I think that in Tennyson's poems, 'The lady of Shalott' and 'Mariana', the central female characters are presented to us in the way that Tennyson views women and their roles in society. There

The imagery of decay used suggests the extreme isolation of the female character ‘Mariana’. The description of her surroundings ‘… rusted nails… broken sheds looked sad and strange …Weeded and worn the ancient thatch… the lonely moated grange…’ let us see that the female has been waiting a long time.

In ‘The lady of Shalott’ the lady is placed in a tower away from Camelot by a river which suggests to me imprisonment. ‘There she weaves by night and day... a curse is on her if she stay to look down to Camelot’. She looks at the world through a mirror longing to catch glimpses of life and weaves the images but longs for more ‘She hath no loyal knight and true… “I am half sick of shadows,” said the lady of Shalott’.

The opening of the poem establishes a contrast, giving the picture of a world which is alive; this is true for her outside surroundings but not for the lady’s life. The world being so alive is taunting and in the end has misleading implications on the woman.

For the lady, Lancelot is a symbol of fulfilment in the world. She thinks that Lancelot is able to provide a promise and everything that she is missing out on. Lancelot is the first person to be named in the poem, and he gives validity to names and meaning to the self. Reality becomes realised for the lady when she invokes the curse and dies in a hopeless situation without the opportunity to meet her knight in shining armour.

The poem is written in a repeated rhyming form in verses between the words ‘Camelot’ and ‘Shallot’. The words used in each verse helps to create images of the world she lives in. The poem is divided into four numbered sections.

In the last stanza Tennyson uses emotive language to describe what the lady is feeling ‘But in her web the lady delights, to weave the mirrors magic sights’. Here Tennyson is trying to bring the lady in the poem to life by using emotion. The first time the lady in the poem speaks she targets the reader for empathy because she wants to have relationships with people and live amongst them. She’s unhappy with her lifestyle and feels that she is becoming shadow herself. Her speech here in Tennyson’s use of dialogue brings her to life because for the rest of the poem it’s mainly narrative. Each of the four stanzas ends with somebody saying something. Otherwise nobody says anything.

At the end of each stanza in ‘Mariana’ it is emphasized again and again just how bored and lonely the female character is. This drives the point of isolation. In the second stanza we are told more about the extent female’s isolation and despair - this theme of exhaustion is carried on into the third stanza as after she sleeps a bit, she wakes in the middle of the night and is unable to return to sleep.

In the fourth stanza it seems that the despair or the female is closing in around the house ‘A sluice with blacken’d waters slept… The cluster’d marish-mosses crept… the surrounding grey…’ In the fifth stanza it’s nightfall again and the descriptive imagery used helps to create a picture of silence and more isolation that come with her sleepless nights ‘…but when the moon was very low, And wild winds bound within their cell, the shadow of the poplar fell Upon her bed, across her brow…’. The sixth stanza takes us inside the house but nothing is different inside. The house is equally isolated and dead inside ‘…the doors upon their hinges creak’d; the blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse behind the mouldering winsot shriek’d...’ Inside the house we experience the female’s endless wait. There was a time in the house however when she was not alone ‘Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors, old footsteps trod the upper floors, old voices called her from without…’

Up until the last stanza in the poem the female had kept using present tense, despite how hopeless her situation seems she kept hoping. She kept the same routine up until now, repeating the same refrain over and over. This changes now when she seems to realise ‘…He will not come,’ she said’

Symbolism is an important aspect of the Lady of Shalott. The mirror is her reality; she looks through the mirrors and weaves what she sees. It is her only experience of the outside world and even this is distorted. The mirror represents the lady of Shallot’s naiveté and innocence. All this changes though when she runs to the window to look at Lancelot; she looses her innocence by falling in love.

 The tapestry flies out of the window (How she saw the world before) and the mirror cracks (Her previous naïve perspective that she had of the world). The lady of Shalott cannot handle unrequited love and the reality of a harsh world so she kills herself.

In the poem there is magical symbolism, this has human significance; ‘or when the Moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said the lady of Shalott.’ Tennyson writes about females lost in half-life, which results in people taking decisive, heroic action that leads to their doom.

Tennyson brings attention to rhymes by making most of the lines stop, and the flow of words is brought to a halt by punctuation. The strong emphasis on rhymes gives the poem the feeling of an ancient tale, when news was carried from town to town by word of mouth and rhyming aided memorization.