The Lady Of Shalott Essay

What is a curse? One is typically thought of as the opposite of a wish, or a wish of misery to fall upon someone. The Lady of Shalott is a lady who has spent her days alone, because of a rumor that a curse is on her. She works through the days without really living her life, only watching others do so. In a poem about her she says that “she heard a whisper say, a curse is on her” if she leaves so she spends her days secluded from others (Alfred, Lord Tennyson 38-39). In "The Lady of Shalott" by Tennyson, Lord Alfred the result of the curse is not tragedy, but love which is proven with irony, characterization, and diction.
Through diction, it can be shown that the Lady of Shalott is quite lonely and even bitter all alone. In the beginning of the text the persona poses a question “But who hath seen her wave her hand?...Or is she known in all the land?”(24-26). This questioning of her fame shows the magnitude of how much she has been isolated. One night when she looked through her window out into the outside world she saw “two lovers” getting married and she said she was “half sick of shadows” (69-71). She means that her own shadow is the only thing that looks remotely …show more content…
Proving first that the Lady of Shalott is isolated, and has not seen or had a relationship with another person allows one to further say that she mistakes the feeling of love for something bad. All in all, the curse is love, which makes it not really a curse at all. However, the worst part is that the minute she realized that she was in love, and was capable of love, she died; which very well could be a curse in and of itself. Being able to take oneself out of a situation and look from an outsider’s point of view at what is going on in one’s life is important in life, and is necessary in a situation that the Lady of Shalott is