Lady Of Shalott Gender Roles

Gender roles can be defined as the ways that women and men are supposed to act in society. They are often looked upon as a “status quo” and are rarely defied. Although society has generally solved some gender issues, they still occur today. Gender Roles were very relevant during the Victorian and Modern Era’s and were often showed through literature. Women were viewed as submissive and did not have as much luxury as men in their everyday lives. Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” illustrates the oppressive nature of women in society during the Victorian Era and the consequences that occur when those roles are defined. However, in Woolf’s A Room of One's Own, gender roles are questioned showing the changing ideology behind women's rights during
The Lady of Shalott is the not-so-typical Romeo and Juliet story, except the woman was the sole individual who was invested in finding love. “And sometimes in the mirror blue the knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott” (Tennyson, 651). Tennyson shows not only how the lady is lonely, but stresses how she is longing for a knight in shining armor. He does this to show how women longed for the love from a man during this time. He shows the lady’s frustration by saying,” Came two young lovers lately wed; ‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said The Lady of Shalott” (Tennyson, 651). The lady is tired of looking through her mirror and desires to have company to keep her happy. The way that Tennyson portrayed the lady’s loneliness showed how women of the Victorian Era wanted the presence of a man in their lives to make them feel more full and complete. Further along in the story, the lady demonstrated how women are more than willing to do anything for men when Sir Lancelot called up the the Lady of Shalott. Her reaction was; “She left the web, she left the loom, she made three paces through the room, she saw the water-lily bloom, she saw the helmet and the plume, she looked down to Camelot” (Tennyson, 652). The Lady of Shalott was willing to break the curse in order to see Sir Lancelot. Tennyson is referring to the women of the Victorian Era here, showing how weak they were and willing to give in to receive the attention of a