Examine, in detail, the ways Tennyson explores the situation of women in "The Lady of Shalott" and "Mariana", compare Tennysons' approach with that of Browning, Wordsworth and Keaten.

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Examine, in detail, the ways Tennyson explores the situation of women in “The Lady of Shalott” and “Mariana”, compare Tennysons’ approach with that of Browning, Wordsworth and Keaten.

In the poems Mariana and The Lady of Shalott, Tennyson presents us with two women; both hold similarities in their situations. But, ultimately, they are both very different perspectives of how the women in these poems approach them.

        Mariana is a woman, alone on the “lonely moated grange”; Isolated from the world outside. Without a man to take care of her, “he cometh not”. Likewise, the Lady of Shalott is alone, “She hath no knight loyal and true”, and is imbowered (trapped) in her tower. Cursed never to be able to look on nearby Camelot. She sees “shadows of the world” by looking into a mirror that hangs before her “all the year”, Perhaps suggesting that women have an incomplete view of the world. Both ladies are in comparatively dull surroundings. In Mariana “With blackest moss the flower-pots were thickly crusted” and “The broken sheds looked sad and strange”, giving us the impression of decay and dilapidation. In Shallot “Willows whiten, aspens quiver” and “little breezes dusk and shiver”. Words such as “quiver” and “shiver” give us the impression of a ghostly, eerie and foreboding landscape.

        Mariana is portrayed as desperate and despairing. Always complaining that “he cometh not” that her “life is dreary”, because she is alone in the grange; she appears weak and helpless, a “Damsel in Distress”. However, in stark contrast, the Lady of Shalott does not seem to care that she is alone, “She weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she” until she falls in love with “bold sir Lancelot”. This attraction is purely physical, and Tennyson uses indirect sexual references such as “his blazon’d baldric slung” and “a mighty silver bugle hung”, to describe Lancelot.

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But unlike Mariana (who never leaves the grange), The Lady of Shallot does not despair that Lancelot does not come to her. Instead, the Lady of Shalott is seemingly strong and assertive; “she left the web, she left the loom”: She drops everything to chase after her love. She makes the effort and sacrifice to create a relationship between the two of them. Similarly, the female character in Porphyrias’ lover, by Browning, Porphyria, is also portrayed as the partner in the relationship who is ‘making all the effort’ to please the other, “She sat down by” her lovers’ “side and ...

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