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Anne Douris Winning Essay of the 2010 W. C. Chau Essay Prize Ryerson University Toronto, Ontario All rights reserved to the author.
The Reach of the River: The Nature of Desire in J.W. Waterhouses Depictions of Tennysons Lady of Shalott In terms of romantic longing, not many lovers have tasted the sweet without the accompanying sour. Desire is double-sided and severe, calling on the senses to describe its extremes a practice of many enamored poets. Hot and cold, melting and frigid, sweet and bitter, desire has the ability to elate you or collapse you. The notion of desire is divided, or double, in nature, and likewise it divides the lover into two opposing conditions. Alfred Tennyson's ballad "The Lady of Shalott" depicts such a divided individual, positioned in an environment that mirrors her inner conflict. In his artistic renderings of the piece, John William Waterhouse aligns the Lady of Shallots division specifically with the notion of romantic longing, emphasizing her sensuality and her role as half of a whole. J.W. Waterhouse's visual interpretations of "The Lady of Shalott" bring into focus the dualities present in the poem by illustrating the Lady in two inverted states. The two paintings, together, present the paradox of desire as expressed in the text: both pleasurable and painful. It is also irresolvable in the sense that fulfilling a desire means ending desire. "On either side the river lie" (Tennyson 1) the poem begins, immediately splitting it in two. Already our landscape is established into two sides for the reader to swing between. "Many tower'd Camelot," populated and bustling, sits at one pole, while the "silent isle" and solitary tower of Shalott sits at the other. The poem continues to express

 polarity as a means to reflect the Lady's condition, not only through the broad strokes of setting and mood, but also its rhyme scheme, its structure, its paradoxical diction and its frequent allusion to doubles. Before approaching the effects of the actual language, the reader is subject to the effects of the rhyme scheme. Set in iambic tetrameter, the poem when spoken reflects

polarity in two ways. The first lies in the function of "iambs." An iamb (or iambic foot) is a measurement of rhythm consisting of two sounds an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (Construction, par. 4). Reciting, the voice flutters between weak and forceful, nothing and something, pole to pole. It also suggests the "lub-dub" of a beating heart, where the "lub" is soft and the "dub" is strong. This might point to why theiamb is so popular in ballads and other lyrical poetry, as romance naturally rises out of it. Secondly, the "tetrameter," where four iambs comprise each line, lends itself to the idea of pairs. Split down the centre, you have two couples of iambs, and each couple can be split into single iambs, which are, in effect, still couples themselves. We can see duplicity in the poem at a molecular level. Stepping back, duality can be seen on each level of the poems structure. Two rounds of rhyming couplets make up a stanza, divided by another, recurring couplet "Camelot" or "Lancelot" paired with "Shalott" at the end. The pattern is consistent throughout: AAAABCCCB. Contrasts present themselves between "A" rhymes and "C" rhymes, as they switch between crisp, agitating sounds and soft, subdued ones. The use of these sounds is directly linked to what is happening in the lines.
She left the web, she left the loom She made three paces thro' the room, She saw the water-lily bloom,


She saw the helmet and the plume She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; The curse is come upon me, cried The Lady of Shalott. (Tennyson 5)

This passage connects soothing "oo" sounds to the image of safety and solitude in the Lady's tower, and then unnerves the reader with anguished "aye" sounds to reflect the Lady's sudden onset of distress. Other stanzas are more or less in keeping, where soothing sounds denote the Lady of Shalott's peaceful surroundings, and their opposing counterparts describe life in Camelot. Once again widening our lens, we see that the first four stanzas make up "Part I" of the poem, and the following four create "Part II." Beyond providing an example of the divisibility of the poem, the first two parts offer another contrast, as they are at odds, both in structure and mood, with the second half of the poem. Structurally, the difference lies in the number of stanzas to each part: "Part III" contains five, and "Part IV" contains six. This addition of stanzas is not arbitrary it points to a change of mood in the poem that is itself paradoxical. The paradox is clearest looking at the big picture of the poem, where the locations are immediately divided with the first line, "On either side the river lie. The poem is split between two locations, a split that leads to many other divisions within the poem itself. The first two parts come from the perspective of the Lady's tower, while the second two parts occur out in the open air of Camelot. Given that the Lady is cursed and imprisoned between four grey walls, forced to work endlessly in isolation, cheerful

 description would not seem appropriate for her circumstances. However, her static and confined state is described contrarily with a quick-paced, song-like quality, we see

that the Lady "delights" in endless toil, as she "weaves by night and day/ A magic web of colours gay" (Tennyson 2). She does not resent the world that she has been denied, as Camelot is described romantically as a happy, animated place ripe with pastoral imagery. The carefree tone of the first half of the poem conflicts with her position of imprisonment. After she frees herself of the tower in the second half, the reader would expect an increased sense of liberation and movement, but instead is met with a drawn out anguish and stillness. The sounds and images weigh on the reader and slow down the reading experience: "Heavily the low sky" hangs over a much less romantic Camelot, "leaves upon her falling light" as the Lady floats away, "chanting lowly" and "freezing slowly." It could be that the extra stanzas in the latter two parts of the poem reflect this slowing pace. Joy and pain are embodied in the two halves of the poem, contrary to their surroundings of imprisonment and freedom, respectively. The Lady of Shalott is subject to two polarized emotions and landscapes and what divides them (and her) comes in the form of Lancelot, and the line of desire he burns across the landscape. "I am half sick of shadows" is the first mark of the Lady of Shalott's discontent, immediately followed by Lancelot's bow-shot flying across our view. The four stanzas describing Lancelot, sealed on each end by the only two uses of his name as a rhyme, burn a bright line of division in the poem. The sun comes "dazzling thro' the leaves"; a horn hangs from his "blazon'd baldric slung"; "his helmet and helmet-feather/ Burn'd like one burning flame together." Lancelot is "trailing [a] light" behind him, separating the Lady's states of complacency and torment. There is no doubt that these images are also

 deeply erotic. In an examination of Arthurian legend in British art, Christine Poulson

describes these burning images as suggesting Lancelots sexual potency (Poulson 186). Given that the Lady in a few brief lines sees newlyweds in her mirror, remarks on her weariness, and is then introduced to the image of Lancelot, it seems that romantic desire would be a reasonable explanation for her imminent switch to despair. The two opposing states of the Lady of Shalott are the result of the realization of a desire, a realization of a lack in her existence, a recognition that she is indeed just a "half" of a whole. It is with these two opposing states that J.M. Waterhouse illustrates the paradoxical effects romantic desire has on the lover. Using images of "halfness" and "wholeness" to reinforce the reach for a desired object, he indicates the importance of the space that must be kept between the lover and beloved in order for desire to exist. "I Am Half Sick of Shadows Said the Lady of Shalott (Appendix 1) and The Lady of Shalott (Appendix 2) are two of John William Waterhouse's oil paintings depicting scenes from the Tennysons ballad. The first portrays the Lady in her tower, as the newlyweds walk across a large round mirror that sits behind her. The second illustrates the Lady after the curse is set upon her, and she has left the tower to sit in her boat on the river. The pieces, completed in reverse-chronological order, are inversions of each other in almost every respect. In Shadows, the woman is robed in bright red, is paleskinned, and has dark hair that she holds behind her head as she stretches. This position "displays the female figure" and shows the "embowered woman's erotic appeal..." (Nelson 4). In the other piece (for clarity's sake I will refer to this painting as "The Boat Scene") we see a white-robed girl, somewhat yellow-skinned, with light, untied hair, one arm limp on her lap, the other loosely grasping a chain. There appears to be a difference

 in the age of the models as well, the latter of the two being slightly less shapely, with a childlike face. Other elements of the scenes are also inverted: where in Shadows the Ladys tapestry is white, in "The Boat Scene" it is a deep red. The colour palettes also

contrast: where Shadows contains rich reds and other warm colours against a crisp, black background, "The Boat Scene" is a haze of indistinct, desaturated greens and greys against a patch of pale white sky. In her essay, The Embowered Woman: Pictorial Interpretations of The Lady of Shalott. Elizabeth Nelson considers the two locations: the contrast between her interior world and the exterior world, between stasis and movement, between the active and the contemplative lives encourages the reader to consider thoughtfully the differences between the two worlds" (Nelson 4). Visually this contrast is there, except stasis and movement are attributed to the exterior and interior, respectively. This inversion reflects the contradicting language used to describe the tower and the outdoors, as outlined above. By means of technique, Waterhouse emphasized the distinction between the Lady's perspectives before and after realizing what she lacked in terms of romance. She sits in her tower with bright, aware eyes and a romantic view of Camelot in her mirror and in her work before being tempted by the delightful image of Lancelot. Once she looks upon him and her notions of a satisfying life in the tower collapse, her perception of the open air of Camelot is drastically different and much less pleasing. Her liveliness seems to fade, her skin pales, her eyes cloud over and her tapestry (formerly her only care in the world) is half-submerged in the water. That said, her sensuality is a focus of both pieces. While comparing Waterhouses interpretation to that of William Holman Hunts, Poulson asserts that Waterhouse made a point of communicating

sensuality: Waterhouses picture is far more sensuous in feelingWith Waterhouse the emphasis is on sexual awakening, seduction (Poulson 186). Waterhouse depicts the one figure in two very different worlds, in two polar opposite personas and moods, but ultimately it is the same world, the same woman. The images conflict just as the Ladys emotions do and this reflects how ultimately it is part of the experience of desire to maintain both pain and pleasure at once, or otherwise swing back and forth from pole to pole. In her exploratory novel on romantic love, Eros the Bittersweet, Anne Carson declares that "...space must be maintained or desire ends" (Carson 26). Before turning to see the window, the Lady of Shalott sees the world on the flat surface of a mirror. Viewing Camelot in direct sight forces her to realize the actual space that separates her from her Lancelot. This space has two effects. The first is that it allows the Lady to experience the sweet sensation of desire, which is realizing that a beloved exists, and the suspended hope for possible union. The second is desire's negative counterpart, where the space acts as an obstacle that cannot be overcome, as doing so would be to end desire. Space is a venue in which desire operates; its unfortunate contradiction is that although there is a pleasure in reaching across the space, actual attainment of what is being sought means that it ceases to be an object of desire. Waterhouse creates images of flatness and space and aligns them with concepts of wholeness and halfness. The mirror, which reflects flat, romanticized ideals, is circular in Shadows. The circle encompasses Camelot, home to Lancelot, suggesting that he is linked to wholeness. In front of the mirror, the Lady of Shalott sits in a crescent shape, a half of a circle staring deliberately out at something we

 cannot see. This crescent shape is repeated throughout the piece in the shuttles of the loom, which bear a particular resemblance to the boat in "The Boat Scene." Out in the open space of "The Boat Scene," the Lady's halfness is even more pronounced as she

bends her body forward toward the edge of the painting. Though she is unable to see, she points herself toward Camelot, where Lancelot, her possible other half, is waiting. Poulson recounts Tennysons description of her expression in the piece as a "new born love for something, for someone in the wide world from which she has been so long secluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities" (Poulson, 184). The trip down the river in the crescent boat is the Ladys reach for wholeness; instead, it takes her to a harsh reality. The reach itself is at once pleasing and painful for her, as she sings a "mournful carol," chanting "loudly" and "lowly." As soon as her reach turns into contact with Camelot, on a final, paradoxical note, she dies in song. In a way, she becomes the embodiment of desire, as she can either live with it, or die without it. Carson defines this reaching as the action of desire, which is "beautiful (in its object), foiled (it its attempt) and endless (in time)" (Carson 29). The Lady of Shalott experiences the sweetness of a "new born love," of seeing that someone, and is located at the pole of pleasure. Her comprehension of space and a reality that cannot allow her hopes for wholeness to be fulfilled send her across the spectrum to a state of anguish. The nature of romantic desire is two-fold and thus the Lady of Shalott is subject to two conflicting states. As she tries to fulfill her desire, to collapse the space and turn herself from crescent to a full circle, she comes to realize that there is no ending for desire that can satisfy. If desire ends, then so too does she.

 Works Cited Carson, Anne. Eros The Bittersweet. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Construction: 'The Lady of Shalott' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson." Exploring Poetry. Gale Research, 1998. March 16, 2010. Http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC/ Nelson, Elizabeth. Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott." Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts. Ed. George P. Landow. Providence, R.I.:Brown U.: 1979.

Poulson, Christine. The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. The Lady of Shalott. The Lady of Shalott. London, U.K: Orion Books Ltd, 1996. Pages 1-8.

Appendix 1.Waterhouse, John William. I am Half Sick of Shadows Said the Lady of Shalott. 1915. Oil on Canvas. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. <http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/paintings>

2.Waterhouse, John William. The Lady of Shalott. 1888. Oil on Canvas. Tate Gallery, London. <http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/paintings>

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