The Lady of Shallot was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson between 1809 -1892. The Lady has been locked in a tower and she has had a curse put on her. The curse is that she cannot look directly at Camelot or men and she can only look at it through a large mirror in her tower. So she sits in the tower weaves tapestries of the images she sees. One day she looks directly at Camelot and “The curse is come upon [her],” so she leaves her tower and this results in her death.
Tennyson uses archaic language, with words such as “blazon’d” and “greaves”, to make it seem like a time long ago. This poem is a literary ballad. It shows how some women were treated in the Victorian period; some women were admired from afar and placed on a pedestal but they were not really allowed to enter into society. They were both trapped by society and also admired by it. The Lady is unable to live an active life in this poem.
My Last Duchess was written by Robert Browning between 1812 – 1889. Browning was also a Victorian and his poem reflects this period. This poem is a dramatic monologue as it is a speech by the Duke only. He has a visitor who we later find out is the servant of the Count; however, this man does not speak throughout the poem.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci was written by John Keats in 1819; it is a ballad. This means each stanza has only four lines. Keats was a romantic and the title which is French, translates as The Beautiful Woman without Pity. The poem is about a knight “alone and palely loitering” who is seduced by a beautiful woman – she is “faery” like.
However, To his Coy Mistress is quite different in a way to the other three poems as it is not tragic; it does not end in death or in a sad way like La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Andrew Marvell was a metaphysical. This poem is about a man who, to put it bluntly, wants the woman in this poem to sleep with him.
The speaker in To his Coy Mistress is the man and he seems obsessed by the idea of the woman’s body whereas in My Last Duchess, it is the Duke who is overly possessive about the Duchess. But in The Lady of Shallot, the man in the poem – Sir Lancelot – is not even aware of the Lady till the end of the poem. In all these poems, the women seem to be the main focus of the men’s lives and the men are the main focus of the poems.
In The Lady of Shallot, the Lady lives her life locked away in a tower, locked away from everyday society. The curse affects her more than she realises which in turn makes her crave a normal lifestyle and the mirror becomes almost like a gateway to the life she craves so much.
This can be compared to To his Coy Mistress where the woman is placed on a higher platform and watched from afar by society. “That long-preserved virginity.” Society seemed to love these females but they did not seem to want to associate with them. They admired the fact that they are well bred and were of the upper class but they pushed them away - to preserve their purity perhaps.
Continuing with The Lady of Shallot, one day Sir Lancelot walks past her tower and she instantly falls in love with him. He is dazzling and free and her enchants her so much that “she look’d down to Camelot.” This brings about the curse put upon her,
“Out flew the web and floated wide,
The mirror crack’d from side to side.”
And this results in the death of the Lady of Shallot.
The title My Last Duchess makes the reader think of high class and opulent people. It conjures up images of relatively old, wealthy, retired men with a naïve young wives and that it exactly what this poem is about. To me, the title is also considerably calculating. The reader can deduce that the poem is written in the point of view of the Duke as the title is My Last Duchess as opposed to The Last Duchess.
Additionally, I think it would be quite easy for the reader to think of the Duke as a bitter old man. This is in contrast with the other three poems because in the other three, the men were not overpowering or evil as such; whereas in this poem, it is definitely the Duke who is in control.
The French title of La Belle Dame Sans Merci immediately conveys the idea that the poem is very romantic and gentle as France is often seen as the romantic capital of the world. Nonetheless, once you start reading the poem, you can see that it is not romance and love that the poem is about but more lust and seduction as well as the enormous power a woman can have over a man.
In a way, To his coy mistress is completely different to the other three poems as it is fairly light hearted and jovial but it can also be compared to The Lady of Shallot and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. It can be compared to La Belle Dame Sans Merci because the theme of the poem is lust and love. The man in the poem is lusting after the woman and he is just saying that he wants to sleep with the woman. He wants her to satisfy his sexual desires but he is saying that if there was time, he would love her more than anyone has ever been loved.
On the other hand, this poem can also be looked at on another level – death is really the underlying theme of this poem. The man is flattering the woman by saying she is the most beautiful thing that has ever existed but soon that beauty will be gone and she will be old and then she will die.
“Time’s winged chariot hurrying near…
…Thy beauty shall no more be found”
This poem is expertly written; Marvell uses gentle persuasion, flattery, humour, fear, strong imagery and logic to persuade the woman to do the deed with him. In the first section of the poem, he flatters the woman by complimenting her beauty; then in the second section he uses humour, strong imagery and fear and then in the last section he changes his argument again saying that they should have fun while they still can – “Now let us sport while we may.”
In each of the poems, the females are in similar positions. In To his Coy Mistress, the female is present but silent; In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the female has disappeared and in My Last Duchess and The Lady of Shallot the females die (although in The Lady of Shallot, she speaks briefly but then dies almost straightaway.) In these poems, the women do not really get a say in anything. The men seem decide things for them as they are seen as socially inferior.
Each poem has some form of rhyming. In The Lady of Shallot, there are nine lines in each stanza and there are nineteen stanzas which are presented in four parts. In each stanza lines one to four always rhyme, lines six to eight always rhyme and then lines five and nine rhyme with each other. The rhyming patterns of lines five and nine are especially interesting. The last word of line five or nine is always Camelot, Shallot or Lancelot and this always brings the reader back to the main subject.
My Last Duchess and To his Coy Mistress both use rhyming couplets. It is a very strict rhyming pattern and it emphasises the strictness and predictability of the Duke in My Last Duchess and it emphasises the serious undertone in To his Coy Mistress. It shows that the male really means what he says even though at times it might sound amusing.
The meaning behind all these poems is really that love is somewhat of an obscure thing. It is an extremely hard thing to find unrequited love and once found, if it is ever truly found, it is hard to keep. For how does one actually define love? Is it possible to define it properly? These are all questions addressed by the poem and each poem answers them in the own style of the author.
