Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” and Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover,” both portray idyllic female subjects described by a third-person speaker. Each poem incorporates themes of temptation, lust, a woman’s position in society, and male domination. A striking yet perplexing similarity between these two works is that both of the female subjects die by the end of the poem, each for a different reason. I would argue that through the lenses of these two poems, the authors equate sexual desire and temptation to a death sentence for the women depicted. Each of the women appears to have little to no agency and therefore no control over their lives or, in turn, their deaths. In Porphyria’s case, she is murdered by her lover; but, in the case of the Lady of Shalott, she is cursed in a way that ultimately leads to her death. Each of these poems, centered around female characters, focuses mainly on their very limited roles in stories that are written about them. I contend that we ought to put these two texts in conversation with one another because they both present female characters who are essentially held responsible for their deaths even though their respective fates are largely out of their control.
The Lady of Shallot in Tennyson’s poem is entirely isolated from the outside world in a tower where she works tirelessly weaving a web. She has no name besides “The Lady of Shalott” and virtually no identity; her only purpose in the poem is to continue to work on her art. She is described as being largely indifferent to her position in life: “And little other care hath she,/The Lady of Shalott.” This holds true until she is given a partial window into the real world. Suddenly a mirror falls in front of her, placed strategically so that she is forced to watch the passersby stroll into Camelot. She watches them knowing she’ll never be able to do the same. The lady knows that if she looks toward Camelot she will be cursed immediately, so she continues to work on her web: “There she weaves by night and day/A magic web with colours gay./She has heard a whisper say,/A curse is on her if she stay/To look down to Camelot./She knows not what the curse may be,/And so she weaveth steadily.” The mirror is a symbol of temptation and deception, as it also further emphasizes the very minimal control that the lady has over her own life. The mirror provides an object of looking out at the world, much like a window. But, it is still a mirror, therefore it will never provide her an escape from her tower, and she will remain trapped. This provides her with a very limited scope of the world and awakens an underlying desire to know more.
The people passing by each day represent objects of temptation enticing the lady to give in to the urge and look toward Camelot. One day, when Sir Lancelot rides by on his horse, her resolve weakens and she looks toward Camelot. This ultimately leads to her curse and, soon after, her death. There is never any designated or real reason for the lady’s death, but the indirect cause is her curiosity and desire to see Sir Lancelot. I would argue that this forced scenario implies that her interest in Sir Lancelot is detrimental to both her life and her work as an artist. This contributes to an overarching theme that the lady’s downfall is due to her sudden desire to take a glance at Lancelot and therefore transcend the limited role that living in the tower and society itself impose on her. The very moment she takes action for herself occurs within the same moment that she is cursed to death. This further suggests that her own agency led to her demise, and that she should not have acted beyond the parameters of her position.
This poem also makes reference to the often thankless work of an artist. The Lady of Shalott is the artist in this case, and her entire life and purpose is dedicated to weaving an extravagant web that no one will ever see, just as no one will ever see her. Additionally, it is important to consider the fact that the lady is not the teller of her own story, and rather that an unknown speaker is the one telling her tale. She lived a life of such extreme solitude, that she did not have a chance to create her own story and talk about her own purpose. The poem tells the story of the lady, therefore it is arguable that the work was not written until after she passed away. She is enticed by Sir Lancelot, so much so that she risks the curse, but even Lancelot doesn’t lay eyes on her until after she has died.
In “Porphyria’s Lover,” the setting at the beginning of the poem is important within the context of Porphyria’s significance and her role within the text. The initial tone is somber and sullen, but this changes when Porphyria enters her lover’s house. The state of the weather is representative of the mental state of the speaker; he is sad and nearly heartbroken until Porphyria appears. He describes her as causing the dreary weather to go away and bringing warmth into the house when he says “When glided in Porphyria; straight/She shut the cold out and the storm,/And kneeled and made the cheerless grate/Blaze up, and all the cottage warm.” She provides immediate relief for the speaker which is quickly replaced with a sense of urgency to trap her in this state of happiness.
Porphyria is described as an ethereal figure who elicits temptation and desire from the speaker: “And called me. When no voice replied,/She put my arm about her waist,/And made her smooth white shoulder bare,/And all her yellow hair displaced.” It appears as though she is trying to draw the speaker in and convince him of something. Her “yellow hair,” is a recurring symbol that contributes to her aura and enticing appearance. The symbol reappears later on in the poem, but for a very different reason. Porphyria reveals that she has overcome her pride and vanity and that she wants to be with him: “Murmuring how she loved me — she/Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,/To set its struggling passion free/From pride, and vainer ties dissever,/And give herself to me for ever.” However, even with this admission of her devotion to him, the speaker still has an underlying fear that her feelings will change. He cannot fight his urge to freeze this moment in time.
In a sudden plot twist, the speaker resorts to strangling Porphyria with her own hair because he wants to preserve her within this condition where she wants to be with him and is content with his station in life. Porphyria being strangled with her own hair, subtly implies that her own beauty is deadly/the cause of her death. However, she is killed by someone else manipulating her features, she does not kill herself. Therefore, this could be a reference to the idea that her beauty and femininity are a detriment to her ability to live. The speaker appears to show no signs of remorse or understanding of the severity of what he has done to Porphyria. Rather, he laughs at what he has done and treats her lifeless body as if she is still living. Through the lens of this poem she is almost doll-like, because the speaker takes complete control over her.
In the case of the Lady of Shalott, her own temptation is what leads to her demise, for Porphyria, however, it is quite the opposite. She is killed for the effect that her beauty and charm have on someone else. This suggests that her femininity is dangerous, specifically to men. It is also arguable that the speaker is so in love with Porphyria and afraid that she will leave him, that he feels as though she has taken control over him. This vulnerability likely scares him and he kills her in order to regain control wherever he feels it has been lost. Additionally, because both women are portrayed by a third person speaker, we never gain any insight into their internal dialogue or their feelings. Rather, we are given a depiction of their lives from the perspective of an outside observer. This gives them no power or position in the telling of their own stories. An interesting contrast between these two works is the fact that in “The Lady of the Shalott,” the lady’s character is not given a name, but the man who catches her attention is given a name; whereas, in “Porphyria’s Lover,” the main female character is given a name whereas her lover is not. The male lover still obtains the power, despite not being given the identity that comes with a name, because he takes full control over Porphyria’s life. In both cases, however, the women depicted in the poems have no say in what happens to them. It is important to take into consideration the time in which these two works were written, because it was not uncommon for female desire to be shunned and for women to have little to no power in making major life decisions for themselves. The trapped state of each of these women, whether that be in life, death or both, is an adequate representation of the reality of many real women’s lives during the 19th century.