The Tatyana-caste

The Tatyana-caste

'...Just as the storm clouds often slay

The scarcely breathing new born day.' 1

One of the most popular of Tennyson's poems, The Lady of Shalott relates the tragic story of an extremely lonely young lady longing for a soulmate. A poem of "technical virtuosity, inspired landscape-painting based on precise observation, and a dreamworld of artistic beauty denying the commonplace"2, "turning to beauty as a possibility of a more complete life"3, it is one of the highlights of the author's early years.

This paper shall attempt to prove my opinion that the work is very much parallel to an even more famous Russian narrative poem finished about the same year as The Lady of Shalott. I will omit discussing the poem's popular critical interpretation concerning "the conflict between the artist's own sensual vision and his need to experience life directly"4 -- I'll rather concentrate on my individual, rather alienated thoughts and feelings arised during the reading, and I will not go into Arthurian considerations, either.

Concerning both the subject of a yearning, introverted young lady and the bleak solution, Tennyson's poem may be readily compared to two other, albeit larger scale, masterpieces of the early 1830's -- Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet" and, even more notably, Pushkin's "Onegin" --, each dealing with the same kind of pastoral, embowered, dreamy, grave and generally misunderstood girls or young women. This 'caste' sticks out of its rustic environment like a sore thumb, often being regarded by their own relatives and acquaintances as hopeless misfits, spinsters or nuns to be; being highly sensitive, imaginative and deep-feeling, they find it exceptionally hard, even actually impossible, to become accepted and understood within their immediate environment made up of generally cruder and simpler sorts. Thus, these girls feel obliged to create a world of their own as a progressive act of counterbalance and self-condolence, rich with remnants of childhood fantasy, romantic works they've read and an air of bittersweet wistfulness. Pushkin's memorable portrayal of Tatyana as a child may well resemble the early years of the Shalott Lady:

"She was no beauty, like her sister, And had no roses on her cheeks, Which would attract admiring looks.

A wild thing, mournful and retiring, Like a doe seen in a forest clearing, In the midst of all her kith and kin She seemed like something alien.

She could not manage a caress With ma or pa, or a soft touch.