After Reading Malory’s “The Fair Maid of Astolat” so many things have changed in how I interpret and feel about Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot”. Since I clearly read the Lady of Shallot first, I originally felt that Lancelot was shallow in seeing only this dead woman’s beauty, but the story was more focused on the mystical place and how the Lady only saw the outside world through a reflection. Lancelot doesn’t even come into the story until a couple of stanzas in and the two never interact. The story by Tennyson is far more focused on the Lady, her escape from the bounds in her castle, and her yearning for a love she will never have as she remains (in Victorian times) the property of her father until wed.

While reading Malory’s poem I noticed the extreme influx in characters. There were so many knight names, real places referenced, more famous names from Arthurian Legend, and so much more backstory. During the first few pages I was overwhelmed with the listing of names and the immense amount of characters that I had no ties to and no way to know if they would remain important throughout the story. During this time, it felt more like a war story or poem in all of its listing of names and battles. The Maiden of Astolat isn’t even referenced until a couple of pages in. There is no mythological or magical interworking in Malory’s story and it is very focused on recounting the exact happenings in the locations, history, and often referenced the round table.

I got a new take on Lancelot throughout Malory’s piece. As much as I despised him in the “Lady of Shallot”, you can see how he only had her beauty to comment on since there was no relationship between them prior to her death. The truth is completely different within Malory’s telling. Lancelot is a cheating bastard. He had an affair with a woman before battle, wore a symbol of her during his fight, hid the fact that he was married from her, used her to nurse him back to health, and then when she revealed her love for him, he turned her down and said he could never be tied down. If you ask me it was karma that he got injured and that Gwenyvere found out, but it was his fault the Fair Maiden of Astolat died in this version. She told Lancelot that she was going to die without him and he still lead her on and lied to her. It was upsetting that the story ended with Lancelot coming out on top. Lancelot used the Maydyn’s dead corpse and note, twisted her telling of their affair, screwed over Lavayne, ruined Lavayne’s reputation, and he got back on good terms with Gwenyvere. This all only makes Lancelot more hated in Malory’s telling.

As far as the Maidens go in each work, my perspective is quite different in each telling of the tale. In Tennyson’s poem, the Lady is someone the reader feels sorry for, she is trapped in a tower, and in solitude. When reading Malory’s version, you realize how much is left unexplained in Tennyson’s tale that is essential to the poem. Is the Lady bound by force? Has she gotten herself stuck in her own weaving? Is their magic or a curse placed upon the Lady? It is never revealed. When I first read the “Lady of Shallot”, there was a work by William Holman Hunt that was placed next to the poem.It persuaded me into reading the poem as she was trapped, caught in her own weavings (art pictured on left). In Malory’s version we have all of the details we need on the Maydyn. She is not stuck in a tower, but gives herself to a man she just met, falls in love to fast, shows feelings he doesn’t seem to have, and commits suicide because she can’t live without this man. The Maydyn is someone you feel sorry for at first when she has been lied to and used, but not when she kills herself because she can’t have Lancelot. She appears weak and dependent whereas the Lady appears strong, rebellious, cursed, and held against her will.

After reading Malory’s poem I realized that Tennyson more or less took the easy way out. He referenced Camelot, Lancelot, and “The Lady of Shallot”, but he ignored Arthur, Gwenyvere, Lavayne, the round table, the injury of Lancelot, and pretty much removed the historical aspects of the Arthurian Legend. Truth be told, I realized that nothing in Tennyson’s story makes me think of the historical Arthur, Lancelot, or Gwenyvere (until I was told that is what Tennyson based his poem off of). There is not enough information in Tennyson’s poem to complete a story and the reader is left questioning so many aspects, but that may be just what Tennyson was going for to keep the reader coming back for more. The sing-song rhythm in his poem is much easier and more interesting to read. As much as I find is missing from Tennyson’s piece, I love his adaptation of the legend told solely from the Lady’s perspective where Lancelot is not such a bad guy and the Lady is someone we pity and come to love as a symbol of rebelling against the constraints of the world.

When considering the texts we read for this course and how each portrays London, the two that stand out the most to me are “London” by William Blake and “Night Walks” by Charles Dickens. Each work highlights a lot of the negative aspects of Victorian Life in London that invoke a lot of pathos in the reader, but each author completes this task in their own unique ways.

The poem “London” by William Blake is organized in 4, 4 line stanzas which constrains the topics and style, leaving Blake a relatively short space to work with. This being said, he gets right into life in London as uses his depictions of life to set the scene, a first-person point-of-view, and his diction to create a dismal tone. In stanza one, he uses diction such “weakness”, “woe”, and “charter’d”: “And mark in every face I meet / Marks of weakness, marks of woe” (3-4). His word choice is quite interesting as he depicts the people as incapable of helping themselves. Dissimilarly with his use of “charter’d”, the city itself is presented as confined, mapped, and under government control (according to Google’s definition). This theme blaming the royalty/ government carries on within each stanza. In the second stanza, he uses words such as cry, fear, ban, and mind-forg’d manacles. Cry is repeated 3 times in the poem, and two of them are in this section; once time is found in “every man” and once referring to every infant. This stanza focuses a lot on the pain and suffering of the people in the streets. “In every voice: in every ban, / The mind-forg’d manacles I hear” (7-8). The use of “ban” again shows government or royal restriction, manacles refers to shackles or constraints (according to the google definition), and mind-forged implies that these men and children are constrained by the minds and beliefs of how others see them, as well as how they see themselves.

In stanzas 3 and 4 he moves away from broad generalizations of “every man” and “every face” to very specific encounters. In stanza 3, Blake refers to crying chimney-sweepers and blackened churches. Puling a little knowledge from Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” the chimney sweepers are often kids sent to work quite young, so again a child is crying. The blackened churches I read as possibly being covered in soot from the chimney, or blackening in sin and impurity as white is regularly associated with purity as well as in church ceremonies. Stanza 3 also refers to “And the hapless Soldiers sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls” (11-12). These lines lead me to believe that Blake is blaming royalty and the government for the bloodshed and the deaths of its people as it stood back and watched. In stanza 4, “How the youthful Harlots curse / Blasts the new-born infants tear” brings a lot of emotion to some ordinarily overlooked individuals. Words such as tear, plagues, and hearse are all centered around a “new-born infant”. A harlot, being a prostitute, appears to be cursing at a newborn in the streets because the baby has plagued rapid and wide spread death on the importance and meaning of marriage. Marriage is often associated with government, conformity, and a way of life. It is symbolic that the birth of the infant is bringing an end to the prospects of marriage for the woman, as well as causing a widespread plague on marriage throughout the city. According to Blake, life is awful, dreadful, full of misery, and at the center of all of the sadness: royalty is to blame.

In Charles Dickens’ “Night Walks”. he has a lot more room to expand on his dismal outlook on London. He does so in a one-person point-of-view like Blake, but in the story-like fashion of a man walking through the city streets. He gives specific details of the roads he turns down, his surroundings, and of the locals he encounters with. He eases his way into the darker elements of London at night, starting off with a restless city at “half-past twelve”. It was filled with “houseless people” and he describes the drunkards, the taxis and “that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning”. He says different kinds of people and happenings late at night appear to band together with others of a similar state of mind. Throughout his story, Dickens writes from the persona of a homeless person, while contradictorily referring to the others like him as “specimen”, “it”, “savage”, “creature”, and “wild bears”. While Blake focused on who was to blame for the situations in London, Dickens seems to focus on the widespread homelessness and disease. He talks a lot of the high rate of suicides, dry-rot developing in men, and how there are more dead than there are living. He describes dry-rot in such a way that is seems as if the working class that have it all, are working themselves to both physical and mental exhaustion. The results of this overworked nature of life causes depression and loss of will to live so that they quite literally rot away and die.

“Night Walks” also has sections where children and the government palaces are referred to, though the government is referred to more sarcastically and less direct in nature than Blake. Dickens walks past the Courts of Law and he writes that they were “hinting in low whispers what numbers of people they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors”. Yet, just before he calls Parliament a stupendous institution in the eyes of other nations. This quote is symbolic in that in the eyes of its own people, the government appears to be failing. Yet, while this is such an important and central cause of dismal life, this section takes up only a small paragraph in Dickens’ work. In a contrasting manor, Blake’s whole poem alludes to the situation of everyday life being the fault of parliament and royalty. The children are also not used in Dickens’ story to draw more sympathy, but describes them as hunted and uncared for savages who fight and allude police in Covent Garden: “But one of the worst sights I know in London, is to be found in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their thieving hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement in the Piazza with the rain of their naked feet”.

Dickens describes how hard these men work and how tough life is, but in a different way than Blake. Blake’s poem is representing these men as consumed with sorrow and feeling sorry for themselves rather than the tough and nasty conditions of working. Blake’s poem is more effective in drawing immediate pathos through large generalizations, but Dickens’ story captures the reality of life that can only be seen at night by presenting real places, real people, and very specific scenarios. Each author carries a different tone in their approach to the topic; Blake’s is dismal and sorrow, where Dickens is shameful and disgust. Both authors are attempting to draw awareness and pathos to their depiction of life through the connection and trust offered through a first person point-of-view, but in vastly different ways of telling their story and drawing the attention of the public to their cause.

Lines Composed Upon Westminster Abbey is a classic appraisal of the beauty of London by Wordsworth, but after reading Blake and interpreting Doré’s engravings, it is hard to read this poem separating Wordsworth’s perception from the others.

Wordsworth writes of the beauty, the captivating, the glittering, calming, effects that London has on those who pass by. Wordsworth’s beauty is in the silence of the streets, the sleeping homes, the glittering of the city from the sunlight, the cleanliness free from pollution, and the emptiness in the lack of people. Wordsworth sees the beauty of London as the beauty of the city itself. His imagery gives life to the city, to the sky, to the famous river, but all without referencing the people. Wordsworth claims that the city is what is beautiful and those who have a lively soul can appreciate it for what it is, but the way he does so takes away from those who live in it. Many believe that the people makes a city what it is, make it great, and are the heart of place, but Wordsworth seems to believe the opposite. He chooses to describe London’s beauty from afar, without the interaction of others.

When reading Lines Composed…, he first person narrative places the reader into the narrator’s shoes. The “I” becomes “me” to the reader and the perceptions and emotions of Wordsworth transfer onto the reader. He keeps the pleasant and raising tone within his upbeat iambic pentameter meter and his strict rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA DEDEDE (I believe that at the time this was written majest-ee was pronounced magist-i,  which would make it rhyme with by, lie, etc., but I may be wrong). This meter and rhyme scheme are important in keeping the reader focused in on the praising tone rather than perceiving it as more mocking or sarcastic. In order to keep this strict meter, Wordsworth even goes as far as to contract never as “Ne’er” once to keep the syllable count from going above 5, where never is left alone in several other lines throughout.

I notice in the poem that every line starts with a capital letter and the line breaks mark both the end of the line structurally and sentence-like. There is no enjambment found in Wordsworth’s work. I see this as a way to appeal to a greater variety of readers. Enjambment for me is one of the most confusing poems to read even in modern times where I have had schooling and been exposed to it. I feel as if the tone, meter, and simple structure make for an easier and understandable read to the lower class. It is a means of setting the education level needed to understand this poem to a more basic level to unite the social classes. This is also done by his emotion writing rather than perfectly replicating an image. By this I mean Wordsworth was known for writing about the emotions, feelings, and individual experiences with a scene, rather than describing with such immense detail that one creates a universal image that is applicable across all readers. By Wordsworth praising the city, the home, of all of these social classes while also inspiring emotions such as love and appreciation, he unites all social classes through their love for a common place, leaving a lot of the imagery open to interpretation for each reader.

Through his use of imagery, Wordsworth seems to be presenting an image of London that appeals to tourists, to travelers, locals, and promotes London as the place to be. The poem draws attention towards the city and inspires the reader to seek that same breathtaking beauty and appreciation for London the way Wordsworth does. The reader can picture beauty in the city and picture the morning sun glittering off of ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples, but these specific sites and details are left open to the reader. Not everyone has the same ideals and definitions of beauty. Different classes, countries, cultures, and languages perceive beauty in contrasting ways. By listing beauty in kinds of places, he describes what is there, but lets the reader’s imagination fill in the blanks and the details of what that building should look like in its most beautiful form. This to me creates a more universal story that can appeal to a larger audience. The imagery of the river flowing unrushed, at its own pace is also used as a means of slowing down the reading of the poem. The emptiness, the calmness, the still hearts, and sleeping all have very calming effects as to set a slower, more appreciative pace for taking in both the poem and London.

I can’t help but picture my own experiences and appreciation for the beauty of London while standing on Tower Bridge and Westminster Bridge. It is a stunning city, not in the business and technology like New York, but in the cleanliness, beauty, and classy buildings. After seeing Doré’s sketches I can’t help but imagine what lies in the streets behind what Wordsworth and I have both seen (At vastly different times in London’s history of course). I have always viewed London from the same perspective Wordsworth has. I have walked through the markets, looked at the items without making eye contact with the sellers, I have looked at the city from a distance, from up above in the London Eye, and all that time what reality have I been ignorant to? Was Wordsworth also ignorant to the poverty stricken truth to life in those alleys or did he also see it and choose to ignore it? Wordsworth wrote this poem from the perspective of someone taking a step back to view the city. I believe it very well have been to remind himself of the beauty of London after constant reminders of poverty and homelessness overwhelmed him.

Each of these authors’ stories must be taken with a grain of salt. Each author is motivated to express different realities, different lesson, and different ideals that lead to exaggerations intended to manipulate the reader to see their perspectives. In the case of Lines Composed Upon Westminster Abbey by Wordsworth, his actions are intended to inspire love and admiration for London, England in his readers and he does so by writing a poem that can be equally appreciated and understood by all.

Gustave Doré sketched with beautiful technique, very dramatic depictions of Victorian life in London in his image Houndsditch. His extreme detail, shading, and his unique use of line direction, shade, thickness, and spacing add a lot of depth and realism to the works. This realism adds to the dramatic differences in the classes that are depicted within each image. When I look at this sketch, I see a man of a wealthier class who is walking down an alley looking at what this woman and her children have to sell. He is dressed in a long coat and a top hat while they are all dressed in wrinkled rags and huddled together as if it is cold. The house behind them is falling apart and has cracks in the windows.

The image appears at first glance to be a local market, but when you look closer you see the ignorance of the man towards the women and her kids. He is oblivious to their state, to the possible importance of the things that lie on the table. There is a watering can, a guitar, a large knife, pots and pans, vases, and it appears to be everything that family has. He is looking down at their table as an outsider looking in, but their faces and defeated forms give a lot away. When I look into the mother’s eyes they are fallen, lost, and sad. The girls in the back are huddled together while the girl in the middle looks angry and frustrated.

The composition is focused right in the middle with the center drawing your eye and when it begins to wander from the family, the background reinforces the conclusions drawn from the image pictured. The moos seems to be solemn, devastating, and ignorant depending on which character the viewer tends to focus on. I focus on the mother’s response to the wealthier man near her table. The focus of this image seems to be the ignorance of a man who has never walked in the shoes of another. A devastating truth can be laid out right in front of us, but we will never see the reality as long as we remain naïve and ignorant.

This image reminds me of a mission trip I went on to the Dominican Republic. Along the airports and the shores are tropical beaches and 5-star resorts, but if you go less than a few miles farther into the island, there are devastated, poverty stricken neighborhoods. The ones who work their whole lives to cater to the rich who travel their on vacation, go home at night to a house that can hardly be considered a house at all. These people could never support their families and are forced to sell anything they can get their hands on to these rich foreigners who remain ignorant to the lives these locals live. In the case of the story within this image, they all live in the same country, the same city, the same neighborhoods, and yet they remain ignorant to the reality around them.

William Blake wrote a poem titled “London” and it depicts what a man who walks through London in this era sees, but in his case he chooses to highlight and focus on these aspects of impoverished to remove the veil that lies over reality. Blake writes of weakness, plagues, mentally ill, crying of men, and fear. If the same man in Blake’s poem had been the rich man in Doré’s illustration then the image would have captured sympathy, recognition, and understanding rather than ignorance and pride. The image and poem both highlight the problems in society, the failings, the ignorance, but both take on the task in different ways. While Blake chooses to highlight the reality of the impoverished lives, Doré highlights the reality in the extreme dynamics of the relationship between the upper and lower classes in Victorian England.

The first time I read Pride and Prejudice,by Jane Austen was for this class. I had never even seen the movie with Kiera Knightley before. While reading through the first 30 or so pages some of the story and the names seemed familiar. I have seen Bridgit Jones Diary and from what I can remember, it seems like a more modern time rendition of Jane Austen’s original story. I noticed that Austen uses several themes and repeated concepts that carry on throughout the story, but the themes I noticed most prevalently were ones that related to the title itself: the varying definitions of the word pride and the inability to properly asses another upon the first encounter.

The word pride is used quite often within the novel and very early on too, which is uncommon considering that it is also the title of the book. We are introduced to this theme primarily between the two main characters in the novel. In the first 5 chapters of the story, we meet the Bennetts, more importantly Elizabeth Bennett as well as Mr. Darcy. After their first interaction she perceives him as clever, rude, disagreeable, and proud. She quickly jumps to conclusions about him and speaks with her family and their friends about the disagreeableness, overwhelming pride, and rudeness he showed towards her. In the same chapter, Miss Lucas pointed out that Darcy has every right to be prideful in his social status and wealth. While Elizabeth agreed, she claimed she would have no issue with it had he not embarrassed her and wounded her pride.

There is then an extensive paragraph defining pride and separating its definition from vanity as if to clear up for the readers not only the margins of the meaning of the word, but also to clarify the theme that Austen will carry through the story. We are told that pride is a common failing that everyone experiences and it is one’s own way of seeing themselves In the case of Elizabeth and Darcy it is the way Darcy sees himself that is the problem. Later in chapter 11, vanity and pride are referenced again clarifying that pride is good in certain levels whereas vanity is a weakness. Darcy is prideful, while maybe too much, it is a strong-suit of his. At this point in the story we are influenced to despise Darcy, being influenced by the Bennetts’ feelings as well as the rest of the town. These lines spent defining and clarifying the two words seem to be Austen’s way of speaking directly to the reader through the dialogue of her characters. These lines struggle to fit into conversation through the voices of the characters and read as more of the authoritative voice of the author coming through. It seems to be Austen’s ways of justifying a goodness in Darcy and leaving messages that he isn’t just rude and disagreeable, a means of hinting towards the resolution of the story.

In chapter 34 we get more references to pride in the argument between Darcy and Elizabeth after he proposes. He claims the reason she says no is because he damaged her pride. Darcy believes the real person in the room who is too prideful to listen to reason is Elizabeth. In chapter 41 we hear of a secondary character, Whickham also referencing Darcy’s pride as the one thing that has kept Darcy in the status he is in. Up until this point we have been introduced to pride as a means of making Darcy disagreeable, something that he has taken beyond the levels of what is socially acceptable, and something that he manipulated to maintain the high social status that he has to this day. The scene where we see pride discussed by Darcy himself, he turns the word back against Elizabeth. This scene is important as it gives us a new insight into Elizabeth and raises questions as to the bias and unreliableness of the third person-limited narrator. To this point we have believed that Darcy is the one who has been over prideful, but could it very well be Elizabeth?

We later hear from Darcy’s maid who has been working for him all of her life in chapter 43. She tells a far different story of Mr. Darcy: someone who is falsely accused of being too proud. She claims he is really misunderstood because he behaves differently than the other men in social settings because his personality is more introverted. This comes as quite a shock to the reader, but is reassuring. There is a reason that Darcy is such an intriguing character who is quite liked, even though the characters in the story present him as disagreeable. Also within this chapter, we see the first instance of Darcy overcoming this pride and lack of communication with others. Elizabeth presents a shocking interaction where he approached the Gardiners and was quite agreeable and gave off a good impression. The Gardiners even went on to say that they did not see his foolish pride that everyone has talked so much about and they quite like him, another moment where the characters judged someone off of the first interaction and meet.

This chapter is Austen’s turning point in our perceptions of Darcy. Without this point it would have been too hard to jump to his good natured attempts at resolving the bad reputation of Lydia, reuniting of Jane and Bingley, and his love for Elizabeth. As well as Austen’s turning point, I believe it to also have been Elizabeth’s. This was the start of her acceptance of Darcy’s side of the story, the goodness in him, and the point where she chooses to let down her injured pride that lets her find that she too loves him.

In the final chapters of the novel, the Bennetts as a whole begin to change their opinions and perceptions of Darcy, steering away from that of proud. In chapter 59, Elizabeth herself admits to her father that she was wrong in her estimations of Darcy’s character from the start and that there is no improper pride about him. After hearing Elizabeth’s profession of reasoning, Mr. Bennett turns around. Jane was hurt for a long time over the insult to Elizabeth’s pride that occurred, but upon Elizabeth’s request she moved to accepting Darcy as well. The Gardiners, the Miss Bennetts, and even Mr. Bennett who favors and loves Elizabeth the most, come around to the truth of Darcy’s pride in the end. (Ironically since they were the ones in the beginning who spread the rumors and the gossip of Darcy’s prideful demeanor in the first place.)

The title of the novel Pride and Prejudiceis used by Austen to show the changing dynamics of Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship and speaks to the themes of pride and not judging one based off of first appearances without knowing them. In the start of the novel, Elizabeth perceives Darcy as overly proud and her perceptions move towards a man who has been misunderstood and too harshly judged upon their first meet. Elizabeth herself is wounded in her pride at the start and becomes very prejudice towards Darcy. She is too quick to jump to judgements based off of the first encounter and stories she heard by words of mouth. She later realizes that she shouldn’t have judged a book by its cover, let’s go of her own pride that she didn’t realize that she had, and opens herself up to Darcy. She begins to perceive his pride in a new light and finds justification in her love for him.

Jane Austen has developed a pattern of pride throughout her novel in the theme of being too quick to judge. Yet, there is irony and contradictions in Jane Austen’s message, you may not be able to judge a book (a person) by its cover (the first interaction), yet her own novel Pride and Prejudiceclearly states the primary theme and topic not only as a pattern throughout the novel, but very straightforward right on the cover. In the case of the novel Pride and Prejudicethe reader can accurately judge the book by its cover, but Elizabeth as well as the rest of the characters in the novel have been proven to do so quite inadequately.