Aestheticism In The Lady Of Shalott

“The Lady of Shalott” presents the artist’s condition in a society which does not give attention to art. Victorians saw art as something useless in an age of scientific and industrialization. The meaning of aestheticism in the Victorian age was often associated with the idea of art which implicitly meant beauty. At these times society persecuted any creative and unique way of expression, which makes us think that the poem of Tennyson can also mean the death because the artist can't face the outside world.
The women were meant to be in a certain way at those times as well.

In the nineteenth century, the Victorian woman was expected to transform the domestic sphere in her only center of interest. In the poem we see Shalott as an Embowered lady. She is kept away and she is never seen by anyone. She's only

Captivated by his image she follows her instinct and breaks the rule looking out the window at the real world. Once she does this, stepping outside of the limited world, from her isolated life which she had lived, the curse comes over Shalott and all she was creating, the web, now is unraveled, and the mirror, which represented the means by which she saw the outside world helping her to create her artistic work, broke.

Shalott finds a boat near the river and by writing her name on it, she gives herself a title, “The Lady of Shalott”, making her death a work of art. She lies down singing her final song while the boat slips down the river. This final act is like a release from her prison. She leaves behind the island and dies before to get to Camelot.

Her tragic death is caused by her intuition to look on the window and not through the mirror, abandoning her art. Lancelot can be seen as the man rescues her from isolation, but he is also the cause of her