A Mystery in Paint and Print

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” (1832) tells the story of a medieval woman trapped in a tower, overlooking Camelot. When the Lady leaves her tower upon seeing Lancelot’s reflection in an enchanted mirror, a curse befalls her. Literary critics of all time have struggled to define the Lady’s role in this puzzling yet charming poem. Most critics unable to define the poem’s mysteries, focused on one aspect of the text that was easily conceivable: its medieval setting and vivid colors. Tennyson took the primary criticism unleashed in 1832, and republished his poem a decade later, maintaining the original poem’s mystery and showing an even more obscure Lady. The Pre-Raphaelites – a small artistic movement founded in 1848 – created a large set of painted Ladies over the course of six decades. The literary critics alike, they struggled to capture the poem’s essence and the Lady’s position in it. In order to unravel the poem’s mysteries most painters pulled all its assets together into a single image. Except for John William Waterhouse. His Lady of Shalott is an image of mysterious beauty, which embraces the poem’s mystery that Tennyson, arguably, deliberately maintained.