How far do you agree with the view that the women in Tennyson’s poems are presented as victims in a male world?
In “The Lady of Shallot” Tennyson portrays the lady as somewhat of a victim by being trapped in her room weaving as if she leaves she will break an elusive curse she is under. In line 63 we see that “she hath no loyal knight and true” this implies to us that she is utterly alone in her world and whether she stays or leaves men have set up a world she is doomed to fail by growing old alone or by dying. We go through the poem thinking that she is content with living in solitude looking out at the world through her mirror but when Sir Lancelot suddenly appears in Part 3 we see her look out the window and break the curse, this shows …show more content…
Yet we still see that although she is defying her husband and riding through town she is still made to feel extremely uncomfortable and still violated by men when she is looked at by a ‘peeping tom’ this shows although she is doing a magnificent act of defiance she is still degraded by men. On the other hand this is contradicted by the peeping tom being instantly blinded. Tennyson has used Lines such as “like a creeping sunbeam” and “like a summer moon” to maybe symbolise the fact that Godiva has huge power and capability such as the sun and moons ability to give out and create light instead of darkness. This could also signify the fact that Godiva is ending a dark time of high taxes. The last lines of the stanza express that “she took the tax away and built herself an …show more content…
In conclusion some may agree with the fact that although in most of Tennyson’s poems he is describing predominately male worlds and the women are presented as victims, In “Godiva” and “the Lady Of Shallot” the main characters are women who appear victims in the beginning but then ultimately break out of their confinement as inferior people and become women who make their own choice and decide how their own lives are going to go for the first time, therefore I believe they maybe are victims in some ways but the ways in which they are not overpower
In “The Lady of Shallot” Tennyson portrays the lady as somewhat of a victim by being trapped in her room weaving as if she leaves she will break an elusive curse she is under. In line 63 we see that “she hath no loyal knight and true” this implies to us that she is utterly alone in her world and whether she stays or leaves men have set up a world she is doomed to fail by growing old alone or by dying. We go through the poem thinking that she is content with living in solitude looking out at the world through her mirror but when Sir Lancelot suddenly appears in Part 3 we see her look out the window and break the curse, this shows …show more content…
Yet we still see that although she is defying her husband and riding through town she is still made to feel extremely uncomfortable and still violated by men when she is looked at by a ‘peeping tom’ this shows although she is doing a magnificent act of defiance she is still degraded by men. On the other hand this is contradicted by the peeping tom being instantly blinded. Tennyson has used Lines such as “like a creeping sunbeam” and “like a summer moon” to maybe symbolise the fact that Godiva has huge power and capability such as the sun and moons ability to give out and create light instead of darkness. This could also signify the fact that Godiva is ending a dark time of high taxes. The last lines of the stanza express that “she took the tax away and built herself an …show more content…
In conclusion some may agree with the fact that although in most of Tennyson’s poems he is describing predominately male worlds and the women are presented as victims, In “Godiva” and “the Lady Of Shallot” the main characters are women who appear victims in the beginning but then ultimately break out of their confinement as inferior people and become women who make their own choice and decide how their own lives are going to go for the first time, therefore I believe they maybe are victims in some ways but the ways in which they are not overpower