Tennyson: The Lady of Shallot

     Tennyson's  The Lady of Shallot is a poem based loosely on Elaine, Fair Maid of Astolat's story. The major changes are instead of inhabiting her father's cottage she's locked in a castle with "four gray walls and four gray towers". She lives alone, weaving and looking at the world through her mirror.Then one day Launcelot gallumps through it and she is so enchanted that she gets up to look out the window, and a curse befalls her. This moment is very troubling. A woman living a celibate existence and doing domestic duties with little cares,seeing the world only through the reflection atop her vanity, sees a man and becomes overcome by love or desire. That is her downfall. A curse lest her heart become impure. She's a character who's becomes a lethal woman, but only to herself. It seems to imply that for women sexuality is the worst enemy.
     The poem seems to be full of allusion to sexuality. the "space of flowers" that the tower guards can be taken as symbolic of her virginity.When she spots "two lovers lately wed" she becomes restless and "half sick of shadows".As if she is beginning to desire what they have. then when Launcelot bursts into her mirror with an obscene amount of attractive masculinity, she goes to look out the window, into reality rather than through the rose colored glasses that her ivory tower lends her in the form of a mirror;and it is at the moment when she spies "the helmet and the plume" that the curse is upon her. These objects are rather phallic in nature. I think it is clear that Tennyson wanted the reader to connect a women's first stirring of desire with the downfall of humanity. It's a story told on the first few pages of Genesis in Eve's desire for the apple handed to her by a snake (and what do snakes look like really?), and echoed in the way Guinevere's desires when acted upon eventually bring the death of Arthur and the destruction of his court.It's these pesky women and their raging ovaries that ruin life for everyone apparently.