Half Sick of Shadows

The Lady of Shalott
William Holman Hunt
The Wadsworth Atheneum
Hartford, CT













Inspired by an assignment for my Spanish class, I have decided to use my considerably more well developed English skills to unpack one of my favorite paintings.

In this painting the Lady is going mad or perhaps being murdered by her fate. She dominates the frame, wild haired, body contrapposto. Is she fighting the current that seeks to undo her or is she relaxing her posture, as a way of releasing herself to the inevitability? Is this a passive or aggressive pose?

Her notions strewn all over the room, chaotic. She is being bound by her own thread. We are witness to this fever storm as it is happening. It could all unfold as we like it.

Her other, sumptuous things, Japanese slippers, a silver tea service of a pasha or his odalisque are still points which serve to offset or even mock the whirling dervish of her skirts.

The masculine figures of antiquity and the feminine supplicant that adorn the walls of her room appear to be fighting for her life and praying for her eternal soul/salvation respectively.

Behind the woman a window. Through it, a knight on horseback and a river winding its way to a faded perspective horizon. Outside, the color is washed out, pale yellow green. The more you look, the less you see of that dreamy reality.

Perhaps this was how it was for her, this artist. What were her tools? The bobbins and baubles we see, but also a loom, a mirror, these are assumed, we must use ouu other knowledge and imagination to bring those items into the microcosm of her workaday existence.

She is vivid. She is barefoot. The sky is bright blue above her curls. She is dancing against death.

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Read the Tennyson poem.