Sunday, February 20, 2005

the lady of shalott

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.

- from "The Lady of Shalott" by Lord Alfred Tennyson


When I was in primary school in Hong Kong, one of my teachers introduced us to a poem about a woman who was cursed to live in a tower, forbidden to look at the outside world save from a mirror in her room. All day, she would weave patterns depicting the reflected images she saw into a cloth. Alas, this woman fell in love with Sir Lancelot, one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table; the same Lancelot who later ran away with Queen Guinevere.

When Sir Lancelot passed the woman's window one day, singing "Tirra lirra", she immediately ran to the window, thus bringing the curse into effect. She was doomed to die. She lay down in a boat and, with her life's work torn into pieces, she carved her name onto the side of her boat, making very well sure that Lancelot saw her as she floated, dead, into the village.

The woman was The Lady of Shalott, a character Tennyson based loosely upon a real woman named Elaine of Astolat, who died of unrequited love for Lancelot.

To my 8-yr-old mind, the poem was only a poem. It was part of my English lessons (yes, lessons are very much more interesting there) and I spent most of my time looking at sad images of the nameless fairy-woman of Shalott. The picture of her, lying dead in a barge, will forever be etched in my mind, but only as a memory from my childhood in a school that brought me much joy.

Recently, I searched the internet for the full text of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott". Reading the poem again, 12 years after I had first heard of it, was a whole new experience. I had never liked poetry set in medieval times - especially after the choral speaking disaster of "Lochinvar" by Sir Walter Scott - but The Lady of Shalott somehow touched me, with its vivid imagery and classic tragedy.

Looking through a mirror can mean many things. For The Lady of Shalott, it meant seeing life as "shadows", probably referring to the fact that the image one sees in the mirror is often nothing but an unworthy reflection of what is real. She must have found it frustrating to view the daily lives of the people she cannot touch in a distorted manner where right is left and left is right. The pain of having to process everything she sees in her mind, to correct the wrongs that may be depicted through the glass finally took its toll when she sees the man she loves riding and singing past her window. She snapped, and had to forfeit her life just because she wanted to see her beloved with her own naked eyes, for once.

Staring at myself in the full-length mirror in my room, I can relate to how the nameless beauty must have felt. The mirror literally feeds me an image of myself and my room that is strange and unfamiliar. It has also made me realise that I have been seeing things through a mirror within my head. This mirror inside me is one that is coated with my parents' thoughts and friends' expectations instead of silver. While I look at my life through my own eyes, the image that is eventually processed in my mind is one that is no longer my own. It has been flipped right side wrong, inside out, by people who have completely shut out my own voice. As a result, I have to work hard to dig down into these layers of contamination to even begin to find what it is that I really see.

It is tiring. I do not blame The Lady of Shalott for succumbing to her frustration and choosing death over a lifetime of never seeing the truth for herself. I would do the same thing in order to regain control of my life. And yet I also have to remind myself that this control itself is but an illusion, also an image that the fun house mirrors of life like to tease us with.

I don't know who or what will eventually lead me to muster up the strength to fight the curse that has blinded my view. All I know is that when I finally walk to the window in my tower, I'd be honoured to take my place inside the boat - beside the bravest woman I know: The Lady of Shalott.

lishun at 4:06 PM

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