The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennynson is a reflection of the Victorians ideas, who show how the women was seen in society, and as an artist. The poem can be approached from the Carl’s Jung perspective, because of the archetypes that can be identified and analyzed, namely the Shadow, the Anima/Animus, and the Self. Of course this is not the only method in analysing the poem, but by using this I try to explain what is happening with The Lady from this point of view.
Firstly, we should explain what archetypes are. They are inborn patterns, something given to us prior birth, but consciously we do not know we have them. They guide our existence, influence our behavior and our intuition as well. This means that The Lady’s actions and thoughts are also governed in an unconscious manner by the archetypes.
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The ego stands in the middle of the conscienceness, and this archetype is symbolized by a sphere. In the initial stage of life, at birth, the Self is fully connected, but as we grow older its elemenets become separated. “So the rest of our life we are trying to put the wholeness back together” (Murawsky). From the poem we don not know if The Lady was always cursed, but we do know that the curse represents the obstacle between her ‘self’ and the world: “A curse is on her if she stay/ To look down to Camelot” (5th stanza). When she breaks the curse, the mirror cracked as a result of the overcoming her fears.
All in all, this is in a few words a possible approach of the poem, in which I tried to analyze it from Carl’s Jung point of view, namely the following archetypes: the Shadow, the Anima/Animus and the Self. As we could see they are not far from each other (in explanation), but they are aspects that guide us in understanding the Tennynson’s piece of