Close Reading Example: "The Lady of Shalott"
Copyright © 2000 by Gareth Jones
Last updated 31 July 2000
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INTRODUCTION
When you try to understand a piece of writing you can use
three methods, usually together:
- research secondary sources or, in other words, read
what others say about the work;
- read for pleasure to see what emotional effects the
work has on you;
- and do close reading of the work itself to see how
it creates those effects.
Do not do these in any particular order. In fact, ideally,
you will mix all three methods.
Close reading, the way I do it, means that you read the work
with a pen in your hand and writing paper beside you. You read
a line, stanza, or paragraph, and then you think about it. You
write down your questions and observations. You read on.
Close reading is very different from reading for pleasure.
Your mind should be active, probing, wondering. You do not
suspend disbelief. Instead, you examine the words, sentences,
symbols, characters, and plot, as well as anything else that
interests you. And you remember that to analyze something means
to pull it into pieces. Strangely, good writing not only survives
this treatment, but your respect for it and your pleasure in
it increases afterwards.
To show you how close reading works, I have reproduced Tennyson's
poem "The Lady of Shalott" below, together with my
thoughts about each section of it, just as they occurred to me.
If I were writing an essay on the poem, these would be my rough
notes.
You could read straight through this article, but you would
get more from it by pausing after every section of the poem to
think about it and write down your own thoughts about it. Remember
that your thoughts are not "wrong" and mine are not
"right." My thoughts are just to show some of the kinds
of questions you can ask about a work.
CLOSE READING
Part 1
ON either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To
many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The
island of Shalott.
- Most of this stanza describes the countryside and the local
people. Only two lines are indented. The first question to ask,
then, is if these lines describe things that are different from
the rest. The first indented line certainly does: Camelot is
different because it is a city, the seat of government, and filled
with heroes and at least one wizard. The other indented line
is about the island of Shalott. The indentation hints that it
is equally set apart from ordinary life, but we don't
yet know why.
- Camelot is described as "many-tower'd," which (if
my memory serves) is how Homer described Troy. A hint about its
future death?
- Shalott is surrounded by lilies, the flower of innocence
and death. Later in the poem we see that both innocence and death
are appropriate for the Lady on the island because she experiences
a type of death in life.
- But, with those two exceptions of Camelot and the island,
both sides of the river are clothed with the makings of bread
("the staff of life") and beer. People there "gaze"
at Shalott, which you would think is non-intrusive, but forshadows
the lethal gaze later in the poem.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing
down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Once again, Camelot is set apart by indentation. This time,
however, it is the lady, not the island, who is equally set apart.
Also, this time, a single tower is mentioned - contrast with
"many-tower'd" Camelot. The single tower is simple
in design and surrounded by flowers. From the first verse, can
we assume that they are lilies? Notice, no mention of people,
or even animals: it is all inanimate or plant on the "silent"
island.
- If you look at it in terms of the four elements that the
Greeks believed in, we have air in the first and second lines,
water in the second and following, then earth. No "fire"
(the symbol of life). The Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism
by Hans Biederman says that fire is "the apparently living
element, which consumes, warms, and illuminates, but can also
bring pain and death." (pg. 129). Intuition: let's keep
an eye out for fire imagery later on.
- There is a low barrier of water (the river) surrounding the
island on all sides. There is a high barrier of earth (the tower)
with four walls, symbolizing the four directions. The completeness
of the isolation is emphasized in this verse, although the one
hole in the defences, the window, is mentioned later.
- What is the symbolism of the willow tree? It is feminine,
not masculine. According to The Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism
(pg. 91), the weeping willow was a popular symbol of death during
the Romantic period. On pg. 381 it says:
In the ancient
Mediterranean world it was generally believed that the seeds
of this tree [willow] were dispersed before they matured, and
that the willow therefore did not reproduce 'sexually.' This
belief made it an image of chastity and an ideal first ingredient
for preparations to promote sexual continence.
- In China, for whatever it is worth, the willow represents
female eroticism. Hmm.
- The words "whiten" "shiver" and "quiver"
make the island sound like a nervous maiden on her wedding night.
"White" is a symbol of virginity (bridal gown) and
I think, here, of death. (Again, like in the orient. Probably
not a significant correlation, though).
By the margin, willow-veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming
down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady
of Shalott?
- OK, now let's see how successful water and earth have been
in protecting this woman. "By the margin, willow veil'd"
slide heavy work boats. Note the magic, virginity-protecting
tree species again, keeping her unseen. And the shallop (a small,
open boat using sails or oars, designed for shallow waters) skims
right by without being hailed. So the senses of sight and sound
cannot pierce the island's secret. This is made explicit in the
second half of the verse, along with the fact that the girl WANTS
to be seen and spoken to, standing and waving at the window.
- She is not seen, and she is not widely known, but some few
people know of her...
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd
Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers ''Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.'
- Locals don't know her, but know of her, and think that there's
something "otherworldly" and magical about her.
- In contrast to the the willow trees on the island, the plants
on either bank are male ("bearded") and support life,
as bread.
- Barley was also important for the ancient religious mysteries
at Eleusis because it sometimes has hallucinogenic fungi growing
on it like "beards," but I don't want to take the religious
symbolism too far! You can take that tack, if you want.
- Part I has set the scene. And notice how lifeless it is:
we know nothing about any individual yet. Part I is like a landscape
painting: There's a tower on an island of lilies and willows
in the middle of a river which has agriculture on either side
and boats going by...
Part 2
PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down
to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady
of Shalott.
- What is the symbolism of weaving? First of all, it is the
essence of female work, and has been for a long time.
(Have a look at the book Women's Work, The First 20,000 Years:
Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland
Barber). Whenever you see cloth, even in the most masculine associations,
it represents the presence of women.
- More importantly, it is a symbol of fate. The three fates
span, measured, and cut people's lives to weave them into the
cloth of past time. This weaving is mentioned as a "magic"
web. And web, of course, has associations with both spiders and
possibly shrouds.
- She has a premonition that some "bad thing" will
happen if she looks at Camelot, the other pole of this circumscribed
universe, but has no idea what it is.
- Camelot is a city, and she's alone. Camelot is "many
tower'd" and diverse, she is cloistered and simple. I'd
have to say that Camelot is the male side of life and she, the
female. Yang and yin, if you prefer the Chinese terms.
- Isn't it interesting that virginity and death are sharing
symbols, but also sex and death are combined? Robertson Davies'
novel The Cunning Man discusses paintings of young women
and skeletons standing together, called "Death and the Maiden".
Apparently, this was a popular theme. Andrew Marvell's poem "To
His Coy Mistress" also associates virginity and death in
the lines "then worms will try/That long preserved virginity."
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down
to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward
from Shalott.
- The way that I think of "mirror" images, especially
when paired with the phrase "shadows of the world"
is similar to Plato's "Myth of the Cave."
- We are in an enclosed space, a cave, in Plato's story. There
is a source of light, a fire, and there are real objects between
the fire and our backs. However, we cannot turn to see the real
objects; we can only infer their existence and nature from their
shadows, cast upon the cave wall in front of us.
- If we apply this idea to the poem, what does that say about
the lady? That she sees not the highway, but an image of the
highway from which she infers that a highway must exist, and
a destination for said highway. Thus, she can make a pretty good
guess that there's a "real" destination for the highway,
Camelot, of which she knows nothing directly.
- Mirrors have associations with femininity (look at the biological
symbol for females). On the other hand, the dictionary of symbolism
(pp. 222-223) mentions several other associations:
- mirrors allow the life force to be held in a room, which
is why mirrors in a room must be covered when someone dies in
it;
- mirrors are also amulets, offering protection against evil
forces.
- Mirrors are instruments of augury (thus, seeing your fate)
and analogues to the eyes,
- but mirrors can also capture and hold your soul (like Narcissus).
- Seeing yourself in a mirror is like stepping outside of your
body to look at it, so Jungians link it to death.
- Others think of it as a route to self-knowledge.
A very ambiguous symbol! So the way to interpret it is not
in one way or the other, but in all ways. It represents safety,
and confinement, knowledge of the world, but partial knowledge
only, a partial wisdom, and a means to her death, all simultaneously
with reinforcing the entirely feminine nature of her little room.
- By the way, although I don't go much for this kind of analysis,
draw a little map of an island (convex sides and pointed ends)
in a river. Draw crops over both banks of the river. You have
just drawn a pretty acceptable image of the female genitals surrounded
by pubic hair. (The "secret garden" surrounded by walls
is a common symbol of this. Tennyson's "island" is
just a more anatomically correct version). This is an example
of imagery that is so heavy-handed that you either have to love
it, the way that you can enjoy a really bad movie, or hate it.
Almost certainly, it was not intended.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to
tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Hey, there are NO heterosexual couples that show up in her
mirror! A group of female virgins, OR a young boy (rich and poor
versions mentioned) OR a group of men. She realizes that there
is some connection that she's not making ... "She hath no
loyal knight and true..." but I doubt that she knows what
is involved.
- The mirror is blue. (Is that water or air's colour? Both,
probably). The young man in red is the first mention of the colour
of fire/sexual desire. Just a hint of it, though. He's not old
enough to affect her much.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music,
went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Ah, now she sees couples and says the first thing that we
hear directly from her in this whole poem: "I am half sick
of shadows"! Pretty unambiguous, although plumes, representing
flight (birds) and freedom are an interesting touch. The mirror,
it is repeated, is a "magic" one. The moonlight often
represents madness -- look up the word "lunatic".
- So, part I painted the scene. Part II introduced what the
lady is waiting for. Part III will bring it onstage...
Part 3
PART III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir
Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote
Shalott.
- OK, I knew that red would show up here. Blazing masculinity
steps up. And it is available to women, too, since it (in the
person of Lancelot) has been known to "kneel to a lady."
However, although the Lady of Shalott has excellent taste in
men (choosing to be impressed by the best knight in the world),
anyone who knows the King Arthur stories knows that this isn't
going to turn out well. Lancelot is big-time in love with another:
Queen Guinevere.
- Notice that, rather than "Camelot" being set apart
in the verse, the representation of the masculine pole has focussed
narrowly on a single human being: "Of bold Sir Lancelot."
- In Europe, there used to be a harvest ceremony where a sheaf
would be dressed up in women's clothing and treated as the personification
of the harvest. A female goddess of the earth's fertility. Notice
that Lancelot doesn't bump into any sheaves, but rides between
them.... His lack of availability is reinforced in that line.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode
down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote
Shalott.
- I wonder if there's a pun between "bridle bells"
and "bridal bells"? And though "blazon'd"
has a special meaning of decorated with a heraldic design, it
is close enough to "blaze" (fire, again) to be meant
to suggest that, too.
- Anyway, like the previous verse, all the words and images
associated with Lancelot are martial, male, or metallic. Summary:
he's a man's man, and a real hunk.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode
down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over
still Shalott.
- Fire and phallic symbols on his head! The meteor image represents
impending and foretold doom. It is a "dis-aster" (a
bad star). There's something in Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR about
there being no comets when poor people die, but "the skies
themselves cry out the deaths of princes."
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode
down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
'Tirra lirra,' by the river
Sang Sir
Lancelot.
- OK, so we get only the second oh-so-profound statement by
a character in this poem. The lady is definitely ripe for a change
from her routine: it just takes a "tirra lirra" from
the right guy to make her go crazy for him. Watch!
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd
down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me!' cried
The Lady
of Shalott.
- She is no longer really a maiden, having looked upon Lancelot
with desire. After that, she is no longer suited for her former,
confined, and innocent life. Her life will change, in one way
or another! Part IV tells how...
Part 4
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd
Camelot;
- Air and water (the boundaries) are violently disturbed.
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Um, she's riding in something that looks vaginal. It was
found beneath the female-and-death symbolic tree.
And down the river's dim expanse--
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--
With a glassy countenance
Did she look
to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Comparing the Lady to a bold seer is an ironic pun. It is
a pun because "seer" has two meanings. One is a person
who "sees" something, as the Lady has just seen Camelot
for the first time. The more common meaning is someone who foretells
the future. All that she "sees" of her future, however,
is her own death. The irony is that the Lady spent much of her
life seeing only reflections in a mirror, rather than the things
themselves, so she was not much of a "seer" at all.
- Part III was very exact about what she saw, by the way. Events
get fuzzy here, just like in Part I: "Did she ...?"
Or didn't she? Tennyson would rather just hint at it. The world
is becoming inexact again after her one moment of clear sight.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--
The leaves upon her falling light--
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated
down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Bridal dress or shroud or both? Air and water again around
her, but light is fading, and there are those willows again.
It is as though they are trying to maintain her former state
by killing her. SOMETHING is killing her, anyway, rather than
let her join life, which it is her wish to do.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
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 Shalott.
- How useless and weak this exemplar of sheltered femininity
is! She can't even survive a simple excursion to the city, where
coarser types like us can go every day. She's like one of those
laboratory rats who have never been exposed to any disease organisms,
and who therefore have no immune defences. Take them into the
world, and they die.
- There's a hymn for the dead being sung for, and by, this
dying woman. Even in this, her loneliness is intact.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into
Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady
of Shalott.
- Pretty self-explanatory, unless you want to get into the
wharfs being phallic symbols, filling up in tribute to the passing
female body... Sort of hard to explain the dames' presence, in
that case.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights
at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, 'She has a lovely face;
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady
of Shalott.'
- Just like a man! A pretty useless comment from Lancelot.
- Why was everyone afraid? Knights know all about death, but
there's something strange about the circumstances of this one.
They sense a mystery. Is it the mystery of her fate? Is it the
strangely intimate relationship between Death and the Maiden?
(Either the presence of death in the midst of life, or a suspicion
that death and womanhood share a common nature: passive and dangerous
to right-thinking males, but unavoidable). To put it another
way, is it simply that the female must be forever a mystery to
the male? (You will find that thought in Freudian and Jungian
analysis, and a lot of religions).
YOU CAN DO IT
A student might say "How can I analyze a poem or story
like this? I don't know what things symbolize." There are
a couple of answers to that. First, a book of symbolism, like
The Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism by Hans Biedermann,
translated by James Hulbert, is a cheap investment. Second, if
you read literary criticism, you will pick up on what symbols
literary critics talk about. You will eventually know all you
need.
It will also help you if you feel free to be free-ranging
and even disrespectful about the work you are reading, just as
I was. (You may have suspected that I am not a big fan of this
poem because it lays on symbolism with a very full trowel). The
tone can be corrected to a more impartial one in your essay.
The notes, however, are for your eyes and your convenience; they
can be as irreverent as you like, as long as they are accurate,
detailed, and many. The process of close reading is
similar to brainstorming in that
your goal is to put down as many questions and insights as you
can, not just a few "good" ones.
My last advice is to use whatever associations you
have with events and objects in the poem. My comments are based
on my knowledge; yours will be based on yours.
The humorous book 1066 and All That has a question
in one of its "Chapter Tests" that was something like
"Discuss X with special reference to anything you happen
to know." That is less of a joke than it seems. In fact,
it's all that we ever do.
EXERCISES
My purpose is to teach the skill of close reading, not to
provide information on a particular poem. There are two exercises
that can strengthen the skill:
Two exercises:
- Choose another poem of about the same length as "The
Lady of Shalott" and do your own close reading of it.
- Select one topic out of all the ones in
your close reading and write an essay on that topic. For example,
I could write an essay on the symbolism of the four Greek elements
in the poem, or the balancing of male and female symbols, or
the plant symbols in "The Lady of Shalott." Writing
about all of them would be too much for an essay.
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