Tennyson's Women

OK, I just created the longest post ever on this topic, and lost it by accident, so I am feeling very negative about the whole blogging thing now. I shall try again.

J W Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888

The most useful resource that I can point you to with regard to your homework task is The Victorian Web, which is a conucopia of information about Victorian literature and culture orginally created by Brown University in America, and now hosted by the University Scholars Program. It is quite vast, so I shall give you a few navigation points to steady you.

The main Tennyson Index is your first point of call, and there are many sub-sections which you can investigate usefully. One of these deals with Visual Art, and discusses the many painterly responses to the poems that we have been discussing.

Many scholars are also very generous about their contributions to this website, and they are well worth citing. For instance, Elizabeth Nelson gives a simpler version of her article  "Tennyson and the Ladies of Shalott," from Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow, Brown U.: 1979, and the whole text of her article on 'The Embowered Woman'

Should you get stuck when thinking about the poems, there is a useful list of Tennyson's poems, reading and discussion questions which you can refer to. Read through these short essays and the questions they suggest, to loosen up your ideas.

Those of you who asked for the references to the paintings can find them all here, with paintings of 'Mariana' here.

The useful articles I suggested are these, which you might be able to find at the central library, or on JSTOR, but there might be enough on the Victorian web to keep you busy.

• Jeffers, Thomas L. “Nice Threads: Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott as Artist.” Yale Review 89 (2001): 54-68.
• Showalter, Elaine . “Victorian Women and Menstruation.” Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972. 38-44.
• Vicinus, Martha, ed. Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972.
• Wright, Jane Cooke. “A reflection on fiction and art in ‘The Lady of Shalott’.” Victorian Poetry (2003): 54-68.

 Happy essay writing!