Victorian Radicals From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement by Martin Ellis, Timothy Barringer and Victoria Osborne.
I Am Half Sick of Shadows
"I am half sick of shadows," says The Lady of Shalott in Alfred Lord Tennyson's lyrical ballad, yearning for freedom from her imprisonment in a tower near Camelot, cursed to view the outside world only through a mirror.
Her visible frustration and suppressed passion reflects the limitations placed on women in Victorian society, an inspiration for artists like John William Waterhouse who created this oil on canvas in 1915.
No time hath she to sport and play:
A charmed web she weaves alway.
A curse is on her, if she stay
Her weaving, either night or day,
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be;
Therefore she weaveth steadily,
Therefore no other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
I Am Half Sick of Shadows