Throughout Western history, women have frequently been limited to certain roles and spaces in society, and this was perhaps best exemplified during the Victorian era. Women were restricted to their homes, accompanied by chaperones when not at home, and were expected to be exemplars of femininity, goodness, and virtue. Literature was by no means immune to these ideals, and works emerged that promote this idea of femininity. Both the 1857 version of Jacob and Wilhem Grimm’s fairytale “Rapunzel” and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ballad “The Lady of Shalott (1832)” use their characters’ environment as a reflection of Victorian gender expectations of purity in women and their subsequent loss of innocence after a sexual awakening. In the beginning of “Rapunzel” and “The Lady of Shalott”, the female
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Rapunzel is locked away in her tower at the age of twelve, which is commonly thought of as a time of transition from childhood to adolescence. As Rapunzel sexually matures, she is isolated from the outside world and kept in a purely domestic space, with her only other company being an older, motherly figure, Gothel. The Lady of Shalott also is sequestered from Camelot, and has absolutely no company at all. Her only task is to weave on her loom. As she watches people pass by through her mirror, her lack of companionship is emphasized when “The knights come riding two and two” as “She hath no loyal knight and true” (Tennyson 61-62). It is also emphasized when she sees “two young lovers lately wed” in the reflection of the mirror (Tennyson 70). It is this image that prompts her to exclaim, “I am half sick of shadows” (Tennyson 71). As a young lady confined in a castle with no company, she begins to long for companionship. The mysterious curse that she is under ensures that she be let alone to weave images on her
Rapunzel is locked away in her tower at the age of twelve, which is commonly thought of as a time of transition from childhood to adolescence. As Rapunzel sexually matures, she is isolated from the outside world and kept in a purely domestic space, with her only other company being an older, motherly figure, Gothel. The Lady of Shalott also is sequestered from Camelot, and has absolutely no company at all. Her only task is to weave on her loom. As she watches people pass by through her mirror, her lack of companionship is emphasized when “The knights come riding two and two” as “She hath no loyal knight and true” (Tennyson 61-62). It is also emphasized when she sees “two young lovers lately wed” in the reflection of the mirror (Tennyson 70). It is this image that prompts her to exclaim, “I am half sick of shadows” (Tennyson 71). As a young lady confined in a castle with no company, she begins to long for companionship. The mysterious curse that she is under ensures that she be let alone to weave images on her