The Lady of Shallot

I bought a print of John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shallot 15 years ago and its subject has been my symbolic friend ever since. She helps me through the bleak times.

I never framed it so when things are going ok in my life, I’ll roll the print up and store it away. I almost can’t have the painting on permanent display – the power of its impact to restore my emotional health so great that I don’t want to diminish the healing powers by having her there all the time. I don't want to take her for granted. And thus, my lady only ventures out when I go hunting for her.

The creased and slightly torn print was propped up on my lounge-room floor for weeks early last year to help me through a relationship breakup. She has been instrumental in helping me heal in the past and was instrumental in helping me heal again.

I remember placing my fingertips on her face in a raw moment of grief and feeling a connection with this figure from another time.

In the painting, the Lady of Shallot is experiencing her own melancholy – this is evident from her facial expression and by her slumped shoulders, but she is surrounded by such beauty and she, so beautiful herself with her youth, flaming red hair and white gown, that I feel things will be ok for her.

All that is surrounding her in her boat with the tapestry throw and the reeds in a river set among the green of nature, says to me there is enough here to bring her back from the depths of despair.

When I look at The Lady of Shallot, I feel comfort that someone else too has been there - where I am - but more importantly, I am rallied by the sense that things will work out for this beautiful creature, and in that, for me as well.


Postscript.

I only learned today when I googled for an image of the painting to publish with this post, that John William Waterhouse painted The Lady of Shallot from Alfred Tennyson’s poem of the same name. And I learned that in Tennyson’s poem, she dies.

What can I say? Waterhouse has painted a woman who - albeit in a dark hour - radiates an inner strength that for me, without knowing the historical background to the painting (until now), always pinned trust in her redeemed fate – and thus, why also, the painting resonates so well in helping me through my own darkest hours.

This discovery makes me chuckle. A woman (ie me) sees The Lady of Shallot making it –whereas Tennyson (and thus Waterhouse) doesn't give her a chance.

Excerpt from Tennyson’s poem, 1832.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy,
She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her eyes were darken’d wholly,
And her smooth face sharpen’d slowly,
Turn’d to tower’d Camelot:
For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shallot.

And a description about the painting from Tate online (the painting hangs at the Tate Gallery, London):

This painting illustrates Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott. Draped over the boat is the fabric the lady wove in a tower near Camelot. But she brought a curse on herself by looking directly at Sir Lancelot.With her right hand she lets go of the chain mooring the boat. Her mouth is slightly open, as she sings ‘her last song’. She stares at a crucifix lying in front of her. Beside it are three candles, often used to symbolise life. Two have blown out. This suggests her life will end soon, as she floats down the river.