Compare the Ways in Which Rossetti and Tennyson Employ Essay Example

strongly relates back to the story of “Adam and Eve”, when they disobey god and consume the forbidden fruit. Rossetti uses many classic fairy tale techniques and themes; however, she has adapted them, without divulging from actually being a fairy tale, to convey more modern themes in an original way.

Laura is tempted by the goblin men, and consumes their fruit at the price of her health. This is similar to drug addiction, as drug addicts seem to lose the instinct of self preservation and cease to function to their normal routine; in much the same way Laura no longer completes here chores, and in her steadily degrading health the only hing she can think about is having more of the goblins’ fruit. Although “Goblin Market” bears great resemblance to “Adam and Eve” and their story of original sin, there is a key difference; both Lizzie and Laura are female and in the end they prevail against the evil temptation of the goblins’ fruit. Rossetti manages to convey a feminist theme in that despite the fact that Laura folds to temptation, she is delivered from evil by her sisters love, and they live to tell their grandchildren to avoid the goblins.

Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” employs aspects of the well known story of “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table”. The poem is divided into four different parts, consisting of nineteen isometric stanzas.

Parts one and two have four stanzas each, part three contains five stanzas and part four contains six stanzas. The stanzas consist almost entirely of description, each part ends when the description yields to speech; part one ends when

the reaper whispers, then when the Lady proclaims she is “half sick of shadows”, then when the Lady exclaims that she is cursed, and finally when Lancelot blessed the Lady.

Each stanza is made up of nine lines with a rhyming scheme of AAAABCCCB. The “B” in the fifth line always stands for “Camelot”, and the “B” in the ninth line always stands for “Shalott”, with the exceptions of the first and fourth stanza’s in part three.

The poem is predominantly in iambic tetrameter, all of the “A” and “C” lines, with the few “B” lines in trimeter. The syntax is also mostly held to a single line. The lady of Shalott is isolated from the rest of the world in her tower, a common fairy tale aspect found in many different stories.

The Lady of Shalott sees everything “moving thro’ a mirror clear” which resembles the magical mirror of the evil queen in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”. Despite all the activity around Camelot, “Only reapers, reaping early” knew of her.

The contrast between the common reapers and the beautiful weaver, the Lady of Shalott, is a theme often found in fairy tales. Tennyson’s poem uses well known folk and fairy tale aspects to convey a different meaning, yet the poem is not entirely in keeping with the fairy tale genre as it has a rather tragic ending.

In the poem the Lady often sees “A funeral, with plumes and light” or “two young lovers lately wed”. The fact that the lovers succeed the funeral emphasises that love and death are interchangeable for the Lady.

In fairy tales, there is often a tragic

forbidden love which is resolved, however, Tennyson is showing that life is not exactly like a fairy tale; he is stressing the conflict between the artist, the Lady of Shalott, and regular life and activity.

Indeed, when the Lady does abandon her tower for love of Lancelot, her mirror, which was her greatest tool, cracks from side to side. Although both Tennyson and Rossetti utilised folk and fairy tales to help them convey their own messages, the ways in which they did it were different. Rossetti’s poem was for children, despite the adult themes which she had subtly conveyed; whereas Tennyson took aspects from fairy and folk tales, and applied them to a tragedy. Ultimately both writers had their own ways of conveying their messages, and they were both extremely effective.