poor decisions, from disobeying authority figures to making rash, poorly thought-out choices. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses various motifs to illustrate how love, irrationality, and disobedience are thematically linked to disorder.

    Read More

  • Displays of Love in Endymion and Tamburlaine

    1213 Words  | 3 Pages

    Comparing and contrasting the kinds of love represented by Tellus and Endymion in Lyly’s comedy of errors, Edymion, and the love between Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine show similarities where passions drive lovers to capture suitors, but differ in one couple desiring the unattainable, and another taking action to attain. Love is presented in different ways, specifically in Lyly’s play the love is unattainable and unreal, as opposite in Marlowe’s play the love is attainable. Both, couples also have similarities when lovers are driven by their passions.

    Read More

  • Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    Love plays a very significant role in this Shakespearian comedy, as it is the driving force of the play: Hermia and Lysander’s forbidden love and their choice to flee Athens is what sets the plot into motion. Love is also what drives many of the characters, and through readers’ perspectives, their actions may seem strange, even comical to us: from Helena pursuing Demetrius and risking her reputation, to fairy queen Titania falling in love with Bottom. However, all these things are done out of love. In conclusion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream displays the blindness of love and how it greatly contradicts with reason.

    Read More

  • John Keats Bright Star Analysis

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    Keats begins with the poem with a question, “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?”. He does this to ask the “knight-at-arms” what has made him this weak, this pale, dying in a field somewhere and the knight’s answer takes up the rest of the poem. The imagery in my visual representation depicting a heart broken and weakened by the icy, deceptive lips of ‘femme fatale’ is both powerful and highly symbolic because it expresses the coldness and the deviousness of the deceptive witch that has weakened the knight. The icy cold lips of the witch symbolise her deceptive nature, and the way she tricks the knight into a deathly sleep, which is also visualised in my representation. His deathly sleep is also represented in a ‘before/after’ representation in which an image of the beautiful woman in the meadows is shown, and after his nightmare, the icy cold, desolate and dark hill side upon which the knight awakes is shown in the neighbouring image. The speaker says that the "sedge" have all died out from around the lake, and "no birds sing”. We can deduce that it 's autumn since all the birds have migrated, and the plants have “withered." The speaker continues to address this sick, depressed "knight at arms." He asks about the "lily" on the knight 's "brow," suggesting that the knight 's face is pale like a lily.

    Read More

  • Vulnerability in the Works of John Donne

    2695 Words  | 6 Pages

    Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex: a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving.

    Read More

  • The Lady of Shalott

    1652 Words  | 4 Pages

    'The Lady of Shalott'; was and is subject for countless interpretation by readers and artists, especially pictorial. Although, or maybe because the whole setting is quite vague and shadowy there have been many attempts to explain why the Lady of Shalott was cursed. Maybe she was not cursed al all. What was this whisper she heard ? Was she schizophrenic, hearing voices inside her head ? Another question is why she had to die in the end. Is it possible she eventually commit suicide, because she had realized that her love for Sir Lancelot was futile ? These are some questions that stay in the back of your head after reading Tennyson's poem. Even today you can feel the infinite struggle the Lady of Shalott had to undergo. Tennyson impressively shows the development of a young woman who is faced with one of the most difficult times in life- growing up in a world full of restrictions and rules and becoming a woman. His subtle description of a girls problems at his time is, slightly altered, even valid today.

    Read More

  • “The Lady of Shalott”

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fantasy is how you can best express the beautiful poem “The Lady of Shalott.” "Tirra lirra," by the river Sang Sir Lancelot,” in my opinion, is one of the best lines of the poem “The Lady of Shalott.” This line of the poem signifies the breaking point of the poem. “The Lady of Shalott” is a very detailed yet simple poem to understand. It was written by Lord Alfred Tennyson in 1832 and later revised in 1842 (The Lady of Shalott). There are examples of imagery and themes that are seen throughout the entire poem.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Isolation In The Lady Of Shalott

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    The final element of the Victorian Age that can be seen in Tennyson's poetry is a feeling of isolation that was heavily felt among the Victorians. This sense of isolation, which sparked a desire for social change, was felt for various reasons. The first is that the scientific discoveries mentioned before set younger generations apart from the previous ones. Many people feared the effects of rapid industrialization, as they often didn't fully understand technology, making them feel isolated from the modern world and nostalgic towards simpler, rural life. Another is that the spiritual doubt that came as a result of these scientific advancements also led Victorians, and in particular, Victorian artists, to feel isolated from life, love, and spirituality. This theme can be seen in The Lady of Shalott, along with the themes about women's roles. In the poem, the Lady of Shalott is completely isolated from society that it becomes harmful to her psyche and ultimately chooses death over her life of isolation. The dangers of social isolation shown in the poem emphasize the need for social change that was greatly felt in the Victorian age. It also shows the isolation of the Victorian artist, who must observe life rather than participate in it. For example, the Lady of Shalott must continue to weave her web alone, and as soon as she tries to participate in the world her web is ruined. This can be symbolic of how it was often thought that an artist's work can suffer when he tries to become more than an observer, when he breaks his isolation. A similar theme is expressed in Ulysses, where the speaker, like the Lady of Shalott, wishes to explore the world, but is resigned instead to a life of conformity: marriage, manners, a tedious job. He is r...

    Read More

  • Analysis of the Sonnet, "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing like the Sun"

    431 Words  | 1 Pages

    This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.

    Read More

More about How Is Love Presented In The Lady Of Shalott

Open Document